Fighter to Watch at UFC Vegas 48: David Onama
After a solid debut up a division, Onama returns to featherweight for his sophomore outing against Gabriel Benitez on Saturday
Name: David Onama
Nickname: Silent Assassin
Record: 8-1 overall, 0-1 UFC
Division: Featherweight
Team: Glory MMA & Fitness
Opponent: Gabriel Benitez (22-9 overall, 6-5 UFC)
If we’re being honest with each other — and why wouldn’t we be? — David Onama might have been the most obscure name to grace this year’s Fighters to Watch list: a fighter with a single, short-notice appearance, which resulted in a loss, on a late October fight night event featuring a very limited number of names and a main event (Marvin Vettori vs. Paulo Costa) that went sideways mid-week.
But d’you know? I think Onama is someone that is going to surprise a lot of people this year, maybe as early as this weekend, when he steps in against Benitez in the final preliminary card fight of the evening.
Here’s what I said about the 27-year-old “Silent Assassin” back in January:
Circle this one and feel free to tell your friends you’re the only person that is high on Onama heading into 2022 if you’d like because there won't be many of us checking for him before his next appearance.
Here’s the thing: Onama pushed Mason Jones hard up a division, on short notice, just two weeks after pushing his record to 8-0, and I’m real curious to see what kind of noise he can make once he settles in at featherweight and gets a full camp behind him. I know the Glory MMA squad are high on him, so I’m paying close attention, and suggest you do the same.
Folks may look at Jones’ record since arriving in the UFC — he’s 1-1 with one No Contest — and dismiss him as being average, but he’s a 26-year-old former two-division Cage Warriors champion who lost a hard fight with Mike “Beast Boy” Davis in his debut and was dominating Alan Patrick in his sophomore outing before an eye poke ended it prematurely. He’s a tough out for anyone trying to work their way up the lightweight ladder, and Onama rolled into the Octagon with limited time to prepare, up a division, a couple weeks after earning his eighth straight victory, and gave Jones all he could handle.
Fighters like that are the reason I do pieces like this.
Most people probably didn’t pay attention to that fight or don’t remember that fight now, and they surely didn’t check to see what the scoop was with Onama before hand either. But that effort showed me he belongs in the UFC, and now I’m ultra keen on seeing what he can do in his natural weight class, in an instant “measuring stick” matchup against the veteran Benitez.
Now, it has to be said that his Natan Levy Number* is poor, which suggests being a little careful when it comes to putting too much stock into his regional circuit wins, but that’s where the fight with Jones becomes so important.
Maybe Onama simply had the best night of his life, rising to the occasion as he walked into the Octagon for the first time, giving Jones a good fight on short notice, and he’s going to regression in his sophomore appearance. It’s possible, but I believe the more likely scenario is that what’s more important than the level of competition he faced before reaching the UFC is how he dealt with those foes, which is handily.
We talk all the time about wanting to see competitors that have favourable — dare I say one-sided — matchups turn in dominant efforts, and that’s what Onama did throughout his eight-fight regional apprenticeship. Every time he turned up, he not only earned a victory, but collected a finish, venturing out of the first round only three times, and reaching the third round only once.
Yes, he was paired up with opponents that haven’t done much since and didn’t do a ton before hand, but that’s how it goes on the regional scene, and the key piece (at least for me) is that there were no real hiccups.
Winning eight straight fights isn’t easy, at any level, and getting eight straight stoppages is even more difficult — if it wasn’t, we’d see more fighters roll into the UFC with unblemished regional records and a ton of finishes — and that above all is what piqued my interest in Onama before the fight with Jones and has me eager to see what he can do on Saturday.
It also helps that he comes from a gym and a team, Glory MMA & Fitness, that is rapidly establishing a reputation for cultivating talent and building quality fighters. James Krause is one of the most respected coaches in the game, and while all teams are going to big up their own guys all the time, the more you do this, the more you know when coaches and fighters are just doing what they’re supposed to do and saying nice things about a team member, and when they’re genuinely high on a fighter, and everything I’ve heard from the team regarding Onama sounds genuine.
Saturday’s pairing with Benitez is a difficult test — “Moggly” has been around for a while, has a couple nasty finishes on his resume, and is usually a tough out, but that’s why I like the matchup so much. Win or lose, this weekend’s pairing will provide a clearly understanding of where Onama fits within the featherweight hierarchy and whether I need to temper my optimism or start printing “Team Onama” stickers to pass out when more people start looking for seats on the bandwagon.
I love fights like this.
I love fighters like this.
And I love doing stuff like this.
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends.
* Natan Levy Number: an MMA formula where you tabulate the combined records of an emerging fighter’s opponents following their meeting in order to get a greater understanding of the level of competition said newcomer faced on their way to the big stage. The better the record, the better the competition, in theory.