This past Saturday was a pretty good UFC Fight Night. It wasn't the most amazing card I've ever seen, but it was a really nice event in the lead up to what is probably the best card, on paper, of the year to this point. I didn't walk away from this card being blown away from many fights as a whole outside of the main event, which I talked about yesterday, but there were enough individual performances to warrant one of these posts. I have quite a few fighters that I want to talk about, so I'm not going to waste time. In these posts, we essentially do a condensed version of the "Fallout" format. I'll say a little about the fighter's performance and then suggest possible future opponents for them. From the start, congratulations to Vanessa Demopoulos, Shayilian Nuerdanbieke, and Josh Parisian on big wins, but I won't be going into detail about them in this post as I just don't have enough to say about their fight.
The first fighter that I do want to talk about is Mario Bautista. He may have had the most impressive performance of the entire night if we're being honest. Brian Kelleher serves an extremely important role on the UFC roster at bantamweight and Bautista passed that test with flying colors. If you read my picks for the week, I thought Bautista would probably be able to win this fight on the feet, but he did a lot more than that. He was hitting Kelleher hard from range, but then he got the takedown, which put the fight where Kelleher wanted it. Bautista had no problems with Kelleher's grappling and ended up submitting him, almost easily. I think Bautista could be in line for a really nice name in his next fight. I think Cody Stamann, Kyler Phillips, Chris Gutierrez, or Montel Jackson would all be perfectly fine fights for him. I think he's earned that opportunity and might only be another fight or two before he can start getting ranked opponents (with continued wins of course).
Normally Cody Durden isn't a fighter I would have much to say about, but men's flyweight is a special case. The division isn't that deep in terms of total amount of fighters, so every fight and win ends up being pretty important. Of the fighters the division does have, a decent percentage of them aren't really anything out of the ordinary and are more so there just to field a legitimate weight class. While Durden doesn't really look like someone who is going to push for a title, I think he is at least a legitimate fighter in the division. He's talented in some aspects, but comes with his flaws. I don't think he would be expecting anyone particularly interesting in his next fight, but he is interesting enough that he generally won't put on sleep inducing level fights whenever he's on a card. I think someone like a Tatsuro Taira, Francisco Figueiredo, or maybe Allan Nascimento would be about the level of fight we're looking at for Durden's next fight.
Next up is Sergey Morozov. I think Morozov is a fighter who is going to be a tough night out for as long as he stays in the tier of opponent he's currently getting. My overall concern for him long term is his durability. I don't think he takes shots well enough to really elevate to an elite level within the division, but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't get those opportunities if he continues to earn them. I'm not really sure where he stands with the UFC as a promotion because he's only 2-2 since joining them, but at the same time, he just fought and beat Raulian Paiva, who was inside the top 15 briefly not all that long ago. Ultimately, I think he is in line for a least a moderately interesting test next fight. I think that could be someone like Nate Maness (who also fought on this card), Jonathan Martinez, Davey Grant, or Brian Kelleher (who we just talked about).
The next fighter to talk about is Carlos Ulberg and he is sort of in a similar situation to Cody Durden. Light heavyweight isn't the biggest division in terms of total number of fighters or depth of quality competition right now, so that makes every fight somewhat meaningful as fighters can move up the rankings pretty quickly. With Ulberg, I'm not entirely sure what to make of him as a fighter. He physically looks to be in fantastic shape, but we saw him gas out badly in his debut. Since, he won the slowest paced 15 minute fight I've ever watched and then got a knockout in 1:15 this time. Skill wise, he seems to be a pretty skilled kick boxer technically, but I don't really get the feeling that he likes to get into the "fight" so to speak. As long as it is a contest of athleticism and technical striking acumen, Ulberg is fine, but whenever someone can throw all of that out the window and turn it into a scrap, that's when things have gotten away from Ulberg. Despite being 2-1 in the UFC now, he hasn't really answered many of the questions we wanted answers for from the Nzechukwu fight. I don't expect that we'll see anything particularly high profile for him in his next fight either. I think someone like a Karl Roberson, Aleksa Camur, Shamil Gamzatov, or Ed Herman are sort of the tier of fight that Ulberg is looking at next.
The story of Chris Curtis continues to write itself and I'm really not sure how the UFC views him right now. He looked pretty damn good again and he was able to stuff all of the takedowns from Rodolfo Vieira. I thought a tough grappler may be the answer to Curtis's good run, but clearly not. Curtis is a guy who I think a lot of MMA fans had figured out, but maybe he is on his one run towards the top. I don't think Phil Hawes, Brendan Allen, and Vieira are necessarily close to be ranked, but I think they're closer to the rankings than they are to the bottom of the division or out of the UFC entirely. I can't imagine Curtis is sitting too far outside of the top 15 at this point and I think his next opponent will reflect that. Maybe he will get someone like Krzystof Jotko, Ian Heinisch, or the loser of the Brad Tavares vs Dricus Du Plessis fight. Maybe there is even an outside chance that he is the next opponent for Edmen Shahbazyan.
Next up is Umar Nurmagomedov and it still seems like he hasn't faced someone who can truly test him in any way. He basically walked through Nate Maness, who is at least a respectable fighter in his own right. I don't think there is any justifiable reason for him to not be fighting ranked competition next. As it turns out, he has replaced Adrian Yanez in the rankings, indicating that ranked competition is in fact coming. Things are kind of lining up for Frankie Edgar to be that guy, which would be unfortunate given how things have gone for Frankie recently. If not him, I think either fighter coming out of the Jack Shore vs Ricky Simon fight probably makes some sense. There is also the Adrian Yanez fight since they are probably right next to each other in the rankings.
Thiago Moises is a guy that I just have a hard time nailing down. He is clearly a skilled fighter, but there's just something that makes him inconsistent. He kind of seems like he's a light weight version of Alexander Volkov. He beats all of the fighters who are beneath him, but has a hard time beating anyone who is above him. He is a competent technical striker and clearly his BJJ game is still very good. I'm not really sure exactly what the UFC would have planned for him. He was coming off of multiple losses in a row, so I don't think one win over Giagos has him pushing for a spot in the rankings again, but I don't know that him just fighting another veteran in his own tier really does all that much. If that is the route they go, I think Bobby Green, Drew Dober, and Renato Moicano fit the bill. I think the more likely scenario is that they give Moises a younger guy who is looking to make that push and he did call out Joe Solecki, which I think is fine. Of all of the young guys who are coming up, I think Solecki is probably the best matchup for Moises, so it was a pretty good call out. Other possible opponents of that same ilk are Grant Dawson, Guram Kutateladze, Mark O. Madsen, and Ilia Topuria (if he's staying at 155).
The final winner to go over today is Shavkat Rakhmonov. Shavkat basically ran over Neil Magny and was simply too much in the grappling. Heavy wrestling and ground based fighting has always been the best path to beating Magny and Shavkat did just that. He looked great as he has for all of his UFC fights so far. He still really isn't facing any resistance, so I think he still needs to be pushed aggressively. I think fights with Sean Brady, Vicente Luque, Belal Muhammad, and Gilbert Burns could all make some degree of sense. Brady hasn't fought yet this year, so I imagine that he is looking for an opponent and now Shavkat is right next to him in the rankings. Luque is booked for August, so the timeline may be a bit of an issue, but as long as he comes out with a win, I think that fight would be what the UFC is looking for. A Belal fight would make a lot of sense as well. Belal is in a similar spot to Sean Brady and Gilbert Burns where they're kind of looking around for an opponent. It kind of feels like Brady, Belal, Burns, and Shavkat end up pairing up and then Masvidal fights Wonderboy with Colby fighting Khamzat. That is sort of my feeling on the situation as it currently stands.
I do want to mention Neil Magny briefly. He didn't look particularly great against Shavkat, but those things happen. He is starting to get older now, so we'll see how Neil Magny looks against a different style of competition. If Geoff Neal loses to Vicente Luque, I think that fight would make sense for the both of them. Otherwise, Li Jingliang is probably the guy for Magny, unless he wants to wait things out and take some time off. Maybe even a Michel Pereira fight would work.
That's it from me on this card. What did you think of the event? Was Shavkat your biggest winner other than Mateusz Gamrot? If not, then who was? What was your favorite fight of the night? Leave any and all comments below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
Comments
Post a Comment