10 Things I Like at UFC 265
From a terrific main card to some intriguing names on the prelims, the UFC's return to Houston has plenty to offer this weekend
It’s weird to me how the noise surrounding UFC 265 seemed louder last week, when Amanda Nunes was forced to withdraw and various people were debating the merits of this main card on Twitter than it is this week, when we’re 48 hours or so away from the action hitting the Octagon. It’s almost like people overreacted, got caught up in the moment, or simply joined the vocal majority, but now that we’re here and the leather is about to start flying, everyone is excited to see this entertaining collection of fights play out Saturday night at Toyota Center.
Funny how that works.
This card has been strong since the lineup initially came together and it’s still going to be all kinds of fun to take in this weekend, with plenty of intriguing pairings, compelling stories, and awesome possibilities that could be unlocked depending on how things shake out inside the Octagon.
I can’t wait.
Here’s what I’m going to be paying attention to the most.
Houston’s Favourite Son
Toyota Center is going to erupt on Saturday night when Fat Pat’s “Tops Drop” starts bumping through the speakers and Derrick Lewis begins to make his walk to the Octagon. The city loves him, and this weekend, he gets the chance to win championship gold at home in front of a partisan crowd.
Regardless of how you feel about the necessity and validity of the interim title on the line in this weekend’s main event, you best believe that Lewis fighting for a belt in Houston is big deal and it’s going to be an insane atmosphere that will absolute translate through your television screen this weekend.
Unbeaten in four fights since undergoing knee surgery, Lewis has never looked better than he has in his last couple of fights where he caught back-to-back second-round stoppage wins over Aleksei Oleinik and Curtis Blaydes. He’s in tremendous shape, packs dynamite in the cinder blocks he calls hands, and has more stoppage wins in the UFC than Ciryl Gane has professional fights. He’s the rare competitor that can lose every second of a fight into the final minute and still have the genuine potential to pull out a victory with a single blow, and that’s only if he doesn’t catch with something nasty earlier.
What makes this even cooler is that no one — not Lewis, not his head coach Bob Perez, not any of us in the media — expected Lewis to reach this position. He profiled as a “kill or be killed” fighter in the middle of the heavyweight pack, but then every time we thought he’d reached his ceiling, “The Black Beast” would pull out another victory, showing there was even more out there for him, and it kept on that way until now, where he’s a legitimate title contender, stationed at No. 2 in the heavyweight rankings, 48 hours away from challenging for championship gold at home.
Lewis’ is an amazing story and I can’t wait to see how this chapter ends.
Unbeaten Ascent
There have been 14 fighters to win UFC gold with an unblemished record, the most recent being middleweight titleholder Israel Adesanya, who won interim gold at UFC 236 and unified the belts six months later at UFC 243. Ciryl Gane is looking to join that group on Saturday, carrying a pristine 9-0 mark with six straight UFC victories into his interim title bout with Lewis in Houston.
What’s crazier is that France’s “Bon Gamin” has only be competing professional in mixed martial arts for three years — three years — and yet here he is, brandishing an unblemished record, with consecutive victories over talented foes like Junior Dos Santos, Jairzinho Rozenstruik, and Alexander Volkov, with a complete skill set, fluid movement, and an undetermined ceiling.
It was clear from the start of his career that Gane was someone to watch, and his first two UFC appearances made it clear that he was more than just your average heavyweight newcomer. Now, two years after putting away Raphael Pessoa in the first round of his debut, the talented Frenchman is fighting for championship gold and facing the biggest test of his career for the fourth consecutive bout, with the chance to earn a piece of the title and set up a fifth straight massive test in a potential title unification fight with his former training partner, Francis Ngannou.
Just like with Lewis, Gane’s rise has been incredible to watch, and even if you absolutely hate everything about interim belts, seeing what transpires this weekend and where the 31-year-old standout goes next is compelling theatre.
Pedro Munhoz’s Moment
I’ve probably written a version of this “thing” three or four times now, and every time it doesn’t happen, I’m more and more confused because Pedro Munhoz is a lights out bantamweight that has been in the thick of the chase for a handful of years, perpetually one fight away from becoming a bona fide title threat.
I thought his first-round knockout win over Cody Garbrandt was going to get him over, but instead, everyone mostly fixated on the former champion’s continued slide. I believed his tremendous effort against Frankie Edgar in a fight that the majority of media judges scored in his favor would do the trick, only to see that turn into another round of “How good is Frankie Edgar?” as if anyone has ever really questioned what the standout from Toms River was capable of inside the Octagon.
Coming off is unanimous decision win over Jimmie Rivera in February, everyone seemed to agree that the 34-year-old Brazilian was one of the most consistently entertaining fighters in the division, and heading into this weekend’s co-main event matchup with Jose Aldo, it once again feels like a win should — should — vault Munhoz into the title conversation.
There is a chance that a victory for Munhoz will be the B-side of discussions, with another Aldo loss becoming the lead, but if the American Top Team representative can go out and earn an emphatic finish against the former featherweight kingpin, he’ll be difficult to ignore, even in a division as stacked and competitive as bantamweight is right now.
And if that’s not how things play out, I’ll be back here in a fight or two, once again singing the praises of the perennially entertaining, Top 10 stalwart that somehow still continues to fly a little bit under the radar in the 135-pound weight class.
A Violent Welterweight Affair
When the discussions of this card being “not great to begin with” were happening last week, the welterweight clash between Michael Chiesa and Vicente Luque was the one that really stuck out in my mind most as the argument against those suggestions.
Originally positioned as the fourth fight on the main card, everything about this fight is delicious.
It’s a matchup of the No. 5 and No. 6 welterweights where the victor will climb into the title conversation. It’s a pairing between a streaking former lightweight who has turned in back-to-back dominant efforts against Top 10 fights and violence merchant that has registered 13 wins in his last 15 fights, with a dozen of those victories coming by way of stoppage; eight due to strikes, four by submission. It’s a massive test for both guys and the exact kind of fight each guy needs to win in order to truly announce their presence as a real player in the 170-pound ranks.
How anyone could look at a card where this fight — this undeniably compelling, ultra-competitive banger — was penciled in the four spot on the main card and resides as the swing bout now and suggest it’s “only okay” is beyond me.
This is an incredible fight in the middle of an excellent collection of pay-per-view bouts and it is sure to be electric, no matter how it shakes out.
Strawweight Crossroads
Tecia Torres and Angela Hill are set to run it back on the main card this weekend, sharing the Octagon for the second time six years after their first encounter and seven months after this rematch was initially booked.
Hill has been chasing it for a while, eager to show how much she’s improved against the first women to beat her and someone that has been a fixture in the Top 15 since the division’s inception. Torres rolls in on a solid two-fight run, putting up a pair of victories last year to halt a four-fight slide that had many questioning her place in the strawweight hierarchy, failing to recognize those losses came against the last three women to wear the title and Brazilian contender Marina Rodriguez. Both need this one for different reasons, but they want it just the same.
After starting 2020 with a pair of victories, Hill garnered a little dark horse buzz as she carried a three-fight winning streak into a clash with Claudia Gadelha. She lost a questionable split decision, and landed on the wrong side of a similar verdict four months later against Michelle Waterson, leaving her on the outside of the Top 10 looking in, needing a win like this to really vault her into the mix in the 115-pound ranks.
For Torres, this is her first date with a ranked opponent since those four consecutive losses, and the first time she can prove that she’s still deserving of her place in the Top 10. Through her last six fights, she profiles as a gatekeeper — the person you’ve got to beat in order to put yourself in title contention, but someone who hasn’t been able to reach that class herself. A victory Saturday won’t necessarily get her there, but a loss would likely make that gatekeeper designation the upper limit of where Torres can climb in the strawweight division.
No matter the outcome, a familiar name will become a new name to pay close attention to in the deepest division on the female side of the roster and fights like that are always compelling and worth checking in on.
This Week’s Bantamweight Banger
I have and will continue to argue that the bantamweight division is the best in the UFC right now from top to bottom.
While there are more established names and a more experienced collection of fighters residing in the top tier at lightweight and welterweight, there are also clear, undeniable gaps between the top six or seven fighters in each division, the remaining members of the Top 15, and then various groupings of fighters throughout the rest of those weight classes. But at bantamweight, several athletes outside of the Top 5 feel genuinely capable of claiming a spot in that exclusive group and there is less of a clear delineation between the haves and the have-nots from No. 16 down to who knows where, because the 135-pound weight class is littered with impressive emerging talents and fighters with undetermined ceilings.
This week’s indication of that is the main card opener between Song Yadong and Casey Kenney — a pairing pitting a 23-year-old hopeful with an abundance of potential against a 30-year-old judoka whose only losses in the division have come against the guy on the longest active winning streak, Merab Dvalishvili, and the long-time former champion, Dominick Cruz.
Neither of them currently carry a number next to their names and the winner probably won’t get one either because bantamweight is just that damn good right now.
What’s wild to me is how quickly people have abandoned ship on Song, who was the divisional “It Guy” after knocking out Alejandro Perez in two minutes at UFC 239 to earn his fourth consecutive UFC win. Folks started to cool on him when he scored back-to-back questionable results against Cody Stamann (majority draw) and Marlon Vera (unanimous decision), fixating on the verdicts and not the efforts of the still-developing prospect.
Once he lost to Kyler Phillips, folks saw an exit ramp and took it, meanwhile, I’m over here thinking he’s still a couple years away from Song being at the start of his athletic prime, with an ocean of potential still waiting to be explored and exposed between now and then.
Kenney, meanwhile, is that perfect veteran stalwart every division needs — a durable, competitive grinder that resides somewhere between 12 and 20, but is a nightmare matchup for anyone and everyone that stands across from him inside the Octagon. He’s the kind of guy Song needs to beat in order to get things moving in the right direction again, and more than capable of handing “The Kung Fu Monkey” a second straight loss.
It’s an outstanding way to kick off the main card and one of the fights I’m most looking forward to this weekend.
Fiziev’s Next Test
Rafael Fiziev is one of the most intriguing fighters on the UFC roster, and Saturday night, the upwardly mobile lightweight gets his next big test in the form of a clash with durable, awkward veteran Bobby Green in the final preliminary card bout of the evening.
The 28-year-old had a ton of buzz when he first arrived in the UFC with a 6-0 record and Tiger Muay Thai pedigree, but lost a good chunk of that momentum when he got stopped in less than 90 seconds in his first appearance inside the Octagon.
I’m not going to lie — that loss dampened my interest in Fiziev, and although he earned good wins over Alex White and Marc Diakiese in his next two outings, I still wasn’t sold on his standing as someone to watch in the rugged lightweight ranks heading into his bout with Renato Moicano last December at UFC 256. I was even in the process of writing a tweet about how everyone has sorta, kinda forgotten how good the Brazilian was during his time at featherweight when Fiziev uncorked a three-punch combo — left hook to the body, right hook to the jaw, left hook to the jaw — that put Moicano on the deck and me second-guess everything I thought about “Ataman.”
Heading into this one, I’m far more intrigued, because his striking and distance management just looked so crisp against Moicano, and this matchup with Green should answer some of the lingering questions that exist around the Sanford MMA representative. It’s the kind of veteran pairing every emerging hopeful needs at this stage of their development and a bout that Green is entirely capable of winning, which is why it’s such a compelling addition to this weekend’s lineup.
Saturday won’t determine whether Fiziev is “the real deal” or not, but it will help us get closer to learning the answer to that question.
Fighter I Can’t Quit: Alonzo Menifield
Alonzo Menifield is a perfect mixture of all the things that make someone a “Fighter I Can’t Quit” — a physical specimen training with a terrific squad brandishing power and speed, a couple quality wins already under his belt, and plenty of room to still grow.
After getting back into the win column with a first-round submission victory over Fabio Cherant earlier this year, the 33-year-old Fortis MMA product takes on Ed Herman this weekend, squaring off with the resurgent light heavyweight that got his start in the UFC on the third season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Just a dozen fights into his professional career, Menifield is one of those guys that could rapidly develop into a wildly dangerous, heavily avoided figure in the somewhat shallow 205-pound ranks or a dude that looks incredible getting off the bus, but never quiet puts it all together, cobbling together a “win some, lose some” career with highlight reel finishes and frustrating defeats. We’ve already seen flashes of both sides, as he holds a first-round finish over Paul Craig, who is 4-0-1 since, while also having gassed hard against Devin Clark and looked lethargic opposite Ovince Saint Preux.
What will Menifield become? I don’t know, but I’m going to watch every single step because I cannot look away.
What to Expect from Karolina Kowalkiewicz?
On February 23, 2020, Karolina Kowalkiewicz dropped a unanimous decision to Yan Xiaonan; it was her fourth straight loss. She was battered and broken — a former title challenger who raced out to a 10-0 record to start her career, only to lose six of her next eight fights, culminating with the one-sided drubbing at the hands of the unassuming, quietly emerging Yan.
She pressed pause on her career, and gave no clear indication that she was going to return. She seemed destined to be one of those competitors that had a brilliant rise and suddenly flamed out hard, going from the top of their division to falling out of the Top 15 in 27 months.
Saturday night in Houston, the 35-year-old Polish veteran returns, taking on Jessica Penne in a clash between former title challengers in the strawweight division.
Penne returned from a four-year absence earlier this year, edging out newcomer Loopy Godinez on the scorecards to secure her first victory since beating Randa Markos in the TUF 20 bronze medal match. She looked good, and now she’s the one welcoming Kowalkiewicz back into the Octagon; a veteran that showed you’re capable of hitting the restart button and righting the ship after a long hiatus facing off with another looking to do the same.
When at her best, Kowalkiewicz was a crisp, technical kickboxer who used sound fundamentals and a quality gas tank to work at range, picking apart capable, talented fighters like Mizuki, Markos, and Rose Namajunas, but those outings took place a long time ago. Her last win, a split decision nod over Felice Herrig at UFC 223, wasn’t particularly convincing, and after that, the losses rolled in, making it impossible to know what to expect from Kowalkiewicz when she walks out to the Octagon this weekend, likely to the familiar strains of “The Passenger.”
If she’s right — and that’s a very big if — Kowalkiewicz could be another veteran presence in the middle of the talent-rich 115-pound weight class, and if she’s not, we should know pretty early on Saturday night. Either option is possible, as is something in between the two, something Penne-like, which is why I’m really curious to her The Stooges bumping through the Toyota Center on Saturday night.
I have questions and I crave answers.
I Want to Know More About… Ode’ Osbourne
Ode’ Osbourne lost his promotional debut at bantamweight, won his sophomore appearance at featherweight, and competes this weekend at flyweight.
Three fights in three divisions and I have zero sense of what to expect from the Contender Series alum.
Osbourne lost to Brian Kelleher in his debut, an understandable result — “Boom” was 29 fights into his career, having fought outstanding competition on the regional circuit before graduating to the UFC; it was the 29-year-old Osbourne’s 10th pro bout.
A year later, Osbourne rolled into the Octagon and laid out Jerome Rivera in 26 seconds — a perfectly time, beautifully delivered left cross laying out the New Mexico native. It was a tremendous performance against an opponent that had lost each of his first two UFC appearances and dropped a fourth straight contest a couple months ago at UFC 264.
The two results feel like they cancel each other out, sending Osbourne into this weekend’s preliminary card matchup with Manel Kape as a relative unknown — a guy with clear upside and obvious skills, but a limited track record against solid, but unspectacular competition. And he’s moving to a new division too.
For me, the intriguing flashes Osbourne showed on the Contender Series and his rapid win over Rivera have me itching to see him in action again, and while Kape has been underwhelming since moving to the UFC, he’s a more proven, more tested talent and how this one plays out should provide a clear baseline indication of where “The Jamaican Sensation” fits in the 125-pound weight class going forward.