10 Things I Like at UFC Vegas 24
From the return of 'The Reaper' to further appearances of several intriguing talents, Saturday's fight card at the UFC APEX has plenty to offer
This weekend’s fight card is the type that prompts a lot of people to suggest making alternative plans and catching up Sunday morning via PVR or Twitter feeds — a 12-fight mixed bag of prospects and middle-of-the-pack types combined with a few veteran names and capped by an intriguing replacement main event.
I get why folks aren’t all that hyped.
I also know there are still plenty of points of interest that will have me watching from start to finish this weekend.
My name is Spencer, and I’m an addict. (Hi Spencer)
These are the 10 Things I Like at UFC Vegas 24.
Robert Whittaker, No. 1 Contender
All the “Marvin Vettori has earned his rematch” talk in the wake of the Italian’s win over Kevin Holland last week was cute, but let me be perfectly clear: Robert John Whittaker is the No. 1 contender in the UFC middleweight division and will further cement his standing as such should he earn a third straight victory on Saturday.
Vettori has been great over his last five and is closing in on title contention, but we need to cool it with the recency bias and rallying behind fresh matchups and trending fighters rather than properly evaluating wins and losses and ranking fighters accordingly.
In his two fights since losing the title to Israel Adesanya in October 2019, “The Reaper” has earned decision wins over Darren Till and Jared Cannonier, pushing his middleweight record to 10-1. This weekend, he takes on Kelvin Gastelum, who replaced recent title challenger Paulo Costa, and if he beats his coaching rival from TUF 28 this weekend, there will be no room to argue that anyone else other than Whittaker is the top contender at 185 pounds.
Now, whether or not Adesanya and his team are interested in a rematch with the former champion is a different conversation altogether, however if we’re going to try to sort through the recent collection of middleweight fights and figure out some kind of pecking order, Whittaker has to be at the top of the heap, and there really isn’t any way to argue otherwise. He’s deftly turned back two skilled, established contenders, and was poised to face the last man to fight for the middleweight title here before Costa was forced to withdraw due to lingering health issues.
Whittaker has done exactly what you’d like to see from a dethroned champion — he’s regrouped and dispatched two quality contenders, with the chance to vanquish a third on Saturday. The level of competition he’s faced and his championship pedigree trump Vettori’s five straight victories — and one could argue Derek Brunson should probably be ahead of the surging Italian as well — and while the UFC may go in a different direction when it comes time to book the next middleweight title fight, that doesn’t change the fact that Whittaker is the top contender and will be even more entrenched in that position with a victory on Saturday.
Kelvin Gastelum’s Openness
I got the chance to speak with Gastelum ahead of this fight (here’s the link) and diving into the depth of everything he was dealing with ahead of his fight with Ian Heinisch was a great reminder that we all struggle with self-doubt and how difficult it can be to put one foot in front of the other some days.
Because these men and women compete for our entertaining on a weekly basis, we can occasionally lose sight of the fact that they’re human too, and prone to hard times just like everyone else, and to break some of that down with the 29-year-old former TUF winner was the kind of thing I relish as an interviewer and a writer.
We often talk about how a fighter has “their back against the wall” when they’re in spots like Gastelum was ahead of his February win over Heinisch, but if you take a minute to break that down just a little, you realize we’re talking about competitors staring down possibly losing their jobs — or perhaps being forced to take a pay cut and demotion — like it’s ain’t no thing when if it were one of us in that position with our employment, how many of us could muster up the energy to push through the fear and uncertainty and doubts and make it out the other side safely?
I’ve been fortunate enough to cover Gastelum’s career from the outset and he’s always been a great interview subject, but this one was different and special and the kind of honest conversation that makes it impossible not to root for the guy on a human level.
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Further Middleweight Clarity
Whatever happens in Saturday night’s main event, it will provide further clarity about how things stack up at the top of the middleweight division.
As covered above, Whittaker is the current No. 1 contender and will further solidify his place in that position with a victory over Gastelum. Should the late replacement topple the former champion, you could make a case for Gastelum jumping to the head of the queue of contenders, where a sequel to his 2019 clash with Adesanya would certainly be welcomed.
Vettori climbed to No. 3 in the rankings with his win over Holland, which seemed like a big jump for beating someone that fell two spots in the rankings as a result of the loss, but he’s certainly in the conversation, as is Brunson, who laid the blueprint for beating Holland that Vettori followed last weekend and somehow got jumped in the hierarchy for his efforts.
Costa’s illness and Till’s injury set them each back a step, as does Cannonier’s continued absences, while the upcoming fight between Uriah Hall and Chris Weidman is another one to pay attention to when it comes to determining how the division will stack up heading into May, where Jack Hermansson will face Edmen Shahbazyan in a battle of Top 10 fighters looking to rebound from recent setbacks.
There are a dozen fighters mentioned above and the results from the next several events should help further refine how they line up and lay the groundwork for potential pairings in the second half of the year. It’s going to be interesting to see who emerging victorious this weekend and in the two remaining Top 15 pairings on the slate, and I’ll be curious to see where everyone lands once the dust finally settles.
This Week’s Reminder of Lightweight’s Depth: Drakkar Klose
Every week, we talk about how deep and talented the lightweight division is, but sometimes we kind of just take it as accepted fact that everyone knows what we mean. So going forward, whenever there is a lightweight matchup that fits the bill, I’m going to highlight the athlete that really drives that point home.
This week, that athlete is Drakkar Klose.
Klose is 11-2-1 overall and 5-2 in the UFC, but he’s nowhere (clears throat) close to cracking the Top 15 at the moment, thanks to a second-round knockout loss to Beneil Dariush last time out. In fact, in each of the Michigan native’s two biggest fights — against Dariush last year, and David Teymur in December 2017 — the Arizona-based lightweight has come up short, which puts him firmly in that expansive pack of talent congregating outside the rankings, constantly jockeying for position and trying to string together enough wins to land another date with a ranked opponent.
In several other divisions, the three-fight winning streak Klose carried into his bout with Dariush last year would have been enough to land him in the Top 15, maybe even the Top 10 in some cases, but in the lightweight ranks, it means you’re making up a little ground and facing your toughest assignment to date.
Harsh.
This weekend, Klose faces off with Jeremy Stephens, who returns to lightweight after a lengthy run as a staple in the featherweight rankings. It’s the kind of fight the 33-year-old needs to win in order to start moving forward again, especially as Stephens enters on a five-fight run without a victory, though each of those fights came against top-end featherweight talent.
But this is why Klose is the perfect example of how deep and competitive it is in the UFC lightweight division: even with a 5-2 record, you can’t be sure he’s going to beat the guy that hasn’t won a fight since February 2018 because that dude is really talented too.
The Unsinkable Andrei Arlovski
At this point, how can you not be impressed with the career Andrei Arlovski has put together?
The 42-year-old has fought in every year of this century, won and defended the UFC heavyweight title, and has risen from the dead like Lazarus three different times, chasing extended losing streaks with a string of positive results that make you tuck the eulogy you wrote for him all the way back in early 2011 when things had gone sideways in Strikeforce back into the “Save for Later” folder.
Saturday night, the heavyweight veteran steps in to face Chase Sherman in his second appearance of 2021, looking to quickly return to the win column after getting cracked and choked by Tom Aspinall just a few weeks back.
This is the kind of fight Arlovski traditionally wins, signalling once more that he still has something left in the tank, though Sherman can crack and if he finds the divisional fixture’s chin, things could get interesting.
Arlovski isn’t going to make another run at the title — I still think the UFC missed out by booking him against Stipe Miocic at UFC 195 instead of giving him the old hot-shot into a title fight with Fabricio Werdum — but he’s remained an important cog in the heavyweight division for the last several years, and the fact that he’s still competing at this level, this far into his career, remains an amazing feat that I’ll celebrate every time he steps into the Octagon.
Another Look at Luis Pena
Every year, there is some fighter that comes into the UFC that everyone gets big time excited about, declaring they’ll be a future contender before they’ve done much of anything, and then we spend the next couple years trying to figure out how and why things went wrong.
Luis Pena is one of those guys.
Coming off Season 27 of The Ultimate Fighter, a lot of folks were high on “Violent Bob Ross,” who won his first-round fight, but was forced out of the competition due to an injury. It always felt like a lot of the love centered around his nickname, which is admittedly dope, and his look — red Afro, super-lanky for a lightweight — because while he was 4-0 with four finishing going into and coming out of the show, it wasn’t like Pena had beaten a string of established regional vets or guys that have gone on to do big things.
Since entering the UFC, Pena has been average at best, amassing a 4-3 record heading into Saturday’s clash with Alexander Munoz. He looked really good against Matt Wiman, but otherwise, it’s been a series of middling efforts, a botched attempt to move down to featherweight, and a whole lot of wondering why everyone was so hyped about this guy.
Pena has relocated to South Florida and is training at American Top Team, and is only 27, so there is still plenty of time for him to figure some things out and become a fixture in the lightweight division, but given what I said above about Klose and the overall complexion of the 155-pound ranks, I’m going to need to see a lot more out of Pena this weekend and beyond in order to think of him as anything more than another guy that people got way too gassed up about early.
I’m genuinely curious to see if “Violent Bob Ross” can prove me wrong.
I Want to Know More About… Tracy Cortez
Tracy Cortez is on an eight-fight winning streak, earning quality wins over Erin Blanchfield and Mariya Agapova before reaching the UFC and following those up with consecutive unanimous decision triumphs in her first two Octagon appearances. She’s 27, trains with a great team (Fight Ready), and has an incredible story (chasing a dream she shared with her late brother, Jose), all of which makes her an obvious candidate to receive a quality push in the flyweight division.
I’m intrigued — it’s impossible not to pay attention to an 8-1 fighter that has rattled off eight straight victories, plus she’s shown the kind of relentlessness and tenacity that could translate into a Top 15 spot in the flyweight ranks — but I do want to see more, which is why I’m excited about her matchup this weekend with Justine Kish.
After getting the better of Vanessa Melo and late replacement Stephanie Egger in her first two UFC appearances, this fight with Kish is the first real litmus test for the Phoenix native. Though she’s just 7-3 overall, the 33-year-old Kish has been in there with quality competition throughout her career and proven to be a tough out, which means, in theory, that Cortez will have to work to maintain her winning ways.
Beating Kish in convincing fashion should propel Cortez in to the Top 15 (why is Maycee Barber still ranked, and ahead of Miranda Maverick no less) and put her in a position to face some of the more established names in the division in the second half of the year.
The opportunity is there for Cortez to become a star in the UFC as long as she keeps turning in quality performances and levelling up inside the gym, so it will be interesting to see if she can make that happen.
Heavyweight Grapplers Collide!
Listen — I’m a fairly simple guy with fairly simple tastes and if you’re going to give me to heavyweight behemoths with high quality ground games going head-to-head inside the small Octagon on a Saturday evening, I’m in heaven.
Alexander Romanov and Juan Espino square off in the penultimate preliminary card fight of the evening and it quite honestly is the second most intriguing fight of the night to me, trailing only the main event.
Romanov is 30 years old with a 13-0 record and all 13 of those victories have come by way of stoppage. He’s 2-0 in the UFC, put Marcos Rogerio de Lima to sleep with a forearm choke last time out and is precisely the kind of wild card addition to the heavyweight ranks that gets me all kinds of excited.
Espino has a bon vivant vibe — choking dudes out when he feels like competing, training with elite talents, traveling the globe looking suave in aquamarine t-shirts or a black turtlenecks, standing next to a Porsche with its hood up in a black-and-white image that could easily be an advertisement for something.
Between them, they have 23 wins in 24 starts and 21 consecutive victories.
The winner will be one step closer to cracking the Top 15 and will join the class of emerging heavyweights making waves in the division of late alongside Aspinall, Chris Daukaus, and Ciryl Gane.
If that doesn’t excite you — or at least intrigue you — I’m not sure we can be friends.
Penne Returns, Godinez Debuts
One of the more interesting fights tucked away on Saturday’s prelims is the pairing between the returning Jessica Penne and the debuting Loopy Godinez.
When she steps into the Octagon this weekend, it will have been 1,456 days since Penne’s last fight, which took place on April 22, 2017. That night, the former Invicta FC atomweight champion and Ultimate Fighter “bronze medalist” dropped a unanimous decision to Danielle Taylor, her third straight loss in the UFC. A pair of suspensions with a freak ankle injury sandwiched in between have kept her out of action since, and now at age 38, she’s a complete wild card in the 115-pound ranks.
Godinez got the call to the Octagon after Penne’s original opponent, Hannah Goldy, was forced from their fight after testing positive for COVID a couple weeks ago, and arrives with a 5-0 record. Last time out, the Vancouver resident scored a majority decision win over Vanessa Demopoulos to claim the LFA strawweight title.
There is no way to know what to expect from Penne, who got steamrolled by Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jessica Andrade before her loss to Taylor, but has always trained with a good crew and was an elite talent prior to entering the UFC, albeit at a lower weight class. Conversely, Godinez looks like a tremendous prospect with a strong wrestling base and real potential, but how will she adjust to a short-notice fight in her UFC debut?
Fight I Can’t Quit: Tony Gravely
We’ve all got those athletes we’re just inexplicably drawn to and Tony Gravely is one of those guys for me.
The 29-year-old is someone whose name kept popping up in the records of a few different prospects I was tasked with writing about back in the day, and upon venturing down the Tapology rabbit hole on him, I found that those upstarts — Ricky Bandejas, Merab Dvalishvili, Manny Bermudez, and Patchy Mix — were the only ones to get the better of the talented grappler. So when he got a chance to compete on the Contender Series, I was in, and when he earned a contract with a third-round stoppage victory over Ray Rodriguez, I was even more in.
The UFC didn’t do Gravely any favors in his debut, booking him against Welsh standout Brett Johns, who halted Gravely’s seven-fight winning streak, but the American Top Team representative rebounded with a split decision win over Geraldo de Freitas last time out and goes searching for a second consecutive win this weekend against veteran Anthony Birchak.
Gravely is one of those guys that might not become a contender in the ultra-competitive bantamweight division, but I love his relentless style and can see him becoming a persistent tough out in the middle of the division; kind of a poor man’s Darren Elkins, if you will, minus the constant bloody visage.
Every division needs people like that, and I’m always going to be down for watching Gravely do his thing inside the Octagon.