10 Things I Like at UFC Austin
From a headliners handiwork to the upside of one of the openers, there is plenty to like about Saturday's show in the Texas capital
So here we are with another “Hangover Card” and this one is a bit of a dichotomy:
On one hand, you have an outstanding main event and a handful of fights that are competitive, intriguing, and carry the potential to have divisional significance one or two more steps down the road, which are the kinds of fights you know I love to pieces.
On the other hand, you’ve got a preliminary card slate that features a pack of fights in the lower half or third of a couple different divisions, with fighters that have seemingly established who they are and where they fit in their respective weight classes, which makes it kind of hard to get really pumped up for them.
And it all comes down to whether the positives in the one hand outweigh the negatives in the other.
You know what the answer is for me, obviously, and what follows are the reasons why.
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Calvin Kattar’s Boxing
All this week as I’ve been talking about Saturday’s main event between Kattar and Josh Emmett, I’ve been referencing Kattar’s boxing thusly: rather than “Death by 1000 Cuts,” it’s more like “Death by 150 Cuts” because he has some pop and sits down on things more and more as the fight goes on.
It’s the big difference between Kattar and his New England Cartel running mate Rob Font — the latter is a jab-machine who gets you with volume and pressure and a little more volume, while the former has a lovely jab, but puts a little more oomph into it, and everything that follows. Yes, he got boxed up by Max Holloway, but that doesn’t mean Kattar doesn’t still have hands and deploy them quite well against pretty much everyone else.
The thing I like the most is that Kattar sticks with his boxing no matter what — it’s his lead weapon and even when things aren’t working early, he doesn’t abandon ship; he keeps looking to stick the jab out there and get into a rhythm. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and he has to bail (or fails to make an adjustment and lets things get away; it happens), but most of the time, he gets that timing down, gets that range figured out, and then falls into a nice rhythm where the cuts keep piling up.
Josh Emmett’s Persistence
Just one of the injuries Emmett has dealt with over the last four-and-a-half years would have been enough for me to never set foot in the Octagon again. While I know that’s not saying much since I make a living on these keys and he makes a living in the cage, but I genuinely don’t think we ever really grasp the severity of these injuries, the physical effort it takes to come back from them, and the emotional, mental toll this shit can take on a person.
After his fight with Jeremy Stephens, Emmett was left with facial fractures including a broken orbital, he nearly lost his eye, and he had a terrible case of vertigo, which was the most difficult one to deal with. In his fight with Shane Burgos, he blew out his knee 18 seconds into the fight, carrying on to get a victory before undergoing surgery. Six months into his recovery, he found out the repair didn’t take and there was a hole in his patella — which is the little bone at the front of your knee joint — and had to start the whole process over.
And yet after all that, the 37-year-old is back in the mix, walking into his second main event assignment, hoping to take the step he failed to take the first time around.
The older I get and the more I talk to these athletes, the more respect and appreciation I have for what they put themselves through, and Emmett has put himself through a lot.
The Right Matchup
Pairing Donald Cerrone and Joe Lauzon together for what feels like it could (should?) be Cowboy’s last ride was absolutely the right decision to make and I’m quite happy that this is how things have played out.
Just like the matchup with Diego Sanchez last year was the correct way to go for Cerrone — you know, before Joshua Fabia made it all about him again, Sanchez got released, and Cowboy got blown out by Alex Morono — finding another willing veteran to share the cage with him here is the only kind of matchup that makes sense.
And now here’s the crazy part: even though he hasn’t fought since October 2019, Lauzon still has the most recent victory of the two, having beaten Jonathan Pearce by submission in Boston in his last appearance; Cowboy’s last victory came five months earlier against Al Iaquinta.
When fighters aren’t willing to take that Jim Miller, Andrei Arlovski step back in order to continue competing, these are the kinds of matchups you have to find for them, because no one wants to see a guy like Cerrone continually walking out there and getting laid out by guy cats trying to make a name for themselves by beating the veteran gunslinger who has seen better days.
Kevin Holland’s Latest Test
As much as I’ve spent many hours and many words expressing my frustration with Holland in this space over the last couple years, the truth of the matter is that it’s because I honestly think he could be a legitimate contender if he’d just apply himself and focus on his craft.
There is so much to like about his game and what he brings to the table, and yet Holland has been more interested in talking with Khabib mid-fight than working to get up off his back and take the fight to a tiring Derek Brunson. That kind of effort is, as Sean Sheehan correctly put it on yesterday’s Severe MMA Preview Show, “embarrassing” and yet Holland doesn’t seem all that bothered, and people like that drive me absolutely bonkers.
My brother is that way. I know a lot of people that are that way. Hell, I was probably that way for a good long while, and it’s difficult to square away because you can see the road to tremendous success and achievement laid out before them, only to watch them constantly show little to no interest in traveling that path.
And so I look at Holland’s fight this weekend with Tim Means as another chance to see if he’s made even the slightest adjustment to his approach and mindset, because the old “Dirty Bird” will have no problem laying into Holland if he’s looking to fuck around in there this weekend. Maybe Holland is skilled enough to beat Means anyway, but I’m not sure, and losing to a grimy veteran that resides in the middle of the welterweight pack is a lot more difficult to explain away than dropping consecutive fights to Top 5 middleweights.
This is a real moment for Holland, and I look forward to seeing how he chooses to handle it, even though I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up being annoyed.
Middleweight Smorgasbord
Four of Saturday’s 14 fights take place in the middleweight division, and none of the eight fighters involved sport a number next to their names. While that is an automatic “this sucks” for plenty of people (understandably), my weirdo brain is excited because it means we’re going to get some clarity about where these dudes fall in the 185-pound weight division and have a better sense of who to keep paying attention to going forward and who to just leave behind.
For me, each of the fights breaks down into a “Guy I’m Curious About” and “Guy I Think I Have Figured Out” pairing, with Joaquin Buckley (pictured above), Julian Marquez, Phil Hawes, and Kyle Daukaus in the first group, and their respective opponents, Albert Duraev, Gregory Rodrigues, Deron Winn, and Roman Dolidze in the second.
What I like (because I’m a psycho) is that what I guess you could call my hypothesis is going to be tested on Saturday, and once the smoke clears, I’ll have a chance to review the data, adjust my expectations and ideas, and wait to see more tests run later this year. I know that sounds laborious and like a real waste of quality Saturday afternoon time many times over, but to me, this is what is required in order to provide the best top-to-bottom coverage of these cards and these athletes, and I genuinely look forward to doing it.
Intriguing Lightweight Altercation
The fight between Damir Ismagulov and Guram Kutateladze is my favourite fight on the card, save for the main event, and it’s honestly close between those two; that’s how much I adore this fight.
Ismagulov is someone I was shouting about last year as he was readying to return because those previous wins over Joel Alvarez and Thiago Moises aged really well and he’s just an ultra-talented, unheralded lightweight. He ended a near two-year absence with a good win over Rafael Alves in May, but then blew weight by a mile for an October assignment against Magomed Mustafaev which cooled his momentum again, but he’s still unbeaten in the UFC and riding an outrageously long winning streak, and you know how I feel about those kinds of things.
Kutateladze has made one start in the UFC, but it’s a really good one, as “The Georgian Viking” earned a split decision win over Mateusz Gamrot that has aged quite nicely as well. Even if you want to question the result and say that Gamrot won, Kutateladze went 15 hard minutes with the Polish standout, which is something no one else has done in his three appearances since, and when you mix in the fact that he trains with Khamzat Chimaev and has been getting reps with fellow Georgians Merab Dvalishvili and Ilia Topuria, you have a recipe that piques my interest.
How this one plays out is going to tell us a great deal about each of these men, where they currently fit in the division, and what to reasonably expect of them going forward, and it might not be all one side or the other. This feels like the kind of matchup where both men can raise their stocks, even if one has to leave with a loss, and my biggest hope is that we get to see more of each of them more frequently in the coming months, because I truly believe both can be excellent additions to an already strong lightweight class.
Adrian Yanez is Fighting
If this dude is on the fight card, I’m tuning in; simple as that.
While there are things I would like to see Yanez clean up before I would be ready to forecast him into the Top 15 in the rugged bantamweight division, he’s already one of those consistently entertaining, all-action fighters that I just enjoy watching compete every time out. Sure, he took too many jabs against Randy Costa and needs to tighten up a few other things, but look: he’s a 28-year-old kid that never seems bothered by what is coming his way, can fight going forwards or backwards, attacking or countering, and is allergic to being in a boring fight.
If that’s not enough to get you interested, I don’t know what to tell you?
I think this fight with Tony Kelley is going to be one that either hits the turbo button for Yanez and makes us all realize we need to pump the brakes a little, depending on how it shakes out, but I’m eagerly awaiting the two of them standing across from one another in the Octagon on Saturday night, just like I am every time Yanez is on the bill.
I Want to Know More About Jasmine Jasudavicius
I can’t go on a big old rant on Monday about how there isn’t as much national or regional pride in Canada and the United States when it comes to supporting their athletes and then not be intrigued by Jasudavicius making her second UFC start, though this isn’t simply “she’s Canadian, so I’m paying attention.”
First, she’s from St. Catharines and I was born in St. Catharines, so I’m automatically in there. Niagara region? I’m paying attention.
More importantly, Jasudavicius has looked good throughout her career, including in her debut win over Kay Hansen. Now, Hansen is a natural strawweight, so there was a real difference in terms of size and physicality, but I actually think that’s something Jasudavicius will bring to the Octagon more often than naught because she is five-foot-seven with a solid reach, good strength, and a grappling-heavy approach. The other thing is that she’s still extremely early in her career — this is her ninth professional appearance — and while she’s a little older than most UFC neophytes, you can see the growth potential in her game and it’s much more common for women to get a late start and have success in MMA these days than it is for their male counterparts.
I think this fight with Natalia Silva is a chance for the Canadian to open up a little more — and she’s talked about wanting to do just that — and provide a little more understanding about the direction her career could go in the next two or three years.
I Want to Know More About Jeremiah Wells
Yesterday I asked whether Wells was a potential dark horse in the welterweight division, and I’m interested in this fight because I really don’t know how to answer that question.
This is one of those cases where you could put me on either side of the debate and I can make a strong argument either in favour of Wells being someone to watch based on his first two efforts inside the Octagon or against him being someone to watch based on his first two efforts inside the Octagon, and cases like that always fascinate me.
What makes his return this weekend one of the 10 Things I Like is that he’s stepping in there with about as game and established a litmus test as you’re going to find in the lower half of the 170-pound weigh class, Court McGee. “The Crusher” is indefatigable and on a tidy two-fight winning streak of his own, and if you’re not ready to work at a ridiculous clip, defend takedowns, and deal with non-stop pressure, he’s going to beat you; it’s just that simple.
Wells’ power and finishing instincts seem genuine to me, but McGee isn’t one to get finished (he’s been stopped once in his career), so we’re going to find out a whole bunch more about the 35-year-old from Philly on Saturday night.
Another Look at Kyle Daukaus
I just want to see more of the younger half of The Fighting Daukaus Brothers (Fighting Dauki?) because his first 18 months on the UFC roster were a non-stop barrage of false starts, shuffled opponents, and circumstances that were out of his control, which didn’t allow him to produce the best results.
Getting that early start to the year and quality finish over Jamie Pickett was a step in the right direction, and I like this fight against Roman Dolidze as a solid progression up the divisional ladder, because the burly Georgian can grapple and should force Daukaus to be at his best. But I do think that skill-for-skill, the Philadelphia-based middleweight is the more complete and more talented fighter — and the one from this smorgasbord of 185-pound talent competing on Saturday with the greatest upside of the bunch — but he needs to prove it, and then keep proving it.
It’s hard to be at your best when things are constantly changing and you can’t get into a rhythm. For the first time in his UFC run, Daukaus is in a little bit of a rhythm, and I’m eager to see just how much of a difference that makes for him this weekend and into the second half of the year.