The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 UFC 278 ended up being a pretty solid night of competition. The main card didn't start off too hot with some less than interesting matchups, but it picked up with time and ended with two really solid fights with emotional elements that brought some added feeling to both bouts. The prelims provided some decent action as well. Even the fights that went to decision were pretty fun to watch for the most part. I already did reviews for the final two fights of the night, but we'll take the time here to briefly go through the rest of the card to talk about the performance for each winner and try to diagnose who their next opponent could be.  We started the night with flyweights and Victor Altamirano picked up a pretty nice win. He weathered an early storm before finding a finish of his own late in round one. This was an important win for Altamirano as it was his first in the UFC and brings him to 1-1 in the promotion. Now that he has the first win under his belt, he can focus on clim

 The co-main event of UFC 278 was a bit of a weird one with Luke Rockhold making his return after 3 years away from competition to take on former title challenger and number 6 ranked lightweight Paulo Costa. Both fighters came into fight week with a lot of questions surrounding them for a variety of reasons. Rockhold had been away from the sport for so long and was coming back down to 185 lbs where he once held the title. He was supposed to return last year, but was forced out due to an injury. No one was sure exactly what kind of shape we would see Luke in and what his motivations were for returning. There were some rumors that he wasn't really training all that hard or taking Costa seriously, so expectations for his performance were pretty low for me in general. I thought he represented himself well, but I'll get more into that later. Costa had just as many questions as his behavior has gotten very strange since losing his title shot against Israel Adesanya. There were a lot

 What an incredible night with some really fantastic moments all around. I didn't get around to the previews because I just didn't feel very inspired or motivated, but I have a lot to say about these fights. We go in reverse order the week after, so that means starting with the main event. I don't even know if I have the words for this fight. This won't be a traditional fall out post as there's no real need to discuss what is next. Assuming Kamaru Usman is capable of making a somewhat normal return (which should be some question because that was a really bad knockout), then they'll do the immediate trilogy. I think as long as they can get that fight within the next 6 months, they'll wait it out. If Usman needs 8 months or longer, they'll probably just move on without him and make the Chimaev fight (assuming he does in fact beat Nate Diaz). Because there's no need to really go into that any deeper, I'm just going to discuss each fighter and maybe

 Alright guys, it's been a bit of a slow week. I'm honestly not feeling that well and just sort of dragging. There's a lot of things in my personal life that are getting to the point where the rubber meets the road one way or another, so I guess it is just general anxiety that has my motivation pretty low recently. That has seen me not do previews for any fights this week, but I'll be a bit long in this one to make up for it. This card is kind of carried by the final 3 fights of the night with some mild intrigue in another matchup or two over the rest of the night. It should be a pretty solid night even though this doesn't really feel like a PPV outside of the welterweight title being on the line. Honestly, if you took the main event off, this doesn't feel all that different than last week. With that said, I'm still looking forward to those big fights and hopefully we can get a few entertaining fights the rest of the way. Just to be clear,  my picks will be

 This past Saturday's UFC San Diego event turned out to pretty solid event. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't quite work out as there were some weird matchups, but it turned out to be really fun. The crowd was absolutely fantastic as well and really had all of the fights feeling important. I do hope we are trending towards getting most events in front of a live audience at this point because it makes the events so much fun. Part of me likes the apex, but I think it is a bit played out. We got a really good mix of results and styles on Saturday as well, which was a nice change of pace. It feels like some recent events just have all felt the same the whole way through. We got all of those decisions in London and then had a full card of finishes a couple of weeks ago. This provided a nice balance of finishes and decisions with different styles and matchup dynamics. Beyond just Chito Vera positioning himself for a potential title shot, there were some winners who did a nice job