The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 We're back with another picks and tips for today's card and it is a PPV version, which always makes things feel a little bigger. I'm writing this significantly later in the day than I normally do, so it may be a late night. UFC 277 has pretty standard looking prelims, but the main card should actually be pretty good, so I'm excited. We're coming off of the back of UFC London, which was a decent afternoon for the picks, but the bets ended up in the red unfortunately. We'll look to bounce back this week. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font , and  the real results will be listed next to it in italics  after the fight is official. Official bets will be at the bottom. I don't have the time to mess around with this intro, so let's get it going.  Orion Cosce defeats Blood Diamond               Result: Cosce by decision (1-0)          We're in for a treat to start the night as we get to...

 The main event of UFC 277 this weekend is the rematch of last December's bantamweight title fight. That night, we saw Julianna Pena turn the MMA world on it's head as she was able to pull of the upset over Amanda Nunes that very few thought was even possible, let alone would've predicted. I think that result caused a lot of people to take a step back and reevaluate how we were talking about Amanda Nunes going into that fight. Amanda had built up a reputation for essentially being this unstoppable force that was just going to bulldoze her way through everyone put in front of her. That wasn't the case with Pena as after she was able to get through a rough patch in the first, Nunes didn't seem to really have anything else for her. It was an absolutely incredible fight on one of the best cards in recent memory. We are now getting to see whether that result was more of a fluke or whether Julianna is here to stay and really start to build an incredible legacy of her own ...

 This weekend presents the second PPV card of July and the final card of the month. It really doesn't feel like a PPV week though and I'm not particularly sure why. The hype just isn't really there. The card really doesn't feel all that special and I think a lot of the big cards have kind of fallen flat for much of 2022. The UFC ended 2021 on such a great run, but we're really not getting much going in terms of full events yet this year. It seems like they're really going all out for the October PPV and they usually try to stack up the November PPV in New York as well. This is probably the weakest PPV of the year so far as prelims are pretty thin and the main card is just kind of ok. Anthony Smith vs Magomed Ankalaev should be a decent fight and I'm looking forward to it as an Anthony Smith fan. Pantoja vs Perez should be another decent fight and I'm always down to watch Derrick Lewis. Kara-France vs Moreno is probably the best fight on the card and then...

 The UFC is in a very good, but very interesting spot with one of it's biggest draws. Paddy Pimblett is quickly becoming a huge star and money making machine for the promotion, even though he is only 3-0 since making his debut less than a year ago. Paddy has found the secret sauce required to become a huge star and someone the fans want to see before he has started competing in big fights and important matchups. This is a very unique situation that forces the UFC to be very careful with how they book him in his next few fights. They want to walk a fine line where the public feels like he is being legitimately tested, but at the same time, the UFC wants to keep him winning so that he has as much interest as possible. I want to get into this dynamic a little bit and discuss what all of the options really are. Hopefully that will help us come to a conclusion.  Before I really get into that part, I want to take a moment to discuss some of these comparisons that people are using to...