CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 191: STUCK IN MIDDLEWEIGHT WITH YOU
Carl faces away from Middleweight and walks backwards into UFC Fight Night: du Plessis vs Usman.
SATURDAY, JULY 18 FROM THE PAYCOM CENTER IN OKLAHOMA CITY
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM
We’re not currently thriving, my friends.
The central point of the UFC’s existence is, in theory, the promotion of the best mixed martial arts fighters and the best mixed martial arts fights on the planet. You put up with all of their evil bullshit because, at the end of the day, they will give you big main events with the top fighters the sport has to offer.
Including this week, our next four UFC main events are:
Dricus du Plessis vs Kamaru Usman for top contendership at Middleweight, where Usman is 0-1
Magomed Ankalaev, former champion and the main who beat Alex Pereira, vs Khalil Rountree Jr., whose last three wins were Jamahal Hill, Anthony Smith and Chris Daukaus
Uroš Medić vs Daniel Rodriguez, because they’re in Serbia and Medić is Serbian
Mateusz Gamrot vs Quillan Salkilld in the fucking Apex
UPDATE: It got worse! Between writing this and publishing it, Khalil Rountree Jr. dropped out with an injury and next week’s main event is now Magomed Ankalaev vs Bogdan Guskov. Everything is terrible. We are in the dead of Summer and we must travel the desert before we reach the light of Islam in mid-August. Come survive with me.
MAIN EVENT: HOW CAN WE MAKE THINGS MATTER LESS
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Dricus du Plessis (23-3, #2) vs Kamaru Usman (21-4, #9 at Welterweight)
I’m so tired of writing these.
Not write-ups. Somehow, impossibly, I have not yet burned out on big, silly essays about our fake sport. I am tired of writing some variant of ‘here’s why this match is an active drag on matchmaking and represents a further movement towards nothing mattering’ three times a month. We just finished watching mixed martial arts fully and wholly debase itself by circling the wagons around Conor McGregor and celebrate his grand return to the sport after forty years spent wandering through the twin deserts of sex abuse and bigotry, and its reward for giving up its last shreds of credibility was ten seconds of an angry Irishman breaking his own leg while trying to pretend he was still in his twenties.
Things Don’t Matter right now. In three decades of watching this sport I would be hard-pressed to think of a time in mixed martial arts when things Mattered less than they presently do, and when I say that, I am including memories of Murilo Bustamante having to submit Matt Lindland twice because after the first time Lindland said “nuh uh,” and Nate Quarry randomly getting a world championship bout because he knocked out no less than Pete “Drago” Sell, and Vitor Belfort somehow being allowed to compete despite very visibly having every known steroid in the world fighting to burst out of his veins, and Michael Bisping bypassing all of his relevant contenders in favor of defending his title against a seventy-eight year-old Dan Henderson, and if you haven’t yet picked up on the pattern, it’s that Middleweight has always been the most frustrating division in the fucking world.
It’s not the worst division! That’s Light Heavyweight. But it is, perpetually, the most annoying. The aforementioned Murilo Bustamante left to go get boned out of decisions in Pride. Anderson Silva was the best mixed martial artist in the world and he would occasionally prove it by winning fights through interpretive dance. Chris Weidman went from the biggest new star in the sport to losing his belt because he crossed 30 and decided after a lifetime of using his knees for wrestling it was time to start throwing spinning wheel kicks. Bisping won the belt in a short-notice match against a man who’d beaten him before, refused a rubber match, and lost the belt to a retired Georges St-Pierre, who promptly re-retired because his colon was dying. Robert Whittaker has zero title defenses because Yoel Romero couldn’t make weight. Yoel Romero exists.
185 has always been the division that most commonly defies the concept of purpose. It asks you to care, then it spits in your eye and makes fun of your sexuality through obscure terminology that only makes sense if you understand the intricacies of Brazilian class struggle*. It tells you to get emotionally invested in contenders, then spurns them in favor of random fighters chosen by a hidden conclave of men in suits who took the auspices and decided Marvin Vettori was In this year.
*This happened.
We already complained about all of this just two months ago, of course. I lamented the way Nassourdine Imavov had been passed over for a shot at then-grand poobah Khamzat Chimaev in favor of Sean Strickland, and because the arc of the present bends towards assholes, Sean is, once again, world champion. Which should be fantastic news for Dricus du Plessis! He beat Sean twice already, so, clearly, he should be the logical choice for the next shot at the belt.
But back in May, I had to break fellow co-writer Jess’s heart by letting her know about the latest matchmaking rumors.
Carl: But then, this is Middleweight, where the guy we both agree to be #3 hasn’t fought in almost a year for no apparent reason and, if rumors are true, his next bout will be Kamaru Usman. This is a division where Kamaru Usman could be 1-1 as a Middleweight and also the #2 contender to its title. Rhyme nor reason have purchase here, this is simply a Place where things Happen and we must hide in the storm cellar until they tell us who the new Anderson Silva is this time.
Jess: I was unaware of that Dricus/Kamaru matchup rumor. I would like to lay down, now.
The baffling thing here is you could have easily run du Plessis/Imavov and had an extremely natural, internationally-relevant #1 contender. And you could have done that at any point in the last year! Imavov hasn’t been booked to fight since he beat Caio Borralho back in September, DDP hasn’t been on the docket since losing the belt to Khamzat one month before that, your two former champ and your top contender have both been sitting idle for an entire season.
And that’s still better than Kamaru Usman, who is proceeding to a top contendership bout despite having one victory in the last five years, and said victory was already thirteen months ago, and it was at Welterweight.
For most of the last decade the UFC beat the marketing drum about Usman being arguably the best Welterweight of all time, having eclipsed Georges St-Pierre on the back of an eight-year unbeaten streak. It was, to be clear, a hell of a streak! In his prime Usman was a Terminator of a champion, a technically sound wrestler with an unending gas tank, a piston of a jab, and enough power in his back hand to surprise you every once in awhile by knocking Jorge Masvidal cold or breaking Colby Covington’s jaw.
Unfortunately, he had a lot of opportunities to do it, because the UFC booked his five-fight title reign to be dominated by rematches. He beat Colby twice, he beat Jorge twice, and sandwiched between them he knocked out poor Gilbert Burns, and at the apex of his success, as everyone was talking up his double-champion prospects, he fell apart. He lost his title to a last-minute Leon Edwards leg upside the head in 2022, he much more comprehensively lost the rematch that following March, he took half a year off, moved up to 185 pounds on short notice to fight Khamzat Chimaev, did better than anyone expected, still lost, and vanished for a year and a half.
Last June was everyone’s last Kamaru Usman sighting. He showed up to fight Joaquin Buckley in a matchup widely seen as the UFC attempting to force a passing of the torch from an old, falling, expensive star to a new, rising, cheap contender, and Usman proceeded to remind everyone why he reigned for so long, practically grinding Buckley into dust in the first round and running the table on him right up until the fifth. Usman walked away with his first win in half a decade, he regained his place as a relevant Welterweight contender, and he opened up all sorts of conversations about where he fit into the deeply crowded, talent-rich top ten of the division.
So he is, of course, leaving for Middleweight, where he already lost to the man who just lost the title.
That’s the funniest part of this whole thing. This is, technically, a fight between two men who’ve both already beaten the champion. Dricus famously took Strickland’s title and defended it against him with ease, but Usman less famously dominated a then-Welterweight Strickland back in 2017 to the tune of multiple judges giving him a 10-8 after he broke Sean’s face and dropped him on his ass. There’s an argument to be made that this fight makes sense, given that either man has an argument to be favored over the champion. It’s just, y’know, one of them beat him twice in very recent history and the other did it back when Charlie Rose was still on the air.
It also falls a bit flat when you remember that both men also got beat by Khamzat in equally recent history. So whoever wins, they beat the champion but lost to the guy the champion beat, and either way Nassourdine Imavov, the only top contender that hasn’t gotten a shot at the belt, is twiddling his thumbs.
But everything’s currently as silly as it can possibly be, so fuck it, whatever. Have Usman fight Dricus. Why the hell not. They’re practically the same size and Usman probably only has another couple fights in him and it’s not like Middleweight isn’t built on a foundation of lies, so as long as everything’s already stupid, why not make it stupid in another, stupider way. And y’know what? I’m gonna pick Usman, too. Is it an enlightened, strategically thought-out choice? Not even a little. Dricus is an energy gremlin and Usman was getting winded just dominating Buckley and there’s a very good chance he won’t be able to wrestle Dricus as well as he has everyone else. I think, realistically, this is Usman trying to pace Dricus behind his jab and hunt for good takedown entries and every time he tries Dricus will make him work so hard for it that by the midway point of the fight Usman’s going to be getting tired and Dricus is going to club him until he falls over.
And I’m picking Usman anyway, because a) he’s still very, very good, and more importantly, b) that’s the dumbest thing that could possibly happen, which makes it much more likely. KAMARU USMAN BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE RETIREMENT PLAN
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jared Cannonier (18-9, #11) vs Christian Leroy Duncan (14-2, #13)
You know what we need after all of that? More Middleweights who are all fighting in one big circle.
On one side of this equation you have Jared Cannonier. Big puncher. Loves crystals. His management took away the keys to his social media several years ago because he wouldn’t stop posting crazy conspiracy shit, which, honestly, way to have your finger off the pulse of the sport. Jared’s had a really rough go of it, he’s 1 for 4 in the past three years, and the sole win keeping him afloat was a vicious knockout over Gregory “Robocop” Rodrigues just a year and a half ago.
Christian Leroy Duncan was a Cage Warriors champion who was supposed to coast into title contention on an undefeated record and British boxing power, but he found things more difficult than anticipated. His ship eventually got righted and he’s now on a four-fight winning streak that saw him knock out Eryk Anders and take a decision over Roman Dolidze, but he’s still dogged by his only loss in his past seven outings, which came against Gregory “Robocop” Rodrigues just two years ago.
If you’re good at keeping a calendar in your head, you will have already surmised that those fights came back to back. Robocop beat Duncan in July of 2024, and in so doing earned his shot at Jared in February of 2025, and promptly got his head bashed in for it. There is a direct, 1:1 connection between both of these performances and what can be surmised about their respective competitors. So why are we still here?
Well, mostly, it’s because they really want Jared to go away.
Seriously, they’ve been throwing prospects they’d like to get boosts at Jared Cannonier for years. The UFC was already talking about Jared being long in the tooth and facing the twilight of his career when he got his title shot at Israel Adesanya because he was already in his late thirties, and that was four goddamn years ago. Since then, in order, he has:
Beaten Sean Strickland, which Sean still complains about to this day
Beaten Marvin Vettori, which was impressive, at the time
Lost to Nassourdine Imavov in a really wonky stoppage, but he was losing anyway
Lost to Caio Borralho in a fight that probably SHOULD have been stopped, but wasn’t
Knocked the fuck out of Gregory Rodrigues
Stood there in confusion while Michael “Venom” Page waved his hands at him for fifteen minutes, which constituted losing a decision
For better or worse, that’s a lot of fucking top contenders. How about Duncan? What’re his last six fights like?
Knocked out Cláudio Ribeiro, who was cut immediately after for being 1-3
Lost to Robocop
Got a decision over Andrey Pulyaev, who is currently 1-3
Knocked out Eryk Anders, whose last wins were a crippled Chris Weidman and the five-fight-losing-streak-laden Jamie Pickett
Knocked out Marco Tulio, who is currently 2-2
Decisioned Roman Dolidze, whose entire career is a confusing morass of looking persistently middling
In other words: Jared has been persistently fighting top competition, and Duncan has been getting gently nudged up the ladder in the hopes that by the time he gets to guys like, say, Jared Cannonier, he’ll be ready to feast on their aging bones. Even this fight, itself, isn’t dissimilar. He’s not rematching Robocop, he’s not defending his spot against Ikram Aliskerov. And it’s not like the UFC is shy about pushing it! They just gave Edmen fucking Shahbazyan an abrupt shot at the top five! If they thought he could handle it, they’d have Duncan fighting Reinier de Ridder.
But he’s facing 42 year-old, one-win-in-recent-memory Jared Cannonier, because they want Jared out of the damn way, and each time he shows up he looks just a bit creakier and just a bit more exhausted and just a bit less happy to be there. They launched Imavov off of him and they’re hoping they’ll get Duncan there too.
So I’m rooting for one last big uppercut. JARED CANNONIER BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: THE TRAVELING APEX
LIGHTWEIGHT: Chase Hooper (16-5-1) vs Mitch Ramirez (8-3)
This is just funny. Both of these men are on losing streaks--violent losing streaks. Two fights ago Chase Hooper got knocked out by Alexander Hernandez; one fight ago it was Lance Gibson Jr. kneeing him to death. For Mitch Ramirez, it was a leg kick TKO to Thiago Moisés followed by just getting flattened by Mike Davis last July.
Alexander Hernandez was thrown right back into the Apex. Mike Davis is on the early prelims in Abu Dhabi next week being served up to the undefeated Nurullo Aliev on a silver platter. Lance Gibson Jr. is not currently booked at all. Thiago Moisés got fired.
Chase Hooper is on the main card of a road show just under the co-main event as a -375 favorite against a man who’s 0-2 in the company after almost three years under contract.
As of this December we’re going to be in year 8 of Chase Hooper in the UFC. He’s not the literal teenager they were hoping to sport as their star prodigy anymore, he is a grown man who can legally rent cars. For eight god damned years they have built him with softballs like Nick Fiore and ancient, retiring Clay Guida only to tentatively put him in the cage with real competition, and every time, he’s gotten fucking thrashed. We’re not talking about close scrapes or fights that prove how competitive he can be with his fellow prospects. Every time in the last five years they’ve put Chase in there with someone who has even the faint chance of divisional relevance, he’s gotten knocked out in the first round.
But he’s a marketing favorite and they refuse to let go, so we’re going to do it all over again. CHASE HOOPER BY DECISION, and I look forward to writing that again in five months when he gets booked against the 0-3 Alex Reyes, and then, maybe, they’ll take the chance of booking him against Kyle Nelson or something and he’ll unfortunately get smashed all over again.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Tabatha Ricci (12-4, #8) vs Fatima Kline (9-1, #11)
Tabatha Ricci, welcome to the back half of the equation. For the last three years, Tabatha has been eating a steady diet of older, more-established fighters on a downward trajectory--Tecia Pennington, Angela Hill, Amanda Ribas--in an attempt to keep her afloat as a potential contender given her bad habit of getting beaten by actual contenders. Loopy Godinez outworked her, Xiaonan Yan outstruck her, and just three months ago the UFC begged Tabatha to rid them of persistent top contender and grappling bugbear Virna Jandiroba, and once again, Tabatha failed. Women’s Strawweight is not an enormous division, it is easy to re-entrench yourself with one or two good wins as long as the UFC cares about you, but when you are hired to carry out a hit and you fail, the Family exacts consequences.
In this case, those consequences include falling into the ‘aging, troubled veteran being changed out for a younger model’ trap that once lifted you into the top ten. These two women even share an origin story. Ricci and Kline were both successful, undefeated Strawweight prospects before the UFC called them up on short notice to fill in at a higher weight class, where they were promptly thrashed by a bigger, stronger woman. For Tabatha it was Manon Fiorot; for Fatima, it was Jasmine Jasudavicius. Kline’s return to her proper weight class has worked out much better. She pounded out Victoria Dudakova, she outright knocked out Melissa Martinez, and just one fight ago she completed the Strawweight entrance exam by beating Angela Hill. She was supposed to get her own shot at Amanda Ribas here, but Ribas couldn’t make it, and Ricci’s the veteran in need of a win now.
I don’t think she’ll find it here. Kline’s game isn’t without issues, she’s got vulnerabilities, but she’s a lot better than Ricci on the feet and she’s a lot bigger than Ricci on the ground. FATIMA KLINE BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Tommy McMillen (10-0) vs Alberto Montes (11-1)
Ordinarily this is where I pitch some form of fit about how the UFC marketing machine is working overtime to push their blood-obvious favorites like Tommy McMillen over the better fighters and genuine prospects and ranked women who are perpetually stuck on the undercard. Fortunately for all of us, I can’t do that this week! Because there aren’t any. Unless you have really strong feelings about Dione Barbosa or Alvin “Goozie” Hines, we’ve reached the point in the Apexification of the UFC’s product that even the road shows barely qualify as half-assed. This is a card people are supposed to pay money for. This is a card intended to fill a 16,500-seat arena.
And your anchoring fight for the main card is industry plant Tommy “Gun” McMillen, owner of one incredible victory over no less than the world’s most Italian man, Manolo “Angeleno Veneziano” Zecchini, and Alberto Montes, who’s had one fight in almost two years as a contracted UFC fighter, and it was a victory over Ricky Turcios, who has one real win in his entire UFC career. Management really likes McMillen given his propensity for violently swinging with no thought of defense or strategy, and coincidentally, he is half a foot taller and has almost as much of a reach advantage on Montes, who is the second-shortest Featherweight in the company and, equally coincidentally, is a lifelong grappler whose sole loss was a violent knockout against a wildly-swinging man.
Congrats on the red carpet, Tom. TOMMY MCMILLEN BY TKO.
PRELIMS: AN ARRAY OF CHOICES
FEATHERWEIGHT: Austin Bashi (14-1) vs Jose Delgado (11-2)
One of the issues with the current talent funnel into the UFC is how little time it gives fighters to make names for themselves. Austin Bashi is a good, solid fighter, but the company gave him a little too much hype as the latest in their neverending march of young, undefeated Contender Series prospects, and said hype centered around his being a) young and b) undefeated. Christian Rodriguez proceeded to beat the stuffing out of him in his UFC debut, and now, two whole years later and going on a truly ancient 25, Bashi has no identity. He’s just another scrappy grappler (”scrappler”) who was throwing guys with 15-35 records in the garbage to get to the company. And they know it, too, because they rehabilitated him by having him beat John Yannis, the same punching bag you saw Marcus McGhee knock around last month. Jose Delgado is, similarly, just here, which feels awfully disrespectful. He’s 3-1, he’s the only man to ever knock out Hyder Amil, he’s coming off a victory over the perennially tricky Andre Fili, and that means he’s right on par with guys who’ve only scraped together one win and need to be re-established.
Bashi just hasn’t quite done it for me yet. He’s very solid, but I need to see more from him before I can let him carry the emotional weight of my time watching Team Alpha Male in the WEC. JOSE DELGADO BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Seokhyeon Ko (13-2) vs Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani (10-2)
This may be an overreaction on my part, but I believe whoever booked this fight should go to jail. Ordinarily I say this due to lopsided odds or a fighter who got knocked out ten minutes before the booking or some similar injustice, but none of those apply here. This fight is the nexus of even more odious crimes: Sloth and incuriosity. Seokhyeon Ko is one of South Korea’s better MMA prospects, a very tough all-around stylist who trains under former UFC contender Dong Hyun Kim and has a hell of a left hook. Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani is a promising, up-and-coming submission prospect with headkicks in his back pocket and a victory by scarf hold in the 2020s, which means I’m ethically obligated to root for him. Both of these men are good! Both of these men just beat Phil Rowe. In Seokhyeon Ko’s last fight back in November, he beat Rowe by unanimous decision. In Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani’s last fight back in February, he beat Rowe by split decision.
Every fight is, or should be, about proving something. You compare two fighters and determine who deserves to rise up in the pecking order. There are 80ish Welterweights in the UFC. You could have booked any of them. You could have called up Ty Miller. You could book Darrius Flowers. You took the only two people in the entire division who fought and beat the same guy in their last fight and you booked them against each other, knowing that means whoever wins receives no momentum from the experience. Nothing will be proven. Nothing of value will be learned. We are letting the days go by, and I am letting the water hold me down. SEOKHYEON KO BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Felipe Franco (10-2) vs Levi Rodrigues Jr. (5-0 (1))
On the topic of things that don’t matter: Oh my fucking god, this fight. Let me diagram this. Just a hair under a year ago, Felipe Franco made it to the Contender Series as an undefeated 8-0 prospect who had only fought an opponent with any wins, ever once in his life, and that was the 19-18 Nilton dos Santos. Franco met the 3-0 Freddy Vidal, a part-time fighter and full-time P.E. coach, and Vidal choked him out. However: Vidal missed weight by 4 pounds. He took the fight as a short-notice replacement with all of one week to prepare, so you would think the UFC would understand, but Dana White was unimpressed, and that’s all that matters. Instead, they told Freddy to return to the DWCS one month later and fight Levi Rodrigues Jr., another undefeated prospect. Levi knocked Freddy out in the first round, only to have his win struck down as a No Contest after he pissed hot for steroids. Vidal, who beat Felipe, jumped through the UFC’s hoops and got screwed by someone who broke the rules even worse than he did, was not signed to a contract. Levi was. Felipe, after defeating a 1-2 man in Brazil, was brought into the UFC as a short-notice competitor for undefeated Heavyweight Mario Pinto, who beat him easily but unimpressively.
Mario Pinto is not booked to fight. (LAST MINUTE PRE-PUBLISHING UPDATE: As of this morning, no longer true! Now Mario Pinto is fighting down in the rankings against Ryan Spann this September, which is even worse.) Freddy Vidal is moldering on the regional circuit. Levi has a UFC debut as a -225 favorite. Everything is as stupid as it can possibly be, all of the time, and when I tell you that Light Heavyweight is the worst weight class on the planet, I want you to realize that this is the kind of shit the UFC is looking towards for its future. This is where we’re headed. Make your fucking peace. LEVI RODRIGUES JR. BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Alden Coria (12-3 (1)) vs Stewart Nicoll (8-3)
This is going to be fun, because it’s Flyweight, but make no mistake, this is a setup. Alden Coria is a four-figure favorite and he should be. Coria’s 2-0 in the UFC and one of those wins was a beautiful, violent knockout over Alessandro Costa, a deeply dangerous boxer who’s only now starting to get his flowers. Stewart Nicoll was picked up by the UFC as an attempt to add local flavor to an Australian card back in the Summer of 2024, and since then he’s 0-3 in the UFC, and the last of those three bouts just this past April was a violent, one-sided knockout loss--against Alessandro Costa.
So three months ago Stewart got his liver punched out by a man Alden knocked senseless last September. The intentions are clear. ALDEN CORIA BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Alvin Hines (7-1) vs RJ Harris (5-0)
Hey, sports fan. Do you remember Alvin “Goozie” Hines? No? That’s probably fair! He showed up in the UFC last June, fought Jhonata Diniz, got the stuffing beat out of him, won the third round because he poked Jhonata in the eye really badly but Jhonata continuned to fight anyway because fouls aren’t real? That guy! Unlike the rest of the UFC’s budget Heavyweight brigade you didn’t hear from ol’ Goozie again because he got busted after pissing hot for multiple steroids, and unlike every other fighter on Earth who blames it on tainted supplements he said “oh yeah I totally did all of that and thought I’d pissed it all out already so you wouldn’t catch me,” for which he was thanked for his honesty, suspended for a year, and booked into a comeback against an undefeated man who is almost half a foot taller than him, almost half a decade younger than him, and appears to have a baseline awareness of how grappling works.
Sorry, Goozie. RJ HARRIS BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Dione Barbosa (9-4) vs Anna Melisano (6-1)
I miss Invicta, man. I miss the women of mixed martial arts having more spaces to develop. When Dione Barbosa made it to the Contender Series she was only 5-2 against a woman who was 5-1, and unsurprisingly, she’s spent the two and a half years since beating other women who were underprepared for the realities of fighting in the UFC while losing when set against anyone relevant to her division. And now she gets to welcome Anna Melisano, who has, herself, only just completed her first fight against someone with any kind of real experience under her belt. There was a time that these women could compete in Invicta or Strikeforce and build themselves up. Now I watch Anna Melisano’s tape and see a woman who has some legitimate offensive talent, but hasn’t yet had to worry about defense or proper technique to the point that I watched her, two fights ago, complete a takedown by just sort of gently shoving Lydia Warren’s shoulders until she fell over.
And I’m genuinely not sure if it’s more unfortunate that we don’t currently have that kind of developmental space for an entire gender, or that what I’m describing is, now, the UFC’s level. DIONE BARBOSA BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Damien Anderson (5-0) vs Ezra Elliott (7-0)
Speaking of missing the days of MMA having a proper developmental level: This fight got added to the card on Tuesday. Damien Anderson is a BJJ black belt who’s spent a lot longer grappling than fighting, his MMA career is all of two and a half years old, and he’s only fought two fights against people with more than 0 wins. Ezra Elliott’s career didn’t start until April 2024, he, too, has never fought anyone with a non-rookie record, two months ago he was beating the stuffing out of the 8-9 Ashton “No Chance” Caniglia for CINCO DE MAYO FIGHT NIGHT, which was not, in fact, held on Cinco de Mayo, as part of Ringside Unified Fighting, yet another of those companies that dares to ask questions like ‘can an undefeated prospect beat a 50/50 fighter with a mysterious preponderance of first-round stoppage losses?’
Here’s the secret: Ezra Elliott knows Sean O’Malley. He’s one of the BJJ coaches at Tim Welch’s Red Hawk Academy in Arizona. You still get opportunities by knowing people. Both of these guys are really good at grappling and I really want this to turn into the kind of fascinating and increasingly rare grappling showcase we need these days, but these guys both being relatively inexperienced and having almost no time to prepare, I feel like a tepid kickboxing match is more likely. Still gonna hope for DAMIEN ANDERSON BY DECISION, though.