UFC Vegas 43 Aftermath: Crucial Results Produce New Contenders
After a run of amazing events and a handful of memorable fights, Saturday's fight card was downplayed by many, but still produced key efforts from some emerging contenders
Four main card fighters each got the biggest wins of their respective careers on Saturday night, answering key questions about themselves and their positions in their given divisions.
Several others that earned victories on the prelims did as well, taking another step forward while further showcasing what they bring to the Octagon and giving fans and observers a greater sense of what kind of upside they possess.
While the action wasn’t as electric and non-stop as it had been on the previous three UFC events, Saturday’s event produced several critical takeaways and discussion points nonetheless, highlighting once again why even the less flashy fight cards are still critically important.
# # # # #
Ketlen Vieira got the hard-fought, prove-your-mettle victory she needed in order to cement her place as a Top 5 talent in the bantamweight division on Saturday, running level with Miesha Tate early before pulling away and putting it on the former champion late in their five-round main event.
The 30-year-old Brazilian had stumbled each of the last two times she was in this type of position, where a victory would elevate her to the short list of contenders in the 135-pound weight class, having been knocked out by Irene Aldana in her return bout following major knee surgery and dropping a questionable split decision to Yana Kunitskaya earlier this year. Another loss would have left her in the “can’t get over the hump” camp, but instead, the talented Nova Uniao representative made it clear she deserves to be in the discussion of the top contenders in the bantamweight ranks.
Beating Tate won’t (and shouldn’t) earn Vieira a title shot, but it does set her up for a potential date with Holly Holm or Germaine de Randamie, a pair of former UFC champions and elite talents that have distinguished themselves as being a cut above the rest of the contenders as of right now. While a win for Tate would have produce a greater storyline and bigger media talking points, this was an impressive victory by an obviously talented competitor — one who was tabbed to be a contender before a couple stumbles —and it has legitimate ramifications for the championship picture heading into 2022.
In the co-main event, Sean Brady pushed his UFC winning streak to five and his record to a perfect 15-0 with a steely effort opposite Michael Chiesa, out-hustling the veteran on the canvas in multiple exchanges before surviving a serious third-round push from the former Ultimate Fighter winner.
This was a highly-regarded emerging talent navigating a difficult fight against a skilled veteran — the exact type of effort you want to see from someone in Brady’s position — and he handled himself well, out-wrestling a guy that prides himself on his wrestling and grappling while dealing with more significant challenges than he’s faced in a fight to this point in his career. It wasn’t clean, it wasn’t easy, but it was a really meaningful victory, one that should elevate Brady into the Top 10 when the new rankings come out tomorrow.
For all the attention and acclaim Khamzat Chimaev receives — deservingly so given his exploits — he doesn’t have a win of this magnitude. The streaking menace has been freakishly dominant over his four-fight UFC run and mauled Li Jingliang last time out, but a gritty win over a guy like Chiesa is more meaningful, and should carry more weight than Chimaev trucking “The Leech” in Abu Dhabi at the end of October.
Chiesa is a legitimate Top 10 welterweight who picked up a really good win over Neil Magny to push his winning streak in the division to four at the start of the year, and has been in there with a bunch of skilled, established, dangerous competitors over the years. Beating him means something. He doesn’t have any “he lost to that guy?” setbacks on his resume; they’ve all come against quality competition.
Jingliang lost to Magny in March 2020 and Jake Matthews two years before that, and while he’s certainly improved since then, he isn’t close to being on Chiesa’s level, and those things should be considered and factored into how we frame impressive up-and-coming contenders like Brady and Chimaev.
Taila Santos has used the last three months to make it clear that she is a person of significant interest in the flyweight division, following up her unanimous decision win over Roxanne Modafferi at UFC 266 with a first-round submission win over Joanne Wood on Saturday to extend her winning streak to four.
The Brazilian has looked more impressive, more dominant with each successive appearance, and absolutely blew through Wood this past weekend; marching her down, lighting her up, and choking her out all in less than five minutes. She’s 28 years old, 4-1 in the UFC, and 19-1 overall, and like Vieira, she could very well end up facing one of the division’s established litmus tests next time out.
Much like at bantamweight, the flyweight division has a similarly clear hierarchy when it comes to the top of the rankings, with champion Valentina Shevchenko standing well ahead of the pack, and former title challengers Jessica Andrade and Katlyn Chookagian running clear of the rest of the contenders. Prior to this past weekend, it felt like everyone else from 3-15 was pretty even, but Santos looks like she could make a case for being a dominant force herself given how impressive she’s looked as of late.
While a date with Andrade or Chookagian would make sense, the wiser road to travel (in my opinion) would be paring Santos off with Andrea Lee, who earned a similar type of victory two Saturdays back against Cynthia Calvillo, collecting a second-round stoppage win over the higher ranked contender. Rather than matching each of them off with the tenured contenders at the top of the division, both of whom have recently been mauled by Shevchenko, creating a clear No. 1 contender from the two “new names” climbing the ranks feels like the better long-term play.
In the opening bout of the main card, Adrian Yanez pushed his record inside the Octagon to 4-0 with a well-earned win over Davey Grant in the exact type of fight he knew he was going to get from the dangerous British veteran on Saturday.
While Tony Weeks turned in a while scorecard and Grant was dismayed by the final decision, it genuinely felt like the surging Contender Series graduate got the better of things watching it live. Not by much, but by enough, and his ability to hang tough and pull out a victory in a fight like this only further bolstered his standing as one of the top emerging names on the UFC roster and the best in the loaded bantamweight class.
Much in the same way that Brady’s win over Chiesa should garner him more acclaim and attention than Chimaev’s triumphs, Yanez himself spoke about the more hyped, less accomplished member of the bantamweight class that everyone focuses on too much, Sean O’Malley, in his post-fight media session.
The soon-to-be 28-year-old, who got the “bulging eyes emoji” treatment from O’Malley following his victory over Grant, questioned the level of competition his fellow Contender Series alum has faced to date, wondering how “Suga Sean” is calling out guys like Petr Yan when he hasn’t fought or beaten a ranked opponent yet.
He’s not wrong — not even a little — and yet while Yanez will likely face a Top 15 opponent next time out and just went to battle against a tougher opponent than O’Malley has ever faced, he’ll remain the less talked about rising star in the division.
# # # # #
This card was the epitome of why I wrote my extensive Fighters to Watch series at the start of the year — a collection of important fights for talented, emerging competitors that have never and will never get the same level of attention as some of their more flamboyant and popular counterparts.
TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter posted the following tweet on Sunday, trying to find a way to sum up the last four weeks of action inside the Octagon in an easily understandable manner, nailing the comparisons:
The problem, however, is that far too many people only pay attention to the steak and lobster fight cards, while occasionally indulging their sweet tooth with the Holloway-Rodriguez key lime pie.
Very few have any interest in the after dinner mints, opting instead to wonder why they’re not getting another serving of pie, another steak, or another lobster tail. As a result, strong, important performances like the four detailed above — and the handful of critical “step forward” efforts on the prelims — either existing entirely off the radar or getting swept aside whenever another sumptuous meal gets put in front of fans and media.
Performances are weighted based on the attention they received and the quality of the fight card they were on, when neither of those things have anything to do with the actual impact of a given victory or determining where an athlete stands in their respective division.
Everyone remembers when Chimaev has a performance like he did against Jingliang because everyone was watching, everyone was talking about the event ahead of time, and it becomes bigger than perhaps it should be in terms of the level of competition as a result — the same with O’Malley’s wins — while efforts like the ones turned in Saturday night don’t have the same resonance because the card didn’t carry as much hype, media members weren’t talking up the importance of these contests nearly as much, and the competitors aren’t media darlings whose every move and comment are treated like news items.
These are the events where those contenders and rising stars that “came out of nowhere” come from, except no one ever comes out of nowhere in this sport.
Everyone has a path that is easy to trace, a journey that is easy to follow; all it takes is to pay attention and be able to recognize the value of their victories, and that even low-key events can produce critical results.