CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 185: A SERIES OF DO-OVERS
Carl is h--what do you MEAN they put Jingnan Xiong on the prelims in China are you KIDDING me wh
SATURDAY, MAY 30 FROM THE GALAXY ARENA IN MACAU, CHINA
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 AM / 7 AM
Western viewers, welcome to your second Card You’re Probably Not Gonna Watch of the month. It’s not quite the annual trip to Macau, as they skipped 2025, but they took Deiveson Figueiredo and Zhang Mingyang to China in 2024 and by god, they’re gonna do it again. If you are staying up until 7 AM to watch Jake Matthews, god bless you.
MAIN EVENT: ROUNDING OUT THE RANKS
BANTAMWEIGHT: Song Yadong (22-9-1 (1), #5) vs Deiveson Figueiredo (25-6-1, #7)
When Song Yadong fought Henry Cejudo back in 2025, I wrote about the troubles of never quite making it to the top of the mountain.
Song Yadong needs this. Song Yadong has needed this for quite some time. Song’s run in the UFC is nearing its eighth year, and it, too, has been a success by any measure. You do not last nearly a decade in one of the hungriest shark tanks in the sport without being good; you do not knock out most of your UFC opponents and hang around in the Bantamweight rankings without being great.
(...)
But he still lost. That makes two failed runs at the top--three, if you count Kyler Phillips knocking him back down the ladder in 2021--and at a certain point, you start running out of bodies to climb. If Song wants to fight his way back to contention, he needs to beat a top guy, and with his longevity, there are precious few he has yet to battle.
Song beat Henry Cejudo that night, albeit with the controversy of an extremely weirdly-officiated eye-poke-based loss, but it was enough to earn him that third or fourth shot at Bantamweight’s pole position. It took almost an entire goddamn year, but this past January, Song walked into the cage with Sean O’Malley and gave it his best effort, and the result was an extremely close bout that split public and media scorecards right down the middle.
You can, I hope, surmise for yourselves who wins a close decision in a Sean O’Malley fight.
Cheap shot? Cheap shot. Probably a cheap shot. It’s not Sean O’Malley’s fault that his path to the title was astroturfed by some of the most egregious marketing and matchmaking favoritism in memory, nor that his title eliminator win over Petr Yan was a robbery, and in either case, the Song fight was no robbery. It was close, it was even, and as so often happens, the cosmic coinflip just happened to go the way of the wide marketing favorite.
And that means Song Yadong is stuck on the outside looking in, yet again. There’s this unfortunate phenomenon with trying to prove yourself as a contender: Every time you fail, it becomes harder to envision your success. After a certain point you stop looking like a contender and you start looking like a gatekeeper.
But that point comes for some fighters sooner than others, and I think Deiveson Figueiredo is already there.
People had high hopes for Figgy as a Bantamweight, as they generally do whenever a former world champion decides to take on another weight class, but as much as I enjoy Deiveson as a fighter, I was skeptical from the beginning. At Flyweight he was a physically imposing, power-punching monster that could hurt anyone he touched. At Bantamweight he was the second-smallest man in the division and already entering the back half of his thirties. But he snapped off a three-fight winning streak, and just like that, he proved that he belonged in the contendership conversation.
Except said streak came against Rob Font, the division’s peripheral gatekeeper, and Cody Garbrandt, a fallen champion at the tail end of going 3 for 10--one of those losses coming at the hands of, hilariously enough, Rob Font--and Marlon Vera, who is now 1 for 6, and even that victory was a widely derided decision. Over the year and a half he’s spent fighting competitively relevant Bantamweights, Deiveson’s gotten beaten handily by Petr Yan, had his knee shredded to pieces by Cory Sandhagen, and lost a wide decision to Umar Nurmagomedov after blowing his weight cut by three and a half pounds.
His sole victory, the only thing keeping him afloat in the top ten, was a split decision over Montel Jackson that stands as one of the most baffling fights I have ever seen, a match-up that bordered on performance art in its sheer tribute to the power of negative space, where only one man landed double-digit strikes in one, single round, and somehow, he was the one that lost.
That’s it. That’s the only good news for Deiveson in the last two years. He won a fight that only barely qualified as a fight, and since then he’s gotten trashed by a top contender after failing--badly--to make the divisional limit despite being one of the shortest Bantamweights in the sport. He is losing frequently, he’s looking awful even when he wins, he’s struggling to get his body where it needs to be, and at the end of this year he’ll be 39 at one of the fastest weight classes in the sport.
Deiveson’s dream has all the hallmarks of being over. It was beautiful while it lasted, but it is quickly gathering dirt, and if he wants to get it back he needs a win that is both big and definitive.
Which is why the UFC has booked him against the one and only ranked Chinese man on the entire roster during their trip to China.
Song is an enormous favorite and he should be. He’s bigger, he’s faster, he hits harder, he hits more often, his only stoppage loss in the last decade came because the referee refused to let him keep fighting when his entire eyebrow was falling off of his face. Song landed 36 significant strikes in his fight with Sean O’Malley, arguably the best striker in the division, which is just one less than Deiveson scored in his last three fights combined. He can wrestle, he can box, he can tank punches and he does not appear to be actively, visibly crumbling more and more into dust every time we see him fight.
Figueiredo’s still absurdly tough, and I think this is the fight where that’s going to cross the Rubicon from “impressive” to “uncomfortable.” SONG YADONG BY DECISION after what could be depressingly lopsided.
CO-MAIN EVENT: TAKE TWO
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Zhang Mingyang (19-7, NR) vs Alonzo Menifield (17-6-1, #15)
The last time the UFC was in China was much like this one: Sergei Pavlovich was risking his top contendership against an undeserving but managerially-beloved Heavyweight, Sumudaerji was being positioned for a jump into the rankings, and Zhang Mingyang was being fed a chronically troubled Light Heavyweight in the hopes of making him a contender.
Johnny Walker has looked pretty bad for quite awhile. He gave up a round to late-period Anthony Smith. He got completely walked through by Magomed Ankalaev--twice, under Pride rules. He’s the only man Volkan Oezdemir has knocked out in more than six years. The optics of making Zhang’s fourth UFC fight a bout against yet another struggling, winless fighter are about as obvious as the choice to book it in Shanghai in the first fuckin’ place. Johnny Walker is not here to test Zhang, he’s not even here to put up a fight. He is here to lose.
And god, I really want to pick him anyway.
I’ve noted on several occasions that my insistence on choosing winners with my heart rather than my head has cost a pretty sizable chunk of my picks percentage, but in this cursed era of the sport, the hope means more to me than the average. And buddy, I’ll tell you: Waking up and seeing that Johnny Walker ruined the entire event by knocking Zhang out in a round and a half? That’s worth every lost pick for the entire damn year.
They moved Heaven and Earth to get Zhang on the safest possible path to the rankings. His contract fight was against Tuco Tokkos, who was known mainly for getting knocked out in Bellator. His followup was Brendson Ribeiro, who the UFC still employs despite being 2-5 with four stoppage losses because they know exactly why they chose to employ him in the first place. After that? Ozzy Diaz, a man who was getting knocked out on the Contender Series at Middleweight. And to earn his number? Anthony Smith, a retiree on his final fight with a long history of terrible losses. All Zhang had to do to finish the job was beat Johnny Walker, who’d been doing nothing but getting knocked out over and over for two full years.
And he couldn’t fucking do it. He is Walker’s one and only win since the Spring of 2023.
Which means they have to try again, and they’re being so thoroughly unsubtle about it that despite their longstanding tradition of organizing their cards by standing--the highest-ranked fighter first, the lower-ranked fighter second--Zhang Mingyang is first as Hell on this card listing, and Alonzo Menifield, the #15 Light Heavyweight, is second.
Which, if we’re being really honest, is fine. It’s absolutely fine. I was a big Menifield booster once upon a time. I liked his aggression in the pocket, I liked his composure, I liked the way he teased the world into thinking Jimmy Crute could still be relevant only to effortlessly smash him in a rematch. But the last couple of years haven’t been kind to Alonzo.
Crushed by Carlos Ulberg in twelve seconds? He’s the champion now, so I guess that’s less embarrassing than it could be. Atomized by Azamat Murzakanov? Tarnished a little after watching Azamat lose to Paulo Costa, but it could be worse. Just barely beating Julius “Juice Box” Walker by split decision? That’s not great.
But getting punched completely stupid by Volkan Oezdemir in one round? That’s when they single you out as a reliable loss machine. And we know this, because the last thing Johnny Walker did before they booked him against Zhang was, shockingly, get uppercutted to death by Volkan in two and a half minutes.
The mistake from their first attempt at propping Zhang up was evident. Johnny Walker is a talented, multifaceted striker with a big range advantage. He was able to hobble Zhang with leg kicks before he could even begin to pose a threat. Alonzo’s shorter and less technical and his best wins come from overpowering his opponents. He can’t play the range game and his crushing attacks in the clinch are a liability because using them means staying right where Zhang wants the fight to be.
Every part of this is built for Zhang to win.
So. Y’know.
ALONZO MENIFIELD BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: GIVING UP ON PRETENDING
HEAVYWEIGHT: Sergei Pavlovich (20-3, #3) vs Tallison Teixeira (9-1, #15)
So we’re just done, right? We’re just giving up completely on even pretending to have a functional Heavyweight division?
Like, we did this already. We did this specific thing with both of these specific guys. Sergei Pavlovich is one of the best knockout artists in Heavyweight history, but he got beat by Tom Aspinall and Alexander Volkov and the UFC decided he was persona non grata. Despite being the #3 man in the division, despite his only losses in almost eight years coming against the champion and his top contender, in the past sixteen months, Sergei has been booked to fight exactly twice. The first time was the last time the UFC went to China, where he was placed up against the #6-ranked marketing darling Waldo Cortes-Acosta. Pavlovich won an extremely clear decision, which is why since said fight he’s been stuck on the shelf while Waldo got booked all the way to a Heavyweight title eliminator. On the plus side: Sergei easily beating him looks even better now, right? That means Sergei beat a man the UFC considered was worthy of a top contendership bout, so he’s going to get a top-tier matchup now, right?
Nope! It’s Tallison fucking Teixeira. We’re gonna recap the complete Tallison Texeira UFC career arc, because it takes roughly thirty seconds:
Wins his contract on the Contender Series by knocking out Arthur Lopes, who has one win over a man with a winning record; said man fights at Welterweight
Makes his UFC debut by knocking out Justin Tafa, who is 7-5, unranked, and hasn’t won a fight in almost three years
Gets immediately booked into a top ten main event against #8-ranked Derrick Lewis, who effortlessly destroys Tallison in thirty-five seconds
Rebounds with a main-card bout against the #12-ranked Tai Tuivasa, who has the longest losing streak in UFC Heavyweight history; Tallison beats him in one of the gassiest, least impressive Heavyweight fights in years
Is rewarded with a fight against the #3-ranked man in the Heavyweight division
I’ve talked about an awful lot of marketing pushes in my time doing this, but Tallison’s is one of the most blatant. He’s the Typhoid Mary of the We Want Less Expensive Heavyweights experiment. He managed to look good once, and it was against a man that once managed to lose a fight to Jared Vanderaa. Tallison’s victory over Tuivasa was so uninspiring that it spawned thinkpieces around the internet regarding the ethical need to shut down the Heavyweight division until we figure out where on Earth we all collectively went wrong, but he’s tall, he’s statistically likely to get a knockout, and he’s on a cheap-ass Contender Series contract, and buddy, in this terrible era of corporate capture, that plus maybe a little conversational bigotry is all the matchmakers could ask for.
And it’s Heavyweight, so it’s going to work every once in awhile. You roll the dice enough, you wind up with Top Ten Tyrell Fortune. Sergei can be clipped, Tom Aspinall proved it, and if a 6’7” guy can sneak just one good punch in there, suddenly, a title match costs 1/10 as much to book as it used to.
Don’t you love being a mixed martial arts fan right now? Isn’t it great to watch an already-borderline sport get driven into the dirt by men in boardrooms that have already made billions but just won’t be content until titles are handed out by marketing fiat, rankings are built by ChatGPT and the roster is paid in company scrip?
Push back the dawn, even if just for a few more hours. SERGEI PAVLOVICH BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Kai Asakura (21-6) vs Cameron Smotherman (12-6)
For as much as I chide the UFC for their business practices, I must also acknowledge that sometimes they do everything right and, as happens in sports, it still doesn’t work out. Kai Asakura was an excellent pickup. 135-pound champion in Rizin, half of the Youtube-famous Asakura brothers, one of three men on Earth to ever stop Kyoji Horiguchi in a fight, just a fantastic bit of talent poaching. Which made it weird when he announced his intention to fight at Flyweight, a weight class he hadn’t participated in since 2017. Did it sap him? Probably! Would it have stopped him from getting wrestled and strangled by Alexandre Pantoja and Tim Elliott? I dunno how much of a difference those ten pounds would make when it comes to some of the best grapplers in the game.
Fortunately, Kai is no longer fighting said grapplers. When I first wrote about Cameron Smotherman in 2024 I cursed the gods for naming a man Smotherman while allowing him to stylistically focus on striking, and true to form, he has not shot a single takedown in his time under the UFC’s corporate banner, and for denying the gift the Gods gave him, he is 1-2 and probably fighting to keep his job. At this point, his only victory was as a late-replacement opponent for Jake Hadley, who got cut after Smotherman took him to a particularly punchy decision. Other than that, Smotherman dropped a fight to Serhiy Sidey, got beat up by Ricky Simón, and, more famously than any of his actual bouts at this point, he had a matchup with Ricky Turcios cancelled this past January after his weight cut went so badly that, seconds after stepping off the scale, he passed out in mid-stride and fell facefirst on the stage.
But don’t worry, the UFC assured everyone that there’s nothing wrong with cutting weight and he probably just got nervous. No, really. Dana White said that shit. They are here in the hopes of quietly sweeping Smotherman into a corner so they can forget they ever had to be embarrassed, and if Kai can’t pull it off, he probably shouldn’t be here. KAI ASAKURA BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jake Matthews (22-8) vs Carlston Harris (19-7)
I don’t know why we’re here. I really don’t. Jake Matthews is entering year thirteen of his UFC tenure, and he enters it having once again failed to overcome his perpetual not-quite-a-gatekeeper status, with his latest winning streak having gone down the tubes after Neil Magny choked him out in September, meaning Matthews is, yet again, not ready for primetime. Carlston Harris was signed up for the legendarily cursed Michelle Waterson-Gomez vs Marina Rodriguez card back in 2021, an event so plagued with replacements that initially Diego fucking Sanchez was supposed to be on it, and now it’s 2026, and Harris is a month and a half away from turning 39, and he’s only fought twice in the last three years and both times he got brutally knocked out.
And this is on the main card. In China. Jake Matthews vs Carlston Harris is a match the UFC decreed deserving of a main card berth. Angela Hill, one of the longest-tenured fighters in UFC history across any gender, and Jingnan Xiong, one of the best female fighters outside of the UFC and one of the best Chinese fighters on the planet, are fighting on this card, in China, for a spot in the rankings, and it’s six fights down from here, buried in the preliminary section.
And we’re here. Jesus wept. JAKE MATTHEWS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Alex Perez (26-10, #11) vs Sumudaerji (19-7, NR)
Sometimes, all it takes is one good win to make people forget about the rest of your career. Alex Perez has been the dwindling afterthought of the Flyweight top fifteen for the last six goddamn years. Until this past January he wasn’t just 1 for his last 6, he had been, more often than not, completely trashed. If getting choked out repeatedly wasn’t enough, having Tatsuro Taira climb his body and break his knee in mid-backpack was more than enough for most people to write him off entirely. But this past January saw Perez take on Charles Johnson, a man with knockout victories over multiple top contenders and even the current champion, and Perez blew him out of the water and punched him out in three minutes. Fantastic win! So good people forgot that he also botched the shit out of his weight cut. But who cares? He’s back, baby.
The UFC cares. The UFC would rather someone more reliable get the spot. I’m not complaining one bit, though: Sumudaerji has more than earned another shot at a ranking. He wasn’t quite up to the task in 2022, and after very nearly flunking out of the company on the heels of a subsequent three-fight losing streak he came into 2025 angry and active, and having snapped off three straight wins in eleven months and not dropped a single round in the latter two, he’s finally ready to try again. He hits hard, he wrestles fast, he’s never been knocked out, and after years of practice with the shirtless battle-monks of Urijah Faber’s Team Alpha Male, he has reached partially-nude enlightenment and knows, inwardly, that the path to progress is paved with punches.
That or I’m just kind of bored of writing about him not really making it and I want him to win the big one already. SUMUDAERJI BY TKO.
PRELIMS: GENUINELY, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Yisak Lee (8-1) vs Luis Felipe Dias (17-5)
Let me lay this preliminary headliner on you. In one corner: Luis Felipe Dias de Assis, who is no less than the Shooto Brasil champion! At Welterweight. Two fights ago he had his first Middleweight bout in years, and it was against the incomparable Helison “Nego Velho” Cruz, who is 2-14 and so clearly fraudulent that the Tapology database doesn’t even count him as a real fighter. He fought one more time in July--three years ago--and choked out a 2-0 man who is now 2-4, and that earned him his Contender Series shot last October, where he defeated no less than Donavan Hedrick, who on that night had his first-ever bout against a fighter with a winning record. And Hedrick almost won! Until he didn’t. In the other corner: South Korean prospect Yisak Lee, who has a whopping two victories against men with winning records so long as you don’t mind that one of them is 8-5-1 and the other is 5-3, and if you need to ask me if the 5-3 guy had, himself, battled anyone with a positive career ratio, you have not been paying attention to the rest of this paragraph.
I obsess over records because they’re the easiest, simplest shorthand for understanding where a fighter has been, what they’ve had to deal with, and how those experiences may have helped them grow as competitors, but they’re never the whole story. Really good fighters can have really unimpressive records. When Merab Dvalishvili entered the UFC he was three years into a 7-2 career with only three decent fights under his belt, on paper. Numbers aren’t everything and sometimes you have to watch the tape to know when someone’s better than their record would indicate.
But, in this case, I have watched tape on both guys and I am completely unimpressed. YISAK LEE BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Ding Meng (35-9) vs José Henrique (8-1)
When I talk about the degree to which numbers lie, this ostensibly lopsided fight where one guy has five times the experience of the other is a case in point. In some ways, China has one of the bigger, more vibrant regional mixed martial arts scenes in the world, between companies like Kunlun and Wu Lin Feng and, in today’s most relevant case, Jue Cheng King, better known as JCK MMA. The bulk of Ding Meng’s career, and the stuff that brought him to the UFC’s attention, came from JCK. And ten of his sixteen JCK opponents had less than ten wins. Five of them had, at most, two. When Ding Meng tried out for ONE Championship during their 2019 Chiense trials, he got knocked out in a round by an opponent with 1/5 as many fights as he did at the time; when the UFC brought him in for the Contender Series in 2024 he got beaten by Rami Hamed, who noticeably did not get a contract. José Henrique’s record is much shorter, but there’s a solid argument to be made that just by hanging out in Shooto Brasil and the Legacy Fighting Alliance and the Centurion Fighting Championships he’s fought consistently tougher competition.
At least, I hope he has, because the last time anyone here saw him it was when Yusaku Kinoshita knocked him the fuck out on the Contender Series four years ago, and Kinoshita went on to wash out of the UFC in a year, so fingers crossed that he’s learned his lessons. JOSÉ HENRIQUE BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Aoriqileng (26-12 (1)) vs Cody Haddon (8-1)
Forget China vs America, forget veterans vs prospects, this is a rubber match against the entire institution of Codies. Aoriqileng’s second-ever UFC fight back in 2021 was a decision loss to Cody Durden, and that left a burning fire of vengeance in his belly that took four years to quench. When last we saw him this past October, Aoriqileng enacted his need for justice by knocking out Cody Gibson with one punch in twenty-one seconds. It wasn’t too long ago that we talked about Daniel Santos and his inexplicable war on every South Korean fighter in the Featherweight division: There are four Codies at Bantamweight, and right now, Aoriqileng is 1-1 against them. He needs this tiebreaker. He needs this glory.
I do not care that Haddon is a big favorite. I do not care that Haddon is probably going to win. This is about more than mixed martial arts. This is about fate. AORIQILENG BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Rei Tsuruya (10-1) vs Luis Gurule (11-3)
I really hate this shit, and I hate that it comes up so often. Rei Tsuruya isn’t the problem here, he’s fine, I’m sure they want to rehabilitate him after he finally losing his undefeated streak when last we saw him--more than a year ago, jesus--but it was Joshua Van and he’s the Flyweight champion now, so honestly, if you’re gonna lose to anyone, it might as well be him. Luis Gurule is the problem. Gurule was on a three-fight losing streak and competing to, in all likelihood, keep his job, but he finally managed to put it together and notch a solid win over Daniel Barez so now, after four attempts, he finally has momentum! Which would be great! Except the distance between that fight and this one is fourteen days. This wasn’t a quick knockout or a first-round submission, it went the distance. A professional fighter struck Luis Gurule 113 times just two weeks ago, seventy-nine of which went straight to the dome, and the world of mixed martial arts has no problem with sending him right back out there.
It’s completely baffling that this is normal now. REI TSURUYA BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Angela Hill (18-16, #14) vs Jingnan Xiong (19-2, NR)
I feel like I am running out of words to properly express my exasperation about ranked women’s fights being stuck on the prelims, and this is one of the most maddening cases.
We already talked about this during the main card, but I’m going to repeat it, because it bears repeating. Angela Hill is the greatest journeywoman in UFC history. She was there for the debut of Women’s Strawweight. She shared the cage with its first-ever champion in 2014 and its current champion almost ten years later. When she makes her walk this weekend, it’ll be her thirtieth UFC fight, which ties Jéssica Andrade for the most in UFC history and puts her just two bouts behind Max Holloway, Dustin Poirier and Diego Sanchez. Jingnan Xiong was the greatest female fighter in the history of ONE Championship, the UFC’s Singaporean competitor. In eight years and eleven fights she went 10-1, with her only loss coming from a failed attempt to drop a weight class and become a double-champion opposite ONE’s other best female fighter, Angela Lee, who Xiong ultimately went 2-1 against, beating her both times they fought at her home in the 125-pound division.
The UFC is happy to spend half of every given year acting as a regional promotion these days. Get paid to come to Australia; stack your card with Australians, even if it means an Ollie Schmid sneaks through. Fight night in Abu Dhabi? Time to book Mohammad “The UAE Warrior” Yahya, even though he’s never won a UFC fight. Despite being arguably the world’s only major global promotion, they book these events like a regional promotion trying to get regional attention, because, for that one night, that’s what they are and what they’re desperately trying to do.
Jingnan Xiong is one of the greatest Chinese mixed martial artists on the planet. This is her UFC debut after a near-decade as a reigning world champion. She is fighting one of the best-known women in the company on a Chinese card airing on Chinese time for a Chinese audience.
They’re three fights into the prelims.
Jake Matthews vs Carlston Harris is on the main card.
At a certain point I think you just have to stop pretending and add a No Girls Allowed sign to the main card graphics. Both women deserve better. I’m very, very worried about Xiong cutting back down to 115 after all of her success in ONE came at 125 and I hope it doesn’t bite her in the ass. That said, JINGNAN XIONG BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Zhu Kangjie (21-4) vs Rodrigo Vera (21-1-1)
Welcome to your third, final, and probably best double-debut fight of the night. Zhu Kangjie was 2025’s Featherweight Road to UFC winner, which everyone has forgotten because, for one, all three of his tournament wins were decisions, for two, the tournament took an entire goddamn year, ended an entire goddamn year ago, and an entire goddamn year later Zhu is only now making his UFC debut, and for three, it’s Road to UFC and the company practically stopped acknowledging its existence after its inaugural season. Ramon Taveras was supposed to be here, but he possibly wisely decided not to head off to China to fight a Chinese tournament winner while already on a two-fight losing streak, so in his stead, the UFC hired Rodrigo Vera, who I am weirdly excited to see get a shot at the big show. Vera has, for the most part, been fighting and performing well against very legitimate competition in Mexico, Brazil and his native Peru. Moreover, he’s sporting one of my favorite fighting styles: High-pressure, up-close, in-the-pocket you-will-breathe-when-I-allow-it work, whether it’s grinding takedowns, phone-booth boxing or some particularly vicious clinch knees.
Prospects I actually care about are a rare and finite resource these days. RODRIGO VERA BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Loma Lookboonmee (10-4) vs Jaqueline Amorim (10-2)
Oh, Loma. I believed in you, Loma. I knew Alexia Thainara was probably going to beat you back in September but I just didn’t have the heart to pick against you, and now we’re in Macau and you’re an underdog again. Jaqueline, even if I did not already hold it against you that being an English student has poisoned my brain so badly that I have to backspace over the C I put in your name one out of every four times I type it, I would be obligated to root against you because the world is better when Loma Lookboonmee is ranked. Granted, the world would be much better if the UFC had a damn Atomweight division, but it’s more important that we budget that money and card space for Contender Series Middleweights named things like Joseph “The Land Animal” Kropschot.
For the record, that’s not one of the ones I made up. You can go look. We are all bastards now. LOMA LOOKBOONMEE BY DECISION.