Fighter to Watch at UFC Vegas 50: Terrance McKinney
Lightweight finisher makes quick turnaround to take on Drew Dober in Las Vegas on Saturday night
Name: Terrance McKinney
Nickname: T. Wrecks
Record: 12-3 overall, 2-0 UFC
Division: Lightweight
Team: Warriorcamp MMA
Opponent: Fares Ziam (12-4 overall, 2-2 UFC)
Saturday night, McKinney looks to do what Bobby Green and Renato Moicano couldn’t do in recent weeks: collect a second victory in a handful of weeks while making a quick turnaround and taking a step forward in the division.
Green beat Nasrat Haqparast at UFC 271 and then jumped into a fight with Islam Makhachev a couple weeks later and get stopped in the first round.
Moicano stopped Alexander Hernandez in the fight after Green in Houston, asked for bigger opportunities, and then filled in for Rafael Fiziev against Rafael Dos Anjos last weekend, getting busted up and beaten down by the former lightweight champion.
Now, with a week off in between, McKinney, who dominated and finished Fares Ziam on the Makhachev-Green card, steps up to face Drew Dober this weekend in what should be an intriguing test for the promising young talent from Spokane, Washington.
* * *
The 27-year-old McKinney burst onto the scene last June with a seven-second knockout win over Matt Frevola at UFC 263.
Just eight days removed from a first-round stoppage win over Michael Irizarry at LFA 109 and already brandishing three first-round finishes in 2021, the former Contender Series competitor waltzed into the Octagon and hit Frevola with a clean two-piece the second he lifted his leg to throw a range-finding kick. The leg started to come off the canvas and then pop-POP — Frevola was down and McKinney was celebrating, tweaking his knee in the process.
It was one of the best debuts of the year and made “T. Wrecks” a person of interest in the lightweight division, which created an avenue for the engaging, energetic kid from Spokane to share his story, and as people learned more about him, it became increasingly difficult not to root for the former high school wrestling standout whose life took a near-fatal turn several years ago.
“I knew I wanted to start changing my life, so I was like, ‘I’m just going to party one last time and I’m gonna take everything seriously this year, try to win a national title,’” McKinney told me when we spoke for a story last summer following his debut win. “So I got everything set up, get some liquor, we’re smoking and drinking, and I take a vial of acid and over an eighth of ‘shrooms. I’m at the mall and it starts hitting me, and I’m like, ‘I need to go home ASAP.’ We go back to the party, we’re in there, and things are getting crazy.”
McKinney ended up falling through a window, suffering a gnarly cut above his eye, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Later that night, seated against a wooden fence wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, McKinney encountered a number of police officers that were invariably called to deal with the drug-addled gentleman wearing nothing but boxer shorts leaning up against someone’s fence in the early morning hours.
The interaction got physical, with McKinney ultimately being tased twice in order for the officers to be able to detain him and get him medical help. Strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance, his heart stopped twice on the way to the hospital.
Fortunately, he was able to be revived.
Dealing with the fallout from his “one last night” adventure was too much for him to balance, prompting him to leave Division-II Chadron State College in Nebraska, return home, and pursue a career in the cage.
* * *
The thing McKinney and those close to him kept saying after he knocked out Frevola to earn his fourth straight first-round stoppage win due to strikes by the midway point of 2021 was that his wrestling was far better than his striking. A two-time state champion in high school, McKinney finally showed that grappling prowess in the Octagon a couple weeks ago against Ziam.
Right out of the chute, Ziam kicked out McKinney’s lead leg, causing him to stumble to the canvas, but he used that opportunity to initiate a scramble and ended up on top. He quickly stacked the legs and moved to side control, eventually working to take the back. As Ziam looked to defend, McKinney flowed with him, staying one step ahead, ultimately attacking a rear-naked choke that he secured after baiting his French opponent to defend a particular way, as the always-sharp Luke Thomas pointed out on Twitter:
Now riding a five-fight winning streak with all of his victories coming inside the opening stanza, McKinney looks to make it six straight on Saturday when he steps in with Dober.
* * *
I love this fight for the surging 27-year-old — not because I think he’s going to steamroll Dober or anything like that, but because it is the kind of “find out where you fit in” test he needs at this point of his development.
He showed two Saturdays ago that he’s better than the “still figuring things out” set in the lower half of the division, and now he’s skipping a couple groups in the 155-pound ecosystem to step in with a game, experienced, dangerous veteran like Dober, who has lost two straight and is sure to want no part of suffering a third straight loss, not that anyone ever welcomes a defeat.
Dober spent the last couple years working as a measuring stick for various 155-pound talents, getting the better of Haqparast and Hernandez in 2020 to climb into the Top 15 before falling to Makhachev and Brad Riddell to slip out of the rankings. But the 33-year-old Elevation Fight Team member is an established figure in the lightweight division — a benchmark fighter that only a certain caliber of competitor tends to get the better of as of late — and a major step up in competition for the talented, but still growing McKinney.
McKinney has a slight height and reach advantage in the matchup, and should be able to match Dober’s speed on the feet. What’s going to decide this fight — in my opinion — is how McKinney navigates the moments where things don’t go his way, because this one is going to be much more difficult than his last two UFC appearances.
It’s unlikely that McKinney is going to run through Dober — he’s been finished before, but hasn’t been finished quickly in nearly seven years, while Top 5 talents like Makhachev and Beneil Dariush had to work methodically to eventually get him out of there — and so what will the impressive up-and-comer do when Dober hangs around, fights back, or has moments where he’s in control of the fight?
Most fighters are great when it comes to being the hammer, but how they handle being the nail is where you can learn a lot more about them, and as of late, McKinney hasn’t spent much any time on the receiving end of things.
Maybe he won’t here either — I genuinely believe he’s a top-end talent that just needs more experience and an opportunity to build further confidence and poise by logging more time inside the Octagon — but it’s why I’m so intrigued by his stepping up to take this fight.
This is the kind of pairing that is going to tell us where McKinney is at right now, and how far he can take things in the next 12-18 months.
Win or lose, he’s absolutely one to watch in the UFC lightweight division going forward.