I've been really struggling with content the last few weeks. Between having a lot going on in my personal and professional life and a general lack of motivation, my posting schedule has gotten very inconsistent. Pair that up with a some strange booking recently and I feel like topics have been lacking outside of my main formulaic posts, but this one actually peaked my interest. Last week on Dana White's Contender Series, we saw 17 year old prospect Raul Rosas Jr earn a UFC contract. He was the talking point of the early part of the MMA week and rightfully so in my opinion. There were a lot of opinions flying around about what his future may hold and exactly what caliber of fighter that he is, so I wanted to throw in my own two cents.
As for the performance that we saw against Mando Gutierrez last Tuesday, I thought Rosas looked very impressive. I don't want to make everything about his age because now that he's in the UFC, "for his age" doesn't really matter anymore to some extent. I was a bit surprised that they opted for the regular contract instead of a developmental deal just because he is ultimately so young. At 17, he still has quite a bit of physical development to do and will be an evolving fighter because his body will be developing physically from fight to fight. I thought the developmental deal would be the best route because, at the end of the day, what really is the rush? I don't think there's any sense of urgency on the surface to get him into UFC fights. He is talented enough to go out and compete right now, but that doesn't mean it is the best thing for him in the long term. However, I think there may have been some pressure on the UFC to get him on a real UFC contract from outside organizations. If the UFC offered him a developmental deal to go and fight a couple of regional fights over the next year or so, he may have just taken a deal with another major organization. I assume Bellator and PFL would have been interested (even though PFL only has featherweight) if he became truly available, Maybe Dana knew that and needed to offer him the actual deal even though the 10 and 10 contender series deal isn't anything special. If that is the case, then I'm find with it because he is a talent and story worth having on the roster even if he doesn't really start to make a push for a few years.
To actually get to his performance, he looked pretty good. He showed a lot of really good skills and attributes that should be able to take him pretty far as long as he continues to develop on a normal curve. He has a really good base that should allow him to compete and win a lot of fights from the jump. He is a very talented grappler and is already a plus fighter there. He is very aggressive as well. I think that aggression was a little too much at times, but I'll attribute it to going all out in an attempt to solidify his contract. He was a little too willing to try for submissions and ended up losing position a few times. He was good enough to end up reversing that on multiple occasions, but true UFC level opponents won't allow for that to happen. He is clearly an intelligent grappler though, so I assume he is actually aware that he can't continue to do that kind of thing. As he gets more fight experience and especially more high level fight experience, those types of mistakes generally happen less frequently. The other big thing is that he showed he is capable of pushing a very high pace for an entire 15 minutes. He forced grappling exchanges and scrambles for the entirety of the fight. While I'm not sure exactly how good his pure wrestling is just yet, the ability to grapple and push a pace is a great base for winning fights at any level. The big unknown is how his striking will play. We don't know too much about his standup game in general, but he looks more than willing to exchange. He seems to be pretty tough and if he pushes the same pace on the feet that he does on the ground, he will be fine from that point of view. He didn't look like the cleanest striker in the world, but as he progresses, that will get cleaned up. Based on what we saw at only 17, I think the sky really is the limit for Rosas as he is already in a really good spot with so much room and time for improvements.
My biggest concern for Rosas is that he's being thrown into one of the best and deepest divisions that the UFC has to offer. For as good and talented as he is, there is a lot of development that is necessary for him to reach his potential. Instead of focusing on getting better and improving every day, he's going to be preparing for a really tough opponent and working to a specific gameplan. The UFC should and likely will bring him along slowly, but there really aren't a ton of places to hide him. It's virtually impossible to give him a matchup against someone with a similar amount of experience at this stage, so they have to give him someone who will engage in the grappling with him. Bantamweight just doesn't have a ton of easy fights or favorable matchups right now, so I do worry that they could end up rushing him along. They'll also have to resist the temptation of pushing him too quickly. If he does win those favorable matchups early and gets to the point where he's 19 years old and is 4-0 in the UFC, people are going to start calling for a push and the UFC will be in a tough spot. Rosas really has all of the potential in the world, but it is going to be interesting to watch exactly how the UFC brings him along and how often they want to put him on the schedule.
At the end of the day, Raul Rosas Jr. is probably the most gifted of the really young prospects that we've seen the UFC sign off of Dana White's Contender Series. I don't think giving him a regular UFC contract over a developmental deal is the wrong decision at all in a sense that Rosas has the skills to win fights against UFC caliber opponents right now. I do worry that putting him in a position where his priority is winning tough fights instead of just improving and rounding out his skill set will take away from his long term potential, but we'll have to wait and see when the time comes. I really think he has the base and ceiling to potentially be inside the rankings one day, so I hope that the UFC is as invested in his long term potential as they are in capitalizing off of his name in the short term while he is a hot commodity and in the news cycle. He's definitely a name to watch and I look forward to seeing him whenever he is slated to make his real UFC debut sometime in the future.
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