The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 We're back with UFC action this weekend in the final week of a really long run. We have next week off, so that's when the post about Colby Covington and the welterweight title picture will come. It took me a bit longer than anticipated, so I had to table it for now in order to have this come out on time. I think UFC San Antonio is going to be a pretty fun event. I think a lot of these fights are going to be close, competitive fights. I also believe we have quite a few fun matchups on our hands. I'm a proponent of idea that not every fight needs to be high level to be good, but making competitive matchups goes a long towards making even low level fights good to watch. This card does just that maybe better than any Fight Night we've seen so far this year. That leads us to a tremendous main event between Chito Vera and Cory Sandhagen. They're two fighters who I root for quite often, despite the fact that I pick against Chito every time he fights. It should be a great

 The co-main event of UFC 286 was billed as a fight that would feature a ton of violence and that is largely what we got. Justin Gaethje and Rafael Fiziev brought the heat and somehow made it to a decision despite each guy landing some really nice shots. It would have taken something really strange for this fight not to be a good one and I'm glad it was because the rest of the main card before it was a little...meh. Gaethje managed to just edge out Fiziev on the judges scorecards in what ended up being a really close fight. It was good to see Gaethje look good in a high level fight and I think Fiziev showed a lot too. I'm not sure exactly what direction I'll go with this to be honest and I don't have any solidified thoughts going into this, so let's see.  This is such a big win for Justin Gaethje and it has to feel really good. A lot of people, myself included, were starting to talk as if this was sort of the last stand for Gaethje as a true title contender, top 5 t

 UFC 286 brought us the conclusion to the Leon Edwards vs Kamaru Usman trilogy. There were a lot of opinions as to how this fight would go, but I don't think I really saw anyone who predicted the fight that we actually ended up getting. We saw a fight that was largely controlled by Edwards on the outside with Usman unable to get much going outside of a few spurts. There weren't many big moments, which favors Edwards, but still felt a bit strange. I have a lot to say about this fight, but I don't want to do it all in the intro, so let's just get to work. We'll start with Leon and I really don't have a ton to say about him this time around performance wise. This was much more of a typical Leon Edwards fight. He was able to get to his game much better than in the last fight and then keep the fight there. I do think Leon looked a bit sharper in this one. He was more confident and decisive. His strikes were sharper and seemed a tick faster, especially his kicks. Leon

 While it hasn't been big money, we've been in the positive for two consecutive weeks, so that's progress. Now, we have to start building on that to get some more productive weeks and with a very large card, we should have some opportunities to do just that. We have an extra PPV this month and it's a pretty big one with the completion of the Leon Edwards vs Kamaru Usman trilogy. Their last fight created the moment of the year in 2022 and this one projects to be a fun one as well, this time in front of the UK fans. We also get the return of Justin Gaethje, which is always fireworks. We have some other pretty good and/or interesting fights to get into, so let's not waste any time. 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. Bets are now being officially tracked at  BetMMA  as well. Julianna Miller defeats Veronica Hardy            

 There was a lot of discussion about how this main event could and would play out, with most people coming down on the side that Petr Yan would probably win. I don't think even Merab Dvalishvili's biggest fans imagined what we saw was a real possibility. I went against my fandom, like I have with Jamahal Hill far too often, and used what I thought was my head instead of my heart. What we learned is that Merab was able to do to Yan what he's done to everyone else he's fought. It was an incredible display of endurance for 25 minutes. Merab broke the record for takedown attempts in a fight as the mentioned during the broadcast, but it was actually more impressive than it sounds. His ability to really shut down almost all of Yan's offense was both unexpected and impressive. This really should put Merab on a short list of candidates for a title shot, but we'll get into that in a minute. It was a great way to cap off what was really a great event from start to finish.