The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

We've made it to the last preview of 2021 and of course, I'll have it out late because I am really dragging today for some reason. Anyways, the main event of tomorrow's UFC Vegas 45 card will have Chris Daukaus in his toughest test to date take on Derrick Lewis in his first appearance since his loss to Cyril Gane for the interim heavyweight title. When this main event was announced, it honestly caught me a little off guard because Lewis is a long time UFC veteran who is 1 fight removed from an interim title shot and Daukaus is only 4 fights into his UFC career and this was his first training camp as a full time MMA fighter. Up until this fight, he was still working as a Philadelphia city police officer full time, with MMA being his side job. I guess I sort of already started into Daukaus's story, so I'll get right into his resume. The story of Chris Daukaus is an interesting one. If you're a long time fan or have just taken notice, heavyweight is one of the UFC...

We're going to take a break from dissecting UFC 269 and preview a couple of fights from the final UFC card of the year happening this weekend. We'll start with the co-main event between Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson and Belal "Remember The Name" Muhammad. Both Belal and Wonderboy are in the top 10 in the welterweight rankings with Muhammad being exactly at 10 and Wonderboy coming in at 5. The welterweight division is in a little bit of a weird spot because champion Kamaru Usman is well on his way to almost clearing out the division entirely. He has two wins over Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington and single wins over Gilbert Burns and Leon Edwards. It seems likely that a rematch with Edwards is on the horizon, but beyond that the division seems pretty open. All of this is important because a win by someone in the top 10 that Kamaru Usman hasn't fought yet can leave someone maybe just 1 or 2 more wins away from a title shot of their own. It is not out of t...

 The main card opener of Saturday's UFC 269 event showcased the polarizing Sean O'Malley against Raulian Paiva. O'Malley is a hot topic in the MMA community as almost everyone has a really strong opinion on him one way or the other. He has a really strong fan base that will ride with him through thick and thin, while supporting everything he does. He has an equally large section of MMA fans that can stand him and will stop at nothing to dismiss and diminish everything he does. I like to think I can be down the middle on most guys and formulate my own opinions of situations as they happen. I can criticize people I generally like and can give kudos to people I don't really like that much. With that said, on the spectrum, I probably tend to the side of people who actually like Sean O'Malley, so keep that in mind. When I say I like him, I mostly mean that I like watching him fight. I don't care too much for his out of the cage personality, not because I have any pro...

 On what was a great night of fights, the main event didn't disappoint even one bit. I think the general public probably still expected Dustin Poirier to run over Charles Oliveira, but the betting market kept the line close the whole way, which I was happy to see. Charles Oliveira deserved his respect regardless of the outcome, but obviously the way it went will help that a great deal. That was a great fight and I'm glad those two men were able to finish off a great card with incredible performances from the both of them. I always have a hard time deciding which order to go in when I discuss the fighters. If I put the shorter one first, it seems like I'm just getting it out of the way. If I put the shorter one last, it seems just thrown in at the end. The problem with these title fights is that the champion is usually the shorter paragraph because their next opponent is largely out of their hands and is already known. Having the champion be discussed first and be shorter se...

 Man, what a weekend of fights we had. That card was set up with the intention of being able to talk about it for an entire month since there will only be one more card until early to mid January and it delivered. There's a lot of fallout posts I want to do and I'll be putting this one out first since I think it will be the shortest and it's already Monday afternoon. I'll get Oliveira vs Poirier out tomorrow and then maybe Sean O'Malley vs Raulian Paiva out Wednesday. I want to do previews for Daukaus vs Lewis and Thompson vs Muhammad, which obviously need to come out before the fight, so those will be Thursday and Friday. However, I do want to talk about some of the other fights from this weekend including Kai Kara-France vs Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz vs Pedro Munhoz at the very least. I might do a combined post for some other guys like Josh Emmett, Tai Tuivasa, and Bruno Silva too. Those will come sometime next week and while those will be late, I would rath...

Fight day is officially upon us and it is the last pay per view of the year. UFC 269 is a massive card filled to the brim with exciting individuals, great matchups, important fights in terms of the rankings, and of course 2 titles being defended to cap it off. This is a pretty large card, which we need because the last month has been pretty rough for me. This is shaping up to be a great night of fights, which is great for entertainment purposes, but for this, it means a lot of fights that can sort of go either way. Despite a good start to this series, I've had some rough weeks recently, but we need a good finish to the year. I'll restart my record after the final UFC card next week and use the winning percentage as a comparison for each year that we end up doing this. 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. Let's start. Gillian Robertson defeats Priscila Cachoeira ...

I did the co-main event yesterday and now we finally made it to the main event. The feature bout of UFC 269 will see Charles Oliveira in his first defense of his lightweight title pitted against consensus number one contender Dustin Poirier. Coming into this, I was expecting to have to say that everyone is overlooking Charles Oliveira, but that actually isn't the case. I think the betting odds are close enough that Oliveira is getting the respect he deserves from the general public, which I appreciate. Normally my intro is a little longer, but I feel like saying any more will just get me into the details, so I'm just going to get started.  Most people reading this will probably be more familiar with Dustin Poirier, so I'll start with him. The challenger does get introduced first after all, so that's how I'll do this. Dustin Poirier will see his second crack at undisputed UFC gold this Saturday and given the strength of the lightweight division, it may be his last. P...