WHAT'S HAPPENING:
*Well, last weekend's Fox card from Kansas City pretty much lived up to all that hype on paper as one of the best cards of the year, and the main event title fight was pretty much Demetrious Johnson summed up in a nutshell - complete dominance by likely the best fighter in the world, accompanied by the lowest ratings of any Fox card to date. Anyway, Johnson's obviously been one of the best of the world for years running with the way he's run roughshod over a really solid division, but few of his performances have put his greatness so clearly on display; Johnson just outclassed Wilson Reis on the feet, darting in with strikes at will while never being there to get hit, before taking things to the ground and running through a BJJ black belt before cinching on a third-round armbar for the tap. Johnson's tied Anderson Silva's record for consecutive title defenses with this win, and it sounds like Mighty Mouse is ready to go for number eleven - it'll be interesting to see if, well, UFC can find anyone who'll give him a challenge.
*And the rest of the main card wound up shaking up the contender picture for a few different divisions. Coming off a frustrating loss to Karolina Kowalkiewicz, Rose Namajunas pretty much put together the best performance of her career in pretty much handling Michelle Waterson, and apparently earned herself a title shot in the process. Admittedly, Waterson helped her out in the first round by trying that dumb head-and-arm throw that so many strawweights seem to love, resulting in Namajunas working over Waterson for the balance of the first round, but the second round saw Namajunas just piece up Waterson standing before going for the fight-ending submission. I'd like to see Namajunas string together a few more performances like this before getting that title shot, but given that Joanna Jedrzejczyk is starting to clear out the division, assuming a Jessica Andrade title win doesn't open things up, Thug Rose is the obvious next contender. The big mover and shaker, though, was Robert Whittaker getting a shockingly one-sided win over longtime contender Jacare Souza, establishing himself as one of the top contenders for middleweight champ Michael Bisping. Whittaker's ability to keep things standing was the big question, but he mostly shucked off Souza when he tried to grapple and then just destroyed the Brazilian on the feet, eventually earning a second-round stoppage. Amazingly, UFC finally has a young Australian star that can fight for the title down under, and while this was a damaging loss for Souza as he seems to be exiting his athletic prime, things could have been worse, as Jacare signed a new eight-fight contract with UFC right before this fight took place. And the main card opener saw Brazilian prospect Renato Moicano suddenly establish himself as a concern at featherweight with a decision win over Jeremy Stephens - it wasn't a dominant win, but Moicano was pretty much a step ahead the entire fight, and while it looked like Moicano's career was stalling a bit thanks to injuries, this was a big win that more than made up for lost time and shot Moicano up the ladder.
*There was a bunch of fun stuff on the undercard, led by Tim Elliott's decision win over Louis Smolka, which led off the Fox portion of the prelims. These two guys pretty much just went non-stop for fifteen minutes, scrambling back and forth with submissions, as a crowd that was awesome pretty much all night cheered them on. Elliott got the big hometown win, and despite three straight losses, I hope UFC hangs on to Smolka, who continues to show here that he's an exciting, if flawed, talent. French uber-prospect Tom Duquesnoy made his debut and mostly lived up to the hype - American wrestler Patrick Williams was surprisingly effective early, not so much in damaging Duquesnoy as much as neutralizing him, but soon exhausted himself as much as you'll ever see a lighter-weight fighter gas out, at which point it was off to the races, as Duquesnoy put him away with some of his trademark vicious elbows. This wasn't the type of win that announced Duquesnoy is ready to be in the bantamweight top ten tomorrow, but his ceiling is still ridiculous, and UFC should bring him along slowly. Also at bantamweight, Aljamain Sterling got a huge win over Augusto Mendes in a hell of a fight - Sterling had fixed some of the problems with his janky striking game, but even that almost wasn't enough, as Mendes, a BJJ stud, has proven to be a quick study, continuing to show his own impressive striking game to complement that lethal submission game. Veteran Anthony Smith shockingly got a third-round comeback knockout over top prospect Andrew Sanchez - Sanchez showed to have some cardio problems here as he tried to coast to a victory, but between this and his last win over Elvis Mutapcic, Smith has basically gotten rid of his rep as a guy who wilts once he's losing, and suddenly might be making a run towards the top fifteen. Kansas City's Zak Cummings got an impressive hometown win, running through Nathan Coy, even if it was marred a bit by Mike England, a terrible referee who's been a regular on Invicta cards in Missouri, basically waiting for Coy to be unconscious for a few seconds before calling the fight off via submission. And in a fun opener of the card, Brazilian bantamweight Ketlen Vieira looked super impressive in a clear win over Ashlee Evans-Smith - Evans-Smith looked solid, but Vieira improved greatly from her UFC debut, using her size and range to dictate the terms of the fight. And there was some not-so-fun stuff - Rashid Magomedov coasted to a win over Bobby Green that never really particularly went anywhere, and the same was true of light heavyweight prospect Devin Clark's win over Jake Collier. Plus Roy Nelson appears to be completely done, as Alexander Volkov rather easily got the nod over him - Nelson's way too foot-slow at this point to do much of anything standing, and even his grappling game is starting to fail him, as he's pretty much just forced to lay on top of opponents and do nothing if he wants to maintain control. I wouldn't be surprised if UFC cut Nelson at this point, but I don't think they'll let a marketable guy go to Bellator - I just don't know what you do with him for his next fight, though.
*So...UFC 214 in Anaheim is shaping up maybe kinda sorta? We have an idea of UFC wants to do there with a double main event, but getting there may be a problem. It appears set that Daniel Cormier will be defending his light heavyweight title on that show, but apparently the ball is in Jon Jones's court - if Jones wants an immediate return against Cormier, it's his, but if he wants a tune-up fight first, it'll be Cormier against Jimi Manuwa. I assume Jones will be taking that fight - I don't see him having any fear of facing Cormier, and why risk losing a big money fight if Manuwa manages to win the title. They also apparently want a women's featherweight title fight between the only two women seemingly left in the division, with Germaine de Randamie defending against Cris Cyborg, but that's apparently turned into way more of a mess. UFC's apparently been trying to put the fight together, and Cyborg is basically acting on social media like the fight is happening, but de Randamie's a complete question mark - after beating Holly Holm for the title, she talked about needing surgery on her hand, and at last word, she apparently hasn't even seen a doctor yet. Plus there's some strangeness going on with Cyborg's contract - apparently she has two fights left on her deal, but regardless of anything else, her contract will apparently expire come this October, and there's no word on any sort of extension. So, one wonders at what point UFC decides that Cyborg, or the featherweight division in general, just isn't worth the trouble.
*World Series of Fighting is apparently no more at the end of 2017, as the promotion just announced they'll become - or be absorbed by? - the new Professional Fighters League. Apparently the new promotional model will be similar to the old IFL, which died a quick death as a bit of a punchline, pitting fighters in some sort of round robin tournament that will eventually end in a playoff format. Uh...interesting, I guess. No word yet on what'll happen to the promotion's champions or talent currently under contract, so, this'll be fun to watch as it unfolds.
*Well, I don't know if UFC's going back to South Korea anytime soon, as Korean police are investigating allegations of match fixing stemming to their debut in Seoul back in November of 2015. I mentioned it at the time, but this all goes back to the fishy betting lines for an undercard bout between Tae Hyun Bang and Leo Kuntz. Bang was a slight betting favorite for most of the time lines were open, but suddenly jumped up to a gigantic underdog in the days leading up to the fight, as what apparently eventually wound up being $2 million worth of money was bet on Kuntz to win. So, immediately everyone realized something was up, with some books taking the line down, but when the fight came around, things didn't seem all that strange. Bang seemed to be walking with a slight limp, suggesting maybe had some inside info about an injury, but he wasn't fighting like a man who had been told to lose, and wound up taking the narrow decision win. Well, the story's apparently started to come out. The Korean mob did in fact pay Bang to lose, paying him the equivalent of $100,000 (half of which he turned around and bet against himself), but when UFC officials repeatedly asked Bang what he knew about all the weird gambling movement on his feet, Bang denied having any knowledge of what was going on. And when push came to shove, Bang got cold feet, and decided to fight for the win, which he wound up getting. So, as you'd imagine, Bang has been getting death threats ever since, at which point he contacted the authorities. So...hoo boy. Hope this all goes well for him.
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BOOKINGS:
*Not a ton has been announced in the last week, with the one big fight being UFC finally signing World Series of Fighting bantamweight champion Marlon Moraes. WSOF helped make a name for a few guys, and Moraes might have been their biggest breakout star, a tiny ball of violence that pretty much ran through all comers. WSOF kind of existed as sort of a scheme for manager/matchmaker/possible terror suspect Ali Abdelaziz to make his own fighters some money, so Moraes pretty much chose to get paid, and rightfully so, but with WSOF falling apart, it's probably the right time for Moraes to make a run in UFC. And they're throwing him right into the fire - Moraes faces top-five contender Raphael Assuncao at UFC 212 in June, and with a win there, he's probably only a fight or two away from a title shot.
*And since there's not much of anything else, let's do the chronological rundown. UFC 211's lineup next month seems finalized - Chase Sherman replaces Jarjis Danho in a heavyweight bout against Dmitry Poberezhets, and debuting featherweights Jared Gordon and Michel Quinones will also go at it on the deep prelims. The Gordon/Quinones fight seems to fill up the card, and no word yet what happens to the rumored Gadzhimurad Antigulov/Joachim Christensen fight that seems to no longer have a spot on this card. That fight was always a weird fit for a card in Texas, so I wouldn't be surprised if it popped up on, say, the Stockholm card a few weeks later. June only adds three fights - that Assuncao/Moraes fight mentioned above is joined by a strawweight bout between Jamie Moyle and Viviane Pereira at UFC 212, and the Auckland card adds top Australian prospect Alexander Volkanovski having his sophomore UFC effort against Japanese vet Mizuto Hirota. From there, we go to the TUF 25 finale, which adds three fairly solid fights - fringe top-fifteen middleweights Elias Theodorou and Brad Tavares square off, Gray Maynard returns to take on Japanese prospect Teruto Ishihara, and top light heavyweight prospect Jordan Johnson takes on Marcel Fortuna, who made his debut in February by knocking out heavyweight Anthony Hamilton. UFC 213 adds an undercard bout between top heavyweight prospect Curtis Blaydes and Daniel Omielanczuk, and the Fox card from Long Island has a second rumored bout, as local boy Gian Villante will apparently take on former hockey enforcer Steve Bosse in what should be a crazy brawl.
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ROSTER CUTS:
1) Michael Graves (6-0-1 overall, 2-0-1 UFC, last fought 7/30/16, D vs. Bojan Velickovic):
One of UFC's toothless investigations actually had consequences, as Graves was released following an investigation into a domestic violence incident late last year. Graves came into UFC via that weird American Top Team versus Blackzilians season of TUF, and the ATT member was given the "redemption" arc in editing, losing his first fight and being portrayed as a lazy screw-up, but eventually getting his act together and scoring a submission win over Jason Jackson. From there, Graves actually looked like a talent, a pretty effective wrestler who made wins over Vicente Luque and Randy Brown look easy, but, well that's all out the window now. Don't hit women.
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UPCOMING UFC SHOWS:
5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic ( c ) vs. Junior dos Santos, Joanna Jedrzejczyk ( c ) vs. Jessica Andrade, Demian Maia vs. Jorge Masvidal, Frankie Edgar vs. Yair Rodriguez, Eddie Alvarez vs. Dustin Poirier
5/28 - UFC Fight Night 109 - Stockholm, Sweden - Alexander Gustafsson vs. Glover Teixeira
6/3 - UFC 212 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - Jose Aldo ( c ) vs. Max Holloway (ic), Claudia Gadelha vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz
6/10 - UFC Fight Night 110 - Auckland, New Zealand - Mark Hunt vs. Derrick Lewis, Derek Brunson vs. Daniel Kelly
6/17 - UFC Fight Night 111 - Singapore, Singapore - Bethe Correia vs. Holly Holm, Colby Covington vs. Dong Hyun Kim, Rafael dos Anjos vs. Tarec Saffiedine
6/25 - UFC Fight Night 112 - Oklahoma City, OK - Michael Chiesa vs. Kevin Lee, B.J. Penn vs. Dennis Siver, Tim Boetsch vs. Johny Hendricks, Ilir Latifi vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira
7/7 - TUF 25 Finale - Las Vegas, NV - Brad Tavares vs. Elias Theodorou, Teruto Ishihara vs. Gray Maynard
7/8 - UFC 213 - Las Vegas, NV - Cody Garbrandt ( c ) vs. T.J. Dillashaw, Donald Cerrone vs. Robbie Lawler, Alistair Overeem vs. Fabricio Werdum
7/22 - UFC on Fox 25 - Uniondale, NY - Chan Sung Jung vs. Ricardo Lamas, Steve Bosse vs. Gian Villante
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UFC Fight Night 108 - April 22, 2017 - Bridgestone Arena - Nashville, Tennessee
So this is the last of three straight cards before, amazingly, another three-week break, and it's a pretty fun comedown from last week's excellent Kansas City card. And, like a lot of cards this year, it's pretty much emblematic of the state of UFC's matchmaking in 2017 - the undercard has a ton of interesting matchups that could either go either way or have some sort of fun style interaction, but the main event picture is a bit of a mess. And boy, is this main event a mess. A dumb, dumb main event. It's a bad main event. But don't let that distract you from the fact that this is still a fun card, and hell, even that dumb main event will probably be a fun one in some aspect.
MAIN CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 10:00 PM ET):
Featherweight: (#4) Cub Swanson vs. Artem Lobov
Lightweight: (#14) Al Iaquinta vs. Diego Sanchez
Light Heavyweight: (#8) Ovince St. Preux vs. Marcos Rogerio de Lima
Bantamweight: (#7) John Dodson vs. (#10) Eddie Wineland
Lightweight: Joe Lauzon vs. Stevie Ray
Welterweight: (#13) Jake Ellenberger vs. Mike Perry
PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 2 - 8:00 PM ET):
Middleweight: (#11) Thales Leites vs. (#13) Sam Alvey
Flyweight: (#9) Dustin Ortiz vs. (#10) Brandon Moreno
Lightweight: Scott Holtzman vs. Michael McBride
Women's Strawweight: (#14) Jessica Penne vs. Danielle Taylor
PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 6:30 PM ET):
Women's Bantamweight: (#10) Alexis Davis vs. Cindy Dandois
Welterweight: Bryan Barberena vs. Joe Proctor
Flyweight: Hector Sandoval vs. Matt Schnell
THE RUNDOWN:
Cub Swanson (24-7 overall, 9-3 UFC, 5-3 WEC) vs. Artem Lobov (14-12-1 [1] overall, 2-2 UFC):
Well, at least Cub Swanson might finally have an easy night at the office. The possibility is still there, but it'll be a shame if Cub Swanson never earns his title rematch against Jose Aldo - in 2009, Aldo and Swanson, both elite prospects, squared off to see who would earn a WEC featherweight title shot, and Aldo turned Swanson from prospect to punchline, destroying him with a flying knee in just eight seconds. But once UFC absorbed WEC, it looked like Swanson was charging towards redemption, suddenly becoming one of 145's most feared knockout artists and reeling off six straight wins, until one-sided losses to Frankie Edgar and Max Holloway left him outside of the title picture and somewhat directionless. But after taking a year off to reevaluate and regroup, 2016 was a huge bounce-back year for Swanson; it's not that Swanson looked demonstrably better, honestly, but that it was a reminder that Cub Swanson is still pretty great - his comeback win over Hacran Dias was fairly workmanlike, but his win over Tatsuya Kawajiri was an excellent back-and-forth fight, and then there was his war last December with Doo Ho Choi. Most people figured Swanson would make for a fun stepping-stone opponent to send Choi into the featherweight title picture, but Swanson and "The Korean Superboy" instead had an insane, non-stop war, with each eating pretty much every bit of offense the other could provide, before Swanson got the nod in one of the best fights of 2016 and an instant classic added to the list of all-time great brawls. And now he fights Artem Lobov, which I guess makes sense if you view it as sort of a reward and a night off? Lobov, frankly, is only even in the UFC because he's the primary training partner and longtime friend of Conor McGregor. His record is ugly, yes, but he fought a tough slate of competition in Europe, and honestly, in a fair landscape, that would probably his role in the MMA universe - a tough European vet who's essentially the guy that actual prospects would need to beat to get into the UFC, and maybe a guy who could earn a short stint in the big time if he racked up a few wins. But instead, Lobov was put on a season of TUF in exchange for McGregor agreeing to coach it, and when Lobov lost his fight to get into the house, they made up some rule to add team members and get Lobov back onto the cast. To his credit, Lobov did make good on the second chance and got all the way to the finals, but Ryan Hall exposed his complete lack of a grappling game, and Lobov followed that up with a one-sided loss to Alex White. Again, most guys would've been cut after showing that little in UFC, but instead Lobov got a layup in Chris Avila - UFC matched the two up in a cute bit of matchmaking, as Avila is a teammate of the Diaz brothers, and this was on the undercard of the McGregor/Diaz rematch, so hey, teammate versus teammate, but Avila turned out to be one of the worst domestic fighters UFC has signed in recent history, so a one-sided win by Lobov was still rather uninspiring. In his last fight, I at least had some hope that Lobov was going to outgrow his status as a punchline, since he turned out a career-best performance over Japanese prospect Teruto Ishihara and actually looked like a UFC-level fighter, but instead UFC rushed him into this main event and pretty much burned any goodwill that performance would've given him. This, as one would assume, looks like an easy Swanson win - Lobov's game is fairly one-dimensional striking, and his short reach for his size has been a bit of a running joke in MMA circles; essentially, imagine trying to fight like Conor McGregor if you were an undersized Russian with none of the innate ability and physical talent that makes Conor what he is, and you essentially have Lobov. And even if Lobov hangs in there better than expected, he's not a huge knockout threat, particularly once you factor in the amount of abuse that Swanson has shown he's able to take. On the plus side, and I assume this is what whoever was responsible for this was looking at when they made this matchup, this could be pretty fun while it lasts, since both guys figure to just stand and bang, so...there's that. I'll laugh if Swanson just takes the easy way out and just immediately takes Lobov down and submits him, since that's probably on the table, but I assume we just get a fun, one-sided striking match for a bit - I'll give Lobov some extra credit since he's only been knocked out once in his career, but I think it says a lot about this fight that even when I'm trying to be nice, my pick is still Swanson by second-round knockout. I have no idea what that accomplishes, but hey, at least we'll get to see Cub Swanson wreck a dude, and why look a gift horse in the mouth.
Al Iaquinta (12-3-1 overall, 7-2 UFC) vs. Diego Sanchez (27-9 overall, 16-9 UFC):
Well, this is an interesting fight, and there's something darkly amusing about UFC matching two of the guys who best represent...I suppose you'd call it concussed insanity on the UFC roster. Long Island's Al Iaquinta is returning from a two-year layoff thanks to injuries and retirement, and if he hadn't come back, he would've at least went out on an extremely Al Iaquinta note - Iaquinta's last fight was a controversial split decision victory over Jorge Masvidal, and as the crowd booed the decision, Iaquinta used his post-fight interview to basically go on a profanity-filled tirade against the fans deciding to boo him. From there, UFC looked to book Iaquinta, then one of lightweight's top prospects, against Gilbert Melendez, but Melendez got a flagged drug test, Iaquinta decided to get some knee surgery, and then things just pretty much went downhill. First, UFC and Iaquinta feuded over the insurance payment for his surgery - UFC claimed it was suffered out of competition, while Iaquinta said it tied back to an initial injury suffered on TUF, and then there was a whole bunch of stuff with UFC punishing Iaquinta for missing a mandatory fighter meeting in Vegas, and some previous issues tying back to an incident where Iaquinta trashed a hotel room. Once Iaquinta was physically ready to fight again - he was linked to a fight with Thiago Alves a few times last year - he basically decided that between the hassle and the reduced money under the Reebok deal, fighting was no longer worth it, and he focused on his real estate business. I'm not really sure what changed his mind, but after meeting with matchmaker Sean Shelby a few months ago, Raging Al is back, and looking to pick up where he left off against fellow crazy person Diego Sanchez. Given that his style has mostly been predicated on his ability to take abuse, it's insane that Sanchez is the last guy still going from season one of The Ultimate Fighter - and even crazier, 2016 was his best year in a while. Before 2016, you could make a case that the last fight Sanchez deserved to win was all the way back in 2010, but he kicked the year off with a shockingly effective win over Jim Miller, where he pretty much outpaced Miller en route to earning a decision. Admittedly, the year wasn't all great - UFC 200 saw Joe Lauzon suddenly, and shockingly, become the first man to ever crack Sanchez's legendary chin and earn a knockout victory, but Sanchez then rebounded in November with a win over Marcin Held, where he pretty much shut down the Polish submission specialist with some good old-fashioned American wrestling. I don't look forward to Sanchez's later years in life - I didn't watch it, but apparently on the last edition of Ariel Helwani's show, Helwani asked one question that prompted Sanchez to give a forty-minute response - but for now, he's looking as good as you could expect late-career Diego Sanchez to look. This is essentially a coin flip fight, given how little we know about Iaquinta - his boxing is by far the strongest part of his game and should give Sanchez problems, but while Iaquinta has a wrestling background, it was kind of an ongoing thing that he'd find himself in trouble on the ground at least once per fight, which could happen here. If Iaquinta has any rust, Sanchez could easily just take the initiative and earn a decision through pressure and activity (or hell, not even earn the decision and get it anyway, as Sanchez has done a bunch of times), but with how badly Sanchez got cracked by Lauzon, the possibility of Sanchez rushing right into a knockout does loom. It's a hard one to call, and I've flip-flopped a few times, but I'll still give Iaquinta the benefit of the doubt and say he earns a narrow decision win by keeping this on the feet and being way more accurate standing - though really, it's hard to know exactly what's going to happen.
Ovince St. Preux (19-10 overall, 7-5 UFC, 6-1 Strikeforce) vs. Marcos Rogerio de Lima (15-4-1 overall, 4-2 UFC, 0-1 Strikeforce):
UFC was last in Nashville only about a year and a half ago, back in August of 2015, and what a difference that time has made for Ovince St. Preux. That 2015 show was pretty much built around St. Preux, a local favorite thanks to his days as a linebacker for the University of Tennessee, taking on Glover Teixeira, but a loss in that fight started a 1-4 run, and now OSP suddenly finds himself likely fighting for his job against Marcos Rogerio de Lima. St. Preux was always an interesting prospect - coming up, he was a ridiculous level of athlete for MMA, and both Strikeforce and UFC decided to slowly move him up the ladder, allowing him to rack up wins as fans got to wonder exactly what he'd become. But once St. Preux got a big spot against Ryan Bader, he simply got out-wrestled for twenty-five minutes, and from there, OSP sort of wound up in light heavyweight purgatory - his loyalty to his small camp in Tennessee sort of prevented his game from developing into anything coherent, which left him sorely lacking against the top fighters in the division, but his athleticism and dynamic finishing ability, especially coupled with such an unorthodox game, meant he could beat pretty much everyone outside of that top tier. After ping-ponging for a bit, St. Preux got a shot at Jon Jones after Daniel Cormier got hurt, simply by being the best guy available coming off a win, but Jones outclassed St. Preux, and things sort of spiralled from there. Again, St. Preux's game is sort of a weird collection of strikes and submissions without much connective tissue, and as St. Preux enters his mid-thirties and loses even just a bit of that explosive athleticism, the whole game is starting to fall apart. St. Preux's last fight, a narrow decision loss to Volkan Oezdemir, is a perfect example - while OSP had his moments and probably deserved the decision win, for most of his career, Oezdemir's the kind of guy that St. Preux would've just taken out with some sort of looping strike or funky submission. So, obviously, St. Preux needs a win here against TUF: Brazil alum de Lima, and given "Pezao"'s track record, we'll probably find out if he gets it in pretty short order. De Lima's average fight time in UFC is just a shade over two minutes, the lowest of any active fighter with any sort of track record, and watching him fight, that's about right - Pezao's just sort of a power monster, throwing heat behind every punch, and knowing just enough when it comes to grappling to get himself into trouble, as it's done in his two submission losses. This fight is basically a coin flip - it's basically a test to see if St. Preux still has any of his dynamic finishing ability left, since de Lima's there to be stopped, but if he can't, the Brazilian should finish things in fairly short order himself. I was originally leaning towards picking St. Preux by submission, since again, de Lima's just confident enough in his grappling game to get himself tapped out, and OSP's got a weird collection of tricks that could stop someone as defensively open as de Lima, but the more I think about this fight, and the more broken that OSP's game seems to look, I'm going to go with de Lima deflating the crowd with a first-round knockout.
John Dodson (18-8 overall, 7-3 UFC) vs. Eddie Wineland (23-11-1 overall, 5-5 UFC, 5-2 WEC):
A really interesting fight here, pitting two veteran knockout artists against each other. Longtime flyweight contender John Dodson can be a bit frustrating to watch - he's from that Uriah Hall/Yoel Romero mold of fighter that spends fights either being completely inactive or exploding with bursts of violence - but he was able to beat everyone he faced save Demetrious Johnson at 125, and early returns after his move up to bantamweight are pretty good. Dodson didn't waste time in his first fight up, blitzing Manny Gamburyan for a 47-second win, and while his follow-up main event fight against John Lineker was a narrow decision loss, it saw Dodson finally execute a gameplan in trying to get the win - and one that probably would've worked if Lineker didn't have a superhuman ability to just eat Dodson's power. Dodson looks to rebound here against Indiana's Eddie Wineland, who's having a bit of a career resurgence. WEC's original bantamweight champion, Wineland lost his shot at then-bantamweight champ Renan Barao in 2013, then his career started to spiral a bit - Johnny Eduardo scored a huge upset win with a knockout of Wineland that broke his jaw, and after recovering from that, Wineland surprisingly got out-pointed on the feet by Bryan Caraway. Wineland then took some time to regroup, and a lot of people figured he was going to retire, but 2016 saw him come back and get some momentum going, handling tough vets Frankie Saenz and Takeya Mizugaki fairly easily. Wineland's probably not going on a run towards another title shot, but he's somehow still only 32 years old, so there may be more years left for him as an action gatekeeper than any of us expect. It's an interesting fight, and one I go back and forth on, since Dodson's style has typically been so hit-or-miss - his old sponsorship with Pop Rocks was pretty much perfect, as he's a tiny ball of energy dependent on moments of explosive knockout power, but if he can't score that finish, one wonders about his ability to win rounds. And Wineland's looked good, and has that unorthodox style that could keep Dodson on his toes, so I could easily see him score the upset victory via decision. But I'll still favor Dodson to win - he looked less patient in the Gamburyan fight, which is a positive, and as mentioned, the Lineker fight showed that he may yet learn how to fight smarter. I do have some concerns that, like OSP in the fight above, whenever Dodson's athleticism slips just a bit (and he's 32 at the moment), his whole game could just fall apart, but I'll call for him to eventually either adjust or find an opening and score a third-round knockout, probably in a fight that's either close or has him losing. Hopefully, it's more of a brawl and less of a staring contest.
Joe Lauzon (27-12 overall, 14-9 UFC) vs. Stevie Ray (20-6 overall, 4-1 UFC):
This should be a pretty fun fight, since, well, it's a Joe Lauzon fight - a decade into his UFC career, the Bostonian is still going strong as one of UFC's surer action bets, and one of the lightweight division's better gatekeepers for seeing if someone can move their way up the ladder. January's fight with Marcin Held saw...mixed results, as the Polish submission specialist probably controlled Lauzon enough to take the nod, but in the end, the judges had the fight for Lauzon, who actually protested the win during his post-fight interview. But, win or lose, Lauzon will pretty much always be a fan favorite and division stalwart, and the returns here to face Scotland's Stevie Ray. Ray's gotten some hype after a pretty good European career and two impressive finishes to start his UFC career, but things sort of plateaued from there - for all his well-rounded offense, a loss to Alan Patrick showed that Ray still has a ton of work to do on his defensive wrestling, and his last fight was a split decision win over Ross Pearson that was solid, if not particularly impressive. I really see Ray settling into a role more like, well, Pearson, as a mid-tier action fighter that can do well on European cards, rather than some sort of future contender, but I think he can take a fun decision win here over Lauzon. As mentioned, the Patrick fight showed that Ray's main weakness is someone who can take him down and control him, and as gifted a grappler as Lauzon is, I don't see him as that type of guy - Lauzon's game is more based on scrambles and hopping on submissions in the chaos rather than controlling things on the ground. And from there, I can pretty much see Ray picking Lauzon apart on the feet, if never getting particularly dominant. So while I'm picking Ray to win, I still figure it'll be a close one, and a fun one, since, well, it's a Joe Lauzon fight.
Jake Ellenberger (31-12 overall, 10-8 UFC, 1-0 Bellator) vs. Mike Perry (9-1 overall, 2-1 UFC):
Welp, UFC's still trying with Mike Perry. I can see why, since in the cage, Perry's a fun as hell prospect - for someone so raw, he has a solid command over his limited game, and it's an exciting one, a power boxing game built around Perry's explosive athleticism and ability to knock fools the hell out. But on the downside, there is literally everything else about Mike Perry. Him and teammate Alex Nicholson are pretty much the human embodiment of Florida - while Perry doesn't have Nicholson's domestic violence incidents, Perry has the similar level of casual racism and homophobia that you'd expect from a guy who started training MMA on a lark as he was getting driven home from prison. And then there's just the more innocuous douchebaggery - Perry is the kind of guy who, after notching his first UFC win, used the money to get his nickname, "Platinum", tattooed over his eyebrow. Sigh. Perry got taken out of his depth a bit by Alan Jouban, who just used technical striking to pretty much shut Perry down, so Perry looks to rebound here against Jake Ellenberger, who continues to try and fight off his late-career slide. When Ellenberger faced off with Rory MacDonald in the summer of 2013, it figured to be an exciting brawl between two top contenders, but instead, just kind of wound up as a flat matchup where both guys looked timid - and while this proved to be a one-off for MacDonald, with Ellenberger, it became a trend. That started a run where Ellenberger just seemed unable to pull the trigger and wound up losing five of six, with the only win coming over a shot Josh Koscheck. Hell, after his loss last year to Tarec Saffiedine, UFC apparently outright cut him, and Ellenberger decided to fly to Vegas, where he successfully lobbied for one more shot. And, amazingly, Ellenberger cashed in, hitting the liver kick of his life against Matt Brown, and essentially saving his career with a sudden knockout win. But honestly, that just looks like an outlier, as Ellenberger looked flat again in his last fight, losing to Jorge Masvidal in one-sided fashion before a weird stoppage after Ellenberger's toe got stuck in the cage. I suppose Ellenberger could hit a hail mary knockout blow again, or suddenly regain his form under original coach Rafael Cordeiro, who's been working with Ellenberger in his last few fights, but this really seems like a fight where Perry's going to be the younger, quicker, more aggressive fighter and pick Ellenberger apart. I'll take Perry via second-round knockout, and don't really feel all that great about it.
Thales Leites (26-7 overall, 11-6 UFC) vs. Sam Alvey (30-8 [1] overall, 7-3 UFC, 1-1 Bellator):
God help us all, "Smilin'" Sam Alvey is making a run up the middleweight ladder. I'm a fan of Alvey's, but the whole package is just delightfully weird - outside of the cage, Alvey is pure cheese (appropriately enough, since he's from Wisconsin) - a giant ginger, Alvey's always got a big, goofy grin on his face, and his seemingly always-pregnant ex-model wife acting as one of his corner(wo)men. The best way I can sum up the whole Sam Alvey aesthetic is this is a man who walks out to Train's "Hey Soul Sister", and it somehow fits right into the whole package. And inside the cage, it's not like Alvey is any less weird, as he's as pure a counter-fighter as you'll ever see - at times, Alvey is almost devoted to inactivity, waiting for his perfect shot, but when he senses his opened, he'll send a giant straight punch right down the pike, and that's knocked a bunch of his opponents out. And lately, he's even done enough to earn decision victories, as he's coming off nods from the judges against Alex Nicholson and Nate Marquardt. Amazingly, Alvey's fought five times in the last year, winning his last four - having kids ain't cheap, and it's been amusing to see Alvey beg for fights in Australia, Europe and Mexico in order to get a paid family vacation - and he looks to break through with win number five against Thales Leites. Leites has had a strange career arc - a horribly boring fight against Anderson Silva for the middleweight title pretty much put Leites on the fast track to being cut in 2009, and UFC only re-signed him in 2013 as a favor to then-featherweight champ Jose Aldo. But Leites suddenly reeled off a five-fight win streak upon his return, and even more surprisingly, some of those fights were actually exciting, as Leites suddenly discovered that you could throw strikes in a MMA fight, and flashed some knockout power to boot. That eventually hit a clear ceiling - a loss to Michael Bisping was narrow, but two of Leites's last three fights have seen Gegard Mousasi and Krzysztof Jotko handle him rather easily - but Leites should be able to hang around as a gatekeeper for a few more years. I...do not know what to expect from this fight. Leites's striking, as mentioned, is as good as it's ever been, and he may be active enough to just win a decision over Alvey based solely on that, but Leites's huge advantage should be if he can get this to the ground. And I'm not sure he can do that. Alvey's done a pretty solid job of keeping himself upright, and even flashed some submission chops, like his strange front guillotine that tapped out Eric Spicely. But normally, when opponents try and work takedowns on Alvey, he can usually turn it into an ugly clinch battle, and mostly get the better of things from there. And the more I think about this, the more I do expect this to be an ugly, ugly fight that's mostly fifteen minutes of blah clinchwork, and I'll actually favor Leites, even though such a fight would probably turn into one of those split decisions that has you questioning the meaning of life. Plus, I think there's a better shot of Leites being able to complete takedowns - at which point he should be able to work over Alvey pretty solidly, if not just tap him out - than Smilin' Sam being able to land that big knockout punch. So yeah, weird fight, and sadly probably not in an interesting way, and I'm picking Leites via decision to send Alvey back down the ladder.
Dustin Ortiz (16-6 overall, 5-4 UFC, 2-0 Strikeforce) vs. Brandon Moreno (13-3 overall, 2-0 UFC):
A sleeper for fight of the night, particularly since the Nashville crowd should have a rooting interest, given that Dustin Ortiz is a Tennessee product. Flyweight is a shark tank - UFC doesn't have a particularly large division, but almost everyone in it is really freaking good, and Ortiz's career is emblematic of that. Ortiz has wins over top prospects like Ray Borg and Justin Scoggins, and his losses have come to three former title challengers and Jussier Formiga, but he still needed a win over Zach Makovsky to even hang onto his spot on the roster. There are no easy nights at 125, and even though Ortiz had a career-best performance in that Makovsky fight and is theoretically taking a minor step down in competition, he's still in for a hell of a fight against another top prospect in Brandon Moreno. Mexico's Moreno impressed in his lone fight on this past season of TUF - he was seeded sixteenth on the cast and gave a game effort in a loss to the much more decorated Alexandre Pantoja - but really made good on his late-notice UFC debut, as he took a fight with Louis Smolka on about a week's notice last October, and clamped on a first-round guillotine for one of the biggest upsets of the year. And things have gone swimmingly since then - he looked excellent in a follow-up win over Ryan Benoit, and combined with the tremendous charisma that Moreno has shown in his post-fight interviews, UFC may have yet another potential Mexican star on their hands. Honestly, I could see this a lot like last weekend's fight of the night between Tim Elliott and Smolka, as this figures to just be a non-stop scramble-fest between two guys most comfortable going to the ground and creating chaos. I'll favor Ortiz to take the decision, but given the strides Moreno has been making fight by fight, a sudden improvement here wouldn't surprise me - hell, just pencil this in for a split decision and a round of applause when it's all over.
Scott Holtzman (9-2 overall, 2-2 UFC) vs. Michael McBride (8-2 overall, 0-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator):
Probably the least relevant fight on the card, as each of these guys might be fighting for their UFC jobs, but it could still be a fun one, since Scott Holtzman is a local fighter, and a pretty entertaining one at that. A former minor league hockey player, Holtzman's mostly a raw athlete who relies on his physical tools, and his UFC career has been a mixed bag - he's beaten some lower-tier fighters, but couldn't even get past a journeyman like Drew Dober. Still, you can see potential for Holtzman as an action fighter and fan favorite, particularly after his last fight against Josh Emmett, where both guys' physicality and lack of defense turned out to be a fun brawl and one of the highlights of December's card in Sacramento. Holtzman looks to get back on track against Iowa's Michael McBride, who's looking to rebound from an unimpressive UFC debut. A giant submission specialist, McBride took a late notice fight against Nik Lentz that was an absolutely awful matchup, as Lentz just overpowered and threw around McBride before pounding him out late in the second round. McBride's path to victory seems pretty simple here - get things to the ground, and from there just work for a submission that he can probably get, since again, Holtzman is more athlete than anything. But I have concerns if he can get it there - again, Lentz is an awful matchup, but for all his size, McBride did get thrown around pretty easily, and just sort of generally looked like a guy who would have trouble imposing anything on the kind of athletes that are up and down the UFC roster. So, for that reason, I'll say Holtzman mostly shuts down McBride's game, works him over on the feet, and then eventually gets a late stoppage in the third, but there's always the chance that McBride could get his ground game going and make me look really dumb for predicting that.
Jessica Penne (12-4 overall, 1-2 UFC, 3-1 Invicta, 1-1 Bellator) vs. Danielle Taylor (8-2 overall, 1-1 UFC):
This'll be weird. Jessica Penne's UFC career hasn't gone exactly as planned - a former atomweight champion with Invicta and one of the top 105ers in the world, Penne did quite well when she moved up to strawweight and was part of UFC's tournament to crown an inaugural champ, as Penne made it all the way to the final four before falling to eventual winner Carla Esparza. Then Penne took a narrow win from Randa Markos to establish herself as a top contender, and then...it all pretty much went to hell. Penne did in fact get a title shot at Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who was champ by then, but Jedrzejczyk destroyed her in one of the more brutally one-sided title fights you'll ever see. In fact, that went badly enough that Penne required surgery on her nose, and after taking a year off to get that taken care off, Penne came back and...promptly got shellacked by Jessica Andrade, who was making her debut at 115 before streaking towards her own title shot against Jedrzejczyk. So Penne badly needs a win to turn things around, and a fight against Danielle Taylor just might do the trick. Taylor looked to be a weird, fun addition to the strawweight ranks, but instead it's just kind of been all-weird, no-fun. At five feet even, Taylor is probably the tiniest human to ever compete in the Octagon, and both her fights have been kind of a mess. Taylor just sort of circles at range and then tries to dive-bomb in with knockout shots, but it hasn't really accomplished much of anything - both her UFC fights just sort of saw her circle at a far enough range that nobody really connected with anything, and that was somehow enough to get her a decision win over Seohee Ham in her last fight. It's hard to tell how this one is going to look, unless it's just another weird circle-fest; Penne's main problem is that when she gets hit solidly, she gets scared off badly and starts to back up against the cage - and fitting enough given her last name, Penne is pretty much done once she starts sticking to the wall. But I don't know if Taylor can connect with that shot, and given how cautious she's been in her UFC fights, if she can even follow up if she's able to rock Penne. Plus Penne figures to be Taylor's first opponent that looks for takedowns and the submission - that's where Penne is best, and I have no idea how Taylor will react if Penne just tries to chase her down and take things to the mat. Just a strange fight - I'll go with Penne via submission in, say, the second round, but I worry this is just going to devolve into two overly cautious fighters and just wind up being the bad sort of weird, like Taylor's last two fights.
Alexis Davis (17-7 overall, 4-2 UFC, 2-0 Invicta, 2-1 Strikeforce) vs. Cindy Dandois (8-2 overall, 2-1 Invicta):
A really fun, interesting fight here, particularly if it winds up going to the ground. I understand why a lot of people don't take Cindy Dandois seriously - she's a chesty Belgian with a goofy personality and a penchant for weird Disney cosplay - but she's actually a pretty solid fighter, at least grappling-wise. While I wouldn't trust her to win a kickboxing match, she has a pretty solid judoka base and is pretty damn good with her submissions; she's the last person to beat current Invicta featherweight champ Megan Anderson, and won her last fight in Invicta via a pretty sweet unorthodox straight armbar against Jessamyn Duke. Given that she splits time between 135 and 145, one would think Dandois would be a natural to move up if UFC ever decides they want to have an actual women's featherweight division, but since they apparently don't, she makes her UFC debut against former bantamweight title challenger Alexis Davis. Davis was one of the victims of Ronda Rousey's path of rage, getting hit with seemingly a million punches before getting finished in sixteen seconds back in 2014, and Davis has been fairly inactive since then - she beat Sarah Kaufman via come-from-behind submission in early 2015, then took some time off to have a baby before returning this past December. And that comeback fight didn't go all too well - Sara McMann was able to survive on the ground with Davis and actually wound up sinking on her own fight-ending arm triangle choke, suggesting that Davis's grappling-heavy game may have some problems against this new wave of athletes that's coming up in women's MMA. I don't know if Dandois qualifies as that, but it's still kind of a coin flip of a fight - I always have trouble calling these submission artist versus submission artist bouts, since there's so many factors going on with how those styles interact. Neither woman is much on the feet, so I'm assuming this is going to be close to a straight grappling match, and I think I actually favor Dandois, since she seems to have the more versatile game - and even if she's not an amazing athlete herself, she should be the bigger woman and be able to bull Davis around a bit. So I'll take Dandois to clamp on something weird, and let's call it a second-round submission, though really, I'm just hoping for a fun fight.
Bryan Barberena (12-4 overall, 3-2 UFC) vs. Joe Proctor (11-4 overall, 4-3 UFC):
2016 saw Bryan Barberena become a bit of a thing - I liked him as a gritty mid-tier lightweight, and when Barberena decided to move up to welterweight, he wound up being the lucky guy to get a shot at Sage Northcutt that January. And Barberena cashed in on it, just pretty much waiting things out until he could get Northcutt to the ground, and tapping the boy wonder in fairly short order from there. Things got amusing from there, as UFC was obviously not happy with Barberena judging by their matchmaking - they paired him up with undefeated Brazilian prospect Warlley Alves, and, amazingly, Barberena survived yet again, weathering a tough first round to take over and score a decision win, one of the bigger upsets of 2016. But the third time wasn't the charm, as Barberena didn't really have much of an answer for Colby Covington's power wrestling game, as UFC finally found a prospect that could overwhelm Barberena. So Barberena looks to rebound from that loss, and it looks like UFC is pretty much shunting him to the journeyman circuit, as he faces Boston's Joe Proctor, who moves up from lightweight himself to make his debut at 170. This seems flippant, but Proctor really is just kind of a guy - he can strike a little, he's got some pretty good grappling, and the whole package makes for a fairly unnotable lower-tier gatekeeper. He's beaten guys like Justin Salas and Cristiano Marcello who never made much of an impact in UFC, but he's been quite overmatched against anything better than that. And, well, Barberena is better than that. He's not flashy at all, so I just kind of expect Barberena to grind out a fairly ugly, one-sided decision, and, well, maybe they can put him against an interesting prospect after that, since gatekeeper is pretty much Barberena's destiny.
Hector Sandoval (13-3 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Matt Schnell (10-3 overall, 0-1 UFC):
We should kick things off on a fun note here, as two action flyweights go at it. Hector Sandoval's one of seemingly a million Team Alpha Male products that populate the lower weight classes, though unlike many, he seems to be more of a speedy striker than your typical wrestler/submission artist that you get out of Sacramento. When Demetrious Johnson was forced to drop out of his initial fight against Wilson Reis, Sandoval was the guy that Reis ran through instead, but Sandoval rebounded this past December with a fairly one-sided decision win over Fredy Serrano. Sandoval looks to make it two in a row against Louisiana's Matt Schnell, who's looking to rebound from a poor UFC debut himself. Schnell, who was apparently a star on a MTV reality show a few years ago called "Caged", if that means anything to anyone, impressed a bit on the all-flyweight season of TUF last year, but moved up to bantamweight for a late-notice UFC debut against Rob Font and got handled pretty easily. So now he moves down to his usual weight class, and it'll make for an interesting contrast, as Schnell is pretty big for the division at 5'8", while Sandoval is just 5'2". I'll take Schnell here - I've been pretty high on him whenever I've watched him, as he's got an impressive dynamic submission game and has some solid knockout power, on top of his size for the division. I do have his concerns once he's against guys who can take him into deep waters - Schnell hasn't had a decision win since the first fight of his career - but I'm not sure Sandoval is that guy. So I'll take Schnell by first-round submission, and then hopefully onto more interesting fights from there.
