10 Things I Like at UFC 261
Three title fights and plenty of additional intrigue makes this weekend's pay-per-view the biggest to date in 2021
Quick Return for Kamaru Usman
The fact that Kamaru Usman is fighting for a second time in a matter of months is a major positive and reason enough for me to be excited about Saturday night.
Quibble with his choice of opponent if you must — and it very much seems like this was his choice — but sometimes it doesn’t have to be about who is standing on the other side of the cage. Sometimes it’s enough that a highly skilled, ultra-competitive, unbeaten champion is making a quick turnaround and we get to see them compete again in short order, rather than waiting six-to-nine months between appearances.
Following his win over Gilbert Burns in mid-February, I wrote that what Usman is doing is incredible, creating the “Usman Scale” based on the number of ranked fighters he’s already vanquished, and marvelling at the fact that a reigning champion that is 13-0 in the UFC still doesn’t command the same kind of respect as several of his less accomplished contemporaries.
What I love about this fight is that it’s a chance to silence all the doubters, much in the same way Francis Ngannou, who will be in Usman’s corner on Saturday, just as the welterweight champion was in his corner last month, did in his rematch with Stipe Miocic. While Jorge Masvidal and. his sycophants have suggested the short-notice nature of their first encounter was responsible for the fight playing out the way it did, this is their chance to justify those claims or for Usman to shut them down once and for all, and the process of determining whether that is true or not should be interesting.
Additionally, it’s an opportunity to see how much more Usman has continued to improve following another camp spent with Trevor Wittman, the technical and tactical mad scientist who has already turned the welterweight champion into a more confident striker.
I get that there are reasons to dislike this matchup, but getting a chance to see Usman compete for a second time in a little over two months is a major win in my books, and even if there weren’t any other fights on the card, I would still be looking forward to Saturday night.
Welterweight Can Get Moving Again
One of thing that makes me appreciate this fight happening now, on a somewhat accelerated timeline is that it means the division can get moving again.
This rematch and a potential rematch with Colby Covington have always lingered because Masvidal had the built-in short notice out and Covington was neck-and-neck with Usman into the final two minutes of their initial encounter. The Masvidal fight is happening this weekend, and current reports indicate that Covington will be next.
Whether you like either of those pairings or not, the fact that these two rematches will, in all likelihood, be over and done with before the final quarter of 2021 means that at the absolutely latest, we should see a fresh contender challenging for championship gold in early 2022, and that’s a positive.
There is no clear, obvious No. 1 contender at the moment, which means the timing is right to get this one out of the way now. Although I wish Covington would have fought more since his first bout with Usman, knowing that he won’t be squatting on his place in the rankings for too much longer is ultimately reassuring as well, as the division is too flush with talent for everyone to keep waiting around, dodging fights because they don’t want to lose their place in line.
Between this weekend’s main event, Covington being declared next in line, and the host of matchups that have already been announced, 10 members of the division’s elite already have assignments, and two more of them — Vicente Luque and Tyron Woodley — just fought each other recently.
Business is picking up again in the welterweight division and that should make everyone excited.
Zhang Weili’s Impressive Ascent
Zhang Weili made her UFC debut on August 4, 2018.
Less than three years later, she stands atop the strawweight division, with a chance to push her record to 6-0 in the Octagon by knocking off a third straight former champion on Saturday night.
No matter how you look at it, that’s a pretty impressive ascent.
If you want to challenge the depth in the division, fine, but that counts against beloved former champions as well. If you choose to question her hasty rise to challenging for the title, there are grounds, but she wasn’t the first contender hustled into a championship opportunity and you have to give her credit for making the most of it. Whatever the objection, whatever the query, there is an appropriate counter that all leads back to the same place: what Zhang has done through her first five UFC fights in incredible.
With a win Saturday night over Rose Namajunas, the 31-year-old Chinese champion will have beaten the three women to previously hold the strawweight title in succession after winning the title from Jessica Andrade and earning the nod over Joanna Jedrzejczyk in their epic clash last March.
“Double Champ” Amanda Nunes has accomplished the feat at both featherweight and bantamweight (what a legend), but the only titleholder on the men’s side of the roster to come close is featherweight ace Alexander Volkanovski, who has bested both Max Holloway and Jose Aldo, though his win over the Brazilian was in a non-title bout before he rose to the throne.
Zhang is an incredible talent and has already began to prove herself as a dominant force in the division.
If she’s victorious this weekend, we might have to start having conversations about whether she’s the best to ever do it at 115-pounds in the UFC.
Flyweight Perfection
The first of Saturday’s tetra-pack of title fights comes in the flyweight division, where Valentina Shevchenko defends her title against former strawweight queen Jessica Andrade in a matchup that is perfect.
Shevchenko has been so dominant that all kinds of people lost their goddamn minds when she dropped a round to Jennifer Maia, but now she’s got to contend with a diminutive dynamo who just wrecked former title challenger and perennial contender Katlyn Chookagian in roughly five minutes, finishing her with a hellacious body shot.
Conversely, Andrade is charged with trying to track, corner, and defeat one of the most compete fighters on the roster; a woman whose only losses in the UFC have been to the reigning “Double Champ,” with both fights being close and the second standing as one of the sport’s great debates.
Shevchenko gets the opportunity to do battle with a former titleholder and further assert her brilliance by turning back the first challenger game enough for the oddsmakers not to install “Bullet” as a ginormous betting favorite, while Andrade looks to join Nunes as only the second woman in UFC history to hold championship gold in two different weight classes.
It’s the slick technician versus the unrelenting marauder; the precise artist versus the demolitions expert, and just thinking about it now gives me chicken skin.
Saturday can’t get here soon enough.
Uriah Hall Has Figured It Out
It’s not the fact that he enters Saturday’s contest with Chris Weidman on a three-fight winning streak that prompts me to suggest that Uriah Hall has finally figured things out, though his results have certainly been solid and the consistency is a major positive sign.
What has signalled it for is listening to Hall speak, both in the handful of instances we’ve spent conversing over the phone ahead of those recent outings, and as he did earlier this week at his media availability.
Stick a tape recorder in his face or put a microphone in his hand and Hall used to be dismissive, defensive, or combative. He bristled at talking to the media because he didn’t trust them to convey his thoughts clearly, honestly, and sent him into every encounter assuming the worst.
Now? Now the 36-year-old is more concerned with sharing his thoughts, passing on the lessons he’s learned and the ideas he has about major subjects like depression, fear, and anxiety, all while caring far less about the way he’s perceived or profiled by the fans and media members he was skeptical of in the past.
He’s become more comfortable in his own skin and in showing the public his authentic self, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that those developments have coincided with the best run of results in his UFC career.
There was a time not that long ago where viewing Hall as a legitimate title contender in the middleweight division seemed like wishful thinking. Today, a championship opportunity doesn’t feel too far off, especially if he pushes his winning streak to four with an impressive, emphatic win over Weidman on Saturday.
Hall is in a great place mentally these days, and that has allowed him to tap into the wealth of talent and abundant natural gifts that made him such a compelling figure on The Ultimate Fighter all those years ago, when many people believed he was destined for greatness.
Even though he’s been in the UFC for eight years, I genuinely believe the best is still yet to come for “Prime Time.”
Perfect Test for Jimmy Crute
Australian light heavyweight Jimmy Crute takes on Anthony Smith in the pay-per-view opener and it’s another brilliant piece of matchmaking, as no matter the outcome, something positive comes of it.
While I like the “See? I’m really back” potential of this fight for Smith if he’s victorious, what I really love of the fact that after two straight first-round stoppage wins, Crute is getting another chance to prove he’s deserving of a place in the Top 10. He stumbled the last time he was tasked with facing a tenured veteran, losing to Misha Cirkunov in the fall of 2019 here in Vancouver, but he’s rolled in two outings since and there really isn’t much left for him to do against fellow hopefuls and lesser talents.
The 25-year-old is 12-1 overall with nine finishing, including earning all four of his UFC wins inside the distance. He’s still a little green, he’s still got tons of room to grow, but Crute has also shown the kind of natural gifts, finishing instincts, and raw talent that makes you drool as a prospect evaluator (or the promotion, for that matter) and rather than wait around and let him build up two, three, four more wins against middling competition, the UFC has opted to stick him in there with a former title challenger and dangerous finisher in another “sink or swim” fight and I couldn’t be more here for it.
Here’s the thing: because he’s still so young, a loss here doesn’t cripple Crute, who can simply take another slight step back like he did following the loss to Cirkunov and keep working on his skills. But a victory catapults him into the Top 10 and makes him an intriguing dark horse contender to track over his next couple fights because only elite competitors have gotten the better of Smith over the last few years.
This is the way to book a promising young talent, and while the initial matchup between Crute and Johnny Walker would have be chaotic awesomeness, I like this pairing even more and think it does more for the division.
Randy Brown: The Next Late Bloomer?
This weekend, Randy Brown squares off with Alex “Cowboy” Oliveira in the final preliminary card fight of the night.
After tracking Brown’s development and progress since his contract-winning turn on Lookin’ for a Fight back in November 2015, the 30-year-old “Rude Boy” strikes me as a prime candidate to be the next late bloomer to emerge in the welterweight division.
Look at the fights he’s lost over the last four years — Belal Muhammad, Niko Price, Vicente Luque; two Top 15 fighters and an explosive striker who put him out with hammerfists from his back; that’s it. While he’s just 3-3 in that time, Brown has earned good wins — stoppage wins — over Bryan Barberena and Warlley Alves during that six-fight run, and profiles, at least to me, as the kind of guy that just needs a little more seasoning, a little more strong coaching, and a little more time before he really starts putting it all together and becoming a bit more of a factor in the welterweight division.
The raw materials are there and he’s had some solid results already, but after a couple tough assignments, I really wouldn’t be surprised if we saw the best version of Brown yet this weekend at UFC 261 and it served as a the start of a little run of success for the talented striker from Queens.
Fighter I Can’t Quit: Brendan Allen
Lost in all the noise around Kevin Holland’s five-fight winning streak last year was the fact that Brendan Allen submitted the now struggling middleweight loud mouth before he started racking up wins.
Allen is one of those fighters that navigated a gnarly path from the regional circuit to the UFC and has been in tough every time he’s stepped into the Octagon. Only 25 years old, the Louisiana native fought Trevin Giles, Eryk Anders, and “Fluffy” Hernandez under the LFA banner, beat surging Canadian Aaron Jeffrey on the Contender Series to land his UFC deal, and then followed his second-round submission win over Holland with victories over Tom Breese and Kyle Daukaus before losing to Sean Strickland last November.
As bad as he looked in the fight with Strickland — and he looked bad — I think it was a fight Allen wouldn’t take if he had the chance to do it all over again, as he was frustrated after missing out on the chance to fight Ian Heinisch for a second time in 2020 and didn’t want to “waste a training camp,” so he agreed to a catchweight clash with a dangerous, technical foe and paid for it.
Now training at Sanford MMA, I still believe “All In” has a chance to be a staple in the Top 15 in the middleweight division, and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if his effort on Saturday against Karl Roberson convinces a few others of that as well.
Welcome Back, Tristan Connelly
Am I a bit of a homer for being excited to see Vancouver’s Tristan Connelly back in action this weekend?
Probably. I mean, I was at his professionally debut back in 2010 and have tracked his career since then, so it’s certainly cool to see someone I’ve been aware of from the outset of his career continue competing on the biggest stage in the sport, but there is more to it as well.
Connelly had a fairytale first showing in the UFC, turning a short-notice assignment into a decision win over Michel Pereira and a big fat bonus cheque, as the duo won Fight of the Night, with Connelly taking home the full amount because the Brazilian missed weight. But he hasn’t fought since after undergoing disc replacement surgery in his neck, and now that he’s back and ready to return, he’s dropping two divisions to compete at featherweight against a talented regional standout in Pat Sabatini.
More than anything, I just think it’s cool to see the 35-year-old finally get this shot late in his career, long after he’d began transitioning to coaching and probably thought this opportunity would never materialize.
Stories of perseverance and making the most of your opportunities are always cool to me, and they’re extra special when they hit close to home.
I Want to Know More About… The Chinese Newcomers
Each of the first three fights this weekend features a newcomer from China making their promotional debut, and I’m super-keen on seeing each of them compete and getting a much better read on how they might do in the UFC long term.
Rongzhu is a 21-year-old with a 17-3 record who reminds me a little of Sumudaerji in terms of having a wealth of experience at such a young age, but with a lot more consistency, as he carries a 10-fight winning streak in his bout with Kazula Vargas on Saturday.
Aoriqileng is nicknamed “The Mongolian Murderer,” though I doubt that gets cleared for use by the UFC, and brings an 18-6 record and a six-fight winning streak into his debut assignment opposite Contender Series grad Jeff Molina.
Na Liang is 15-4 overall and riding a four-fight winning streak as she readies to face Ariane Carnelosi this weekend, with losses to Bellator champ Juliana Velasquez and UFC fighters Liliya Shakirova and Mariya Agapova on her resume.
All three are facing a step up in competition compared to the level of talent they’ve faced of late, and I have zero expectations for any of them at this point because I have no first-hand experience with them thus far. That being said, the level of talent coming out of China continues to rise and each of them look like intriguing prospects at the very least.
While some people have little to no time for neophytes and unknowns, I adore them, and can’t wait to get a first live look at these new additions to the UFC roster this weekend.