The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 I feel like I've been saying this forever, but I'm really just running out of time for a lot of the early and midweek posts here. These next two weeks are when everything is coming to ahead so, after the next 10 days, everything should return much closer to normal. This weekend I will be traveling for a series of interviews that take place all of next week. That means that I probably won't be posting anything for UFC 280 until the picks and bets on Saturday morning. At the very least, I'll have picks out just for the continuity of it, but depending on how much time I actually have to write and look over lines, I could take the week off from betting. I have to be in 3 different cities over 5 days and I get way too car sick to type when it isn't my turn to drive, so there's really not any way for me to get any of those previews done. I may try to squeeze in a round up for this card if I can, but it depends on how much all of the driving takes out of me. Anyways, ...

 Despite being kind of a weird card on paper, UFC Vegas 61 ended up being a pretty interesting watch. There was a lot of weirdness surrounding the Mark Zuckerberg stuff, but I think the action ended up being the thing that most people were talking about after the event came to an end. We got a lot of good fights even though most of the main card went to decisions. I do have some things that I want to say, so I'm just going to get right into it. Guido Cannetti picked up another win, this time in a much tougher matchup. Cannetti is getting up there in age, but he's still turning in solid performances. He's a bit limited at this point, but he's finding a way to win as long as they give him opponents in his own tier. His kicks still looked powerful and once he got in dominant position after Randy Costa slipped, he finished the choke pretty quickly. As an aside, that was a really bad look for Costa, but it doesn't take away from what Cannetti did well. Some opponents tha...

 We were witness to a pretty important main event within the strawweight division. Yan Xiaonan and Mackenzie Dern were ranked 5 and 6 within the division and were battling to potentially get right back into the title conversation. If you don't read my picks and bets posts on Saturday, then you missed where I said that I didn't do a full preview for this fight because I had a test to do in preparation for an interview and then my grandfather had surgery, so I just ran out of time to get it done. That is going to happen for UFC 280 fight week as well. I have 3 separate interviews that week and have to travel for 2 of them, so I don't think I'll be very active here. Maybe I can get some of those previews done well in advance, so we'll see. Anyways, I thought we got a really compelling fight this past weekend that was pretty fun and interesting to watch. There were a lot of hot takes coming out of it as well, so I want to address that when appropriate. While it wasn...

 Unfortunately, I just didn't have time to do the preview for today's main event between Yan Xiaonan and Mackenzie Dern. I thought I would be able to get it done, but between a test that I had to do for an interview and my grandfather getting surgery done, I just ran out of time. If there is any upside, it's that I don't think Dern vs Xiaonan is all that difficult of a fight to break down, so everything I say here should be sufficient for you to know what to expect or look for. This card is really flying under the radar as it is a bit of a strange one. Dern is a fan favorite and I know she may not be a traditional headliner, but I think the main event is just fine. The rest of the fights have some intrigue just based on some matchup dynamics that I'm interested to see exactly how they play out. I think a lot of the betting lines have gotten a bit strange as well, but we'll talk about that as we get to them. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font ...

 I don't typically talk about Dana White's Contender Series on here and now I'm talking about it two days in a row. We've gotten some legitimately interesting prospects over the last couple of weeks with Raul Rosas Jr. and now the second appearance of the season for Bo Nickal. Contender Series has lost a bit of it's luster in recent seasons with so many fighters being given contracts just to be able to fill out the bottom half of Fight Night cards, but I really don't mind it too much. It does take away slightly when you see a fighter given a contract and you're already planning to fade them against the first veteran fighter they face, but it is what it is. When we get prospects who seemingly have a championship level ceiling, it is exciting and that is what we have with Rosas and Nickal. Much like I did yesterday with Rosas, I just want to talk about what I thought of Nickal's performance and where I can see him going in the future. To start, I think it ...

 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 mat...

 UFC Vegas 60 turned out to be a pretty fun event with a lot of fights that were competitive and entertaining. It all culminated with a pretty important fight in this sort of bantamweight grand prix that the UFC has set up. This title eliminator fight saw Cory Sandhagen fend off the young up and comer Song Yadong after the doctor stopped the fight in between the 4th and 5th rounds due to a cut in the eyebrow of Song. The fight was pretty competitive for the most part, but I thought Sandhagen was consistently just getting the better of Song. The judges were seeing it a bit differently as two of the three had it 38-38 going into the final round even though most people had it 39-37 in favor of Sandhagen at that point. The doctor finally had seen the cut get bad enough and close enough to the eye to put a stop to the fight though and Sandhagen moves on to the next round of the tournament so to speak. This was a pretty interesting fight to watch and I feel like I have a fair amount to s...