UFC Vegas 45: One Question for Every Fight
For the final time this year, we're diving into every contest on the upcoming UFC fight card, identifying intriguing about every matchup
Settle in for a minute, because I need to get something off my chest.
Look, I get lots of stuff wrong and miss on a bunch of things, but you’re never going to catch me not trying, not caring, and not paying close attention.
I’m an effort guy in just about everything I do because lord knows I’m not athletically gifted, nor am I particularly charming or good looking either. Hell, I’m an anxious, fidgety, kind of annoying wonk, so the best thing I can do is be dedicated to my craft and make sure that when you come and read my stuff, I’ve done everything I can to give you the goods.
That means Erin Blanchfield isn’t going to blow me away by thoroughly outworking Miranda Maverick, because I’ve watched Erin Blanchfield tape, read up on her, and know she’s one off the best prospects in the sport.
That means I’m going to ask on Wednesday of fight week if everyone forgot about Andre Muniz, explain why that makes absolutely no sense to me, and bring it back up again Thursday just in case you didn’t read Wednesday’s post.
That means when folks wanted to dismiss this weekend’s headliner Chris Daukaus earlier in the year because he didn’t have a Wikipedia page, I’m going to speak on how lazy and dismissive that is, a sentiment Daukaus echoed when we spoke earlier in the month for a feature I produced for OSDBsports today.
I know that at different times, I can come off as an asshole, the leader of the booster squad, and as a try-hard.
But I’d rather try hard than not even bother.
I’d rather find elements about each and every one of these fight cards that are interesting and compelling and think about the potential long-range impact than dismiss them as being insignificant, unimportant, and not worth the effort.
And I’d rather be an asshole that genuinely wants this sport and its athletes covered with the same depth, passion, care, and genuine interest as you see from the best in the business in most other sports than someone that accepts the most prominent voices and biggest platforms in the MMA space regularly being surprised by fighters they should know, needing to be reminded about emerging contenders, and generally being reactionary when it comes to covering this sport instead of taking a more proactive approach.
But what do I know? I’m just some dickhead with a newsletter that told you last Monday to pay close goddamn attention to Erin Blanchfield at UFC 269.
On to the questions…
Derrick Lewis vs. Chris Daukaus
Q: Where does Derrick Lewis fit in the heavyweight division?
I love Derrick Lewis as much as the next guy — more, probably, given that even though he doesn't like to talk all that much, he’s one of my favorite people to speak with before his fights — but I’m not sure where he fits in the heavyweight division at the moment because he’s a huge threat, but a limited fighter at the same time.
Lewis can knock anyone out with one shot, but as we’ve seen a few times now, he tends to shrink in the biggest moments. He’s come up short in two different championship opportunities, but is both a terrific measuring stick for every emerging contender and a constant potential monkey wrench in the division because he’s capable of ending any fighter’s ascent.
Guys like that are great to have when you’re not trying to move them forward in the division and there are a multitude of fresh names working up the ranks at all times, but neither of those things are ever the case at heavyweight, which makes Lewis a tough guy to book in the big boy division.
He’s both the test you want to see everyone pass before they can be confirmed as a contender, but the guy you don’t necessarily want knocking off the next emerging threat.
He’s a guy with an established floor and ceiling, and while beating him still counts for a great deal, I’m starting to wonder if the value that comes from having an up-and-coming potential contender is worth the risk of having Lewis halt that fighter’s ascent up the divisional ladder?
Stephen Thompson vs. Belal Muhammad
Q: Can Belal Muhammad complete his 2021 mission?
Belal Muhammad’s goal coming into this year was to elevate his profile, break into the Top 10, and establish himself as a contender in the welterweight division. Thus far, he’s done a pretty good job with that list and has a chance to complete his mission with a win over “Wonderboy” this weekend.
It’s a difficult task to accomplish, as Thompson has only lost five times in his career, but Muhammad has close ties with two of the men that beat him — former training partners Tyron Woodley and Anthony Pettis — and a solid relationship with the last man to accomplish the feat, Gilbert Burns, who effectively closed the distance and wrestled the karate stylist for 15 minutes to secure the decision win. Most anticipate Muhammad deploying a similar game plan this weekend, and he’s certainly capable, but as he told me last week, “Everyone says, ‘All you’ve got to do is take him down’ when there are a million guys before me that tried to take him down.”
Muhammad doesn’t even necessarily have to take Thompson down to win this fight — he just has to cut him off and keep him hemmed in along the fence, which is something he’s done frequently throughout his UFC career. It’s not the most exciting approach, but it works for the Chicagoland native, who has learned to use his conditioning and relentlessness as weapons, wearing opponents out in the late stages of fights.
This has been a breakout campaign for Muhammad regardless of the outcome of this weekend’s co-main event, but closing the year with a high profile victory and a place inside the Top 10 secured sure would make it even sweeter.
Amanda Lemos vs. Angela Hill
Q: Is Amanda Lemos a title contender?
Saturday’s contest may not fully answer the question, but it should bring greater clarification, as Lemos looks for her third victory of the year and fifth straight win in the UFC.
Having watched each of her fights this year multiple times (it doesn’t take that long), I really want to see how Lemos handles herself against an engaged, active opponent like Hill; someone that won’t necessarily shy away from the striking exchanges, and you can count on to give you maximum effort. She walked down Livinha Souza before finishing her and exploited Montserrat Conejo’s reckless aggression, but Hill won’t allow either to happen, which means we should get a better understanding of whether Lemos’ recent punishing success is something consistent, or more a function of who she fought.
I tend to lean towards her being a contender and the transformation into an offensive force being real — she earned a bunch of finishes on the regional circuit, moves well, and has sound technique — but I’d like to see it one more time before I commit wholeheartedly.
What’s interesting is that strawweight is kind of open beyond the contending class. Everyone from No. 4 down feels fairly fluid and anyone beating anyone in that group wouldn’t be surprising, which is why matchups like this (and the original pairing with Nina Nunes) are always intriguing.
These are the fights that tell you something more about unknown commodities on the rise like Lemos.
Raphael Assuncao vs. Ricky Simón
Q: How did Raphael Assuncao never get a title shot?
I know this is going back a few years, and I’m probably one of seven people outside of the Assuncao family that thinks about stuff like this, but my god, man — how did this guy not get a title shot at some point in 2018 or 2019?
The answer is because TJ Dillashaw rallied and finished Cody Garbrandt at UFC 217 and the promotion opted to book a rematch, which Dillashaw won in more convincing fashion, and by the time new contenders were being sought out, Assuncao had already missed his chance.
But you’ve got to feel for a guy that went 11-1 over his first 12 bantamweight appearances, splitting two fights with Dillashaw and registering wins over Pedro Munhoz, Bryan Caraway, Marlon Moraes, Aljamain Sterling, and Rob Font and never got a title shot. That’s a world-class resume right there, and yet rather than get a championship opportunity, Assuncao got hustled into a rematch with Moraes, lost, and watched his last chance to potentially land a title fight go with it.
Saturday night, the Brazilian veteran returns to his gatekeeper role for a clash with Ricky Simón, looking to halt a three-fight losing streak and hold onto his place in the Top 15 a little longer. It’s a tough assignment for the 39-year-old, who hasn’t fought since getting knocked out by Cody Garbrandt in June 2020, as Simón is a young grinder with designs on elevating himself in the bantamweight hierarchy at Assuncao’s expense.
I hate seeing veteran stalwarts like this hit the skids late in their careers because it invariably leads to a whole bunch of people forgetting how great they were in their primes, and when that’s someone as criminally underrated as Assuncao has been throughout his whole career, it feels even worse.
Not enough people mention Assuncao’s name when talking about the best fighters to never challenge for UFC gold. He was a fixture in the Top 10 for a number of years and beat a bunch of really talented fighters, but he could never get the timing right, and it cost him.
Diego Ferreira vs. Mateusz Gamrot
Q: Which Diego Ferreira will show up on Saturday night?
Diego Ferreira has fought twice in 2021, delivering wildly different efforts each time.
In February, he battled hard against Beneil Dariush, landing on the wrong side of a split decision verdict in a competitive, entertaining scrap that earned the familiar foes Fight of the Night honors.
In May, he missed weight ahead of his fight with Gregor Gillespie by 4.5 pounds, started well enough, but faded hard in the second, resulting in Gillespie securing a finish in the waning seconds of the round. “The Gift” was spent after wrestling hard for the first five minutes of the contest, but while he was able to dig deep and keep grinding, Ferreira was not, and he wilted under Gillespie’s non-stop pressure.
This weekend, the 36-year-old is tasked with taking on Mateusz Gamrot, who enters off back-to-back stoppage wins that once again have people talking about the former KSW two-division titleholder as a potential dark horse in the UFC lightweight division.
If Ferreira is at anything other than his best on Saturday, there is a good chance he leaves Las Vegas on the first three-fight slide of his career. That’s possible even if he’s at his best, so while it’s encouraging that he’s saying all the right things heading into this weekend’s clash with the emerging Polish standout, saying and doing are two very different things.
His last performance raised a lot of red flags and created a lot of questions that hopefully will be answered this weekend.
Cub Swanson vs. Darren Elkins
Q: How have these two never fought each other until now?
Every once in a while, you come across one of those matchups where you’re like, “How have these two never fought each other before?”
This is one of those times.
Swanson has made 20 appearances inside the Octagon, all at featherweight. Elkins has made 24, all but two of which have come in the 145-pound weight class. Yet somehow, despite both being in or around the Top 15 for much of that time and being two of the most senior competitors in the weight class, they’ve never fought each other… until now.
What’s weirder (to me) is that neither man has ever engaged in a rematch, and they only have three shared opponents — Charles Oliveira, Jeremy Stephen, and Hacran Dias — which means that they’ve combined to face 41 different featherweights over the course of their careers, but never ended up facing off with one another… until now.
This should be an entertaining fight, as each is rarely in an uneventful contest on their own, so the likelihood feels like it should be even less when they’re paired up.
Jim Miller always jokes that he hasn’t retired from the UFC because he “hasn’t fought everybody.” Between the two of these guys, they’ve come close, and now they can finally scratch one another off their respective lists.
I love this goofy sport so much.
Dustin Stoltzfus vs. Gerald Meerschaert
Q: Gerald Meerschaert, Comeback Fighter of the Year?
TSN’s Aaron Bronstetter floated the idea out there earlier this week, and as someone who plans on writing an unconventional “Year-End Awards” piece next week, I have to say, I completely understand what Aaron is saying and appreciate the case he’s making for “GM3” here:
In case you don’t recall off hand, Meerschaert got blitzed and finished by Ian Heinisch in 74 seconds in June, then returned in September and got put out by Khamzat Chimaev in 17 seconds.
Since then, however, the submission ace has earned back-to-back finishes of Bartosz Fabinski and Makhmud Muradov, the latter of which, as Aaron points out above, came as a massive underdog and ended Muradov’s lengthy unbeaten streak.
He’s filling in opposite Stoltzfus this weekend and could very well run his winning streak to three, and if he does, Meerschaert should, at the very least, earn an Honorable Mention in the Comeback Fighter of the Year race given how his final two appearances of 2020 played out.
Raoni Barcelos vs. Victor Henry
Q: Raise your hand if you’re pumped to see Victor Henry in the UFC?
I know there probably aren’t many people with their hands in the air at the moment, but I was jazzed to hear the news that Henry was stepping in for Trevin Jones opposite Barcelos this weekend because he’s been one of those “How’d he never get a chance in the UFC?” guys for me for quite some time.
A catch wrestling protégé of Erik Paulson and Josh Barnett, Henry has spent the majority of his career fighting in Japan. He has wins over Japanese veterans Hideo Tokoro and Masakatsu Ueda, current UFC bantamweight Kyler Philips, and former UFC competitors Anderson Dos Santos and Albert Morales, whom he beat on October 30 to claim the LXF bantamweight title.
Learn more about him by checking out this rad video profile E. Casey Leydon put together a couple years ago, and know that just because he’s never fought in the UFC before and you’re not familiar with him doesn’t mean he’s got zero chance of getting his hand raised on Saturday.
Henry’s a talented dude, and this fight with Barcelos should be competitive.
Justin Tafa vs. Harry Hunsucker
Q: Where does Harry Hunsucker rank on the list of classic names in UFC history?
Not to take anything away from the heavyweight set to bang it out on Saturday, but I, like many others I assume, have a chuckle every time I read Hunsucker’s name because it just doesn’t seem like a name someone actually has.
It’s the name of a comic book character or a villain in a terrible direct-to-DVD movie or one of the stage names you throw out there when you’re trying to find something that works, but move on from quickly because no one would believe it’s real.
But where does it rank in the pantheon of classic names in UFC history? It has to be up there, right? Others in the running include Rudyard Moncayo (UFC 6), Onassis Parungao (UFC 7), Moti Horenstein (UFC 10, UFC 14), and Ebenezer Fontes Braga (Ultimate Brazil), who might be the only person I’ve heard of being named Ebenezer in real life.
These boys are going to sling hammers at one another on Saturday night and the winner will secure a stay of execution, but in a piece filled with serious thoughts, I had to introduce a little levity to the mix here.
And now back to our regularly scheduled questions…
Sijara Eubanks vs. Melissa Gatto
Q: Will Sijara Eubanks be a contender at flyweight?
If she keeps making weight without issue, I think the most likely answer has to be yes.
As I said when I named Eubanks my Fighter to Watch ahead of her October assignment where she was ultimately scratched due to COVID, it’s never been about talent with the former Ultimate Fighter contestant — it’s been about making that 125-pound mark with consistency, or, more correctly, not making that mark consistently; that’s why she got dispatched to bantamweight.
She looked outstanding hitting the scale ahead of her return to the division this summer and if she can turn in a comparable effort against the undefeated Gatto this weekend, you’d have to put her on the short list of potential contenders heading into next year given that (a) Valentina Shevchenko has already beaten everyone else, and (b) Eubanks already has wins over Roxanne Modafferi and Lauren Murphy in her back pocket.
Yes, she missed weight for the fight with Modafferi, but she didn’t against Murphy, and she dominated the contest.
If she’s sorted out the weight issues once and for all, “SarJ” could be in the mix in 2022.
Charles Jourdain vs. Andre Ewell
Q: Can Charles Jourdain find consistency in the UFC cage?
There was a lot of attention directed towards Charles Jourdain when he arrived in the UFC as a two-weight titleholder under the TKO banner, and after losing his debut up at lightweight, he showed why with a second-round stoppage win over Dooho Choi in Busan, South Korea in his featherweight debut.
But the 26-year-old French-Canadian has struggled since then, entering Saturday’s contest with Ewell sporting a 2-3-1 record inside the Octagon.
From a talent standpoint, I think Jourdain has the skills to be a Top 15 fighter, but it all hinges on the consistency piece. He needs to replicate the effort he delivered against Choi or Marcelo Rojo earlier this year in order to build some momentum and get to a place where he’s not fighting for his job every time out.
He’s ostensibly doing that this weekend, as it’s the final fight on his current contract, and there are no guarantees of a new deal. I love that he’s betting on himself and think the matchup is one where he can, in theory, have success, but I’ve felt that about most of his fights because I think highly of the engaging, honest talent from Beloeil, and thus far, I’ve been wrong more often than I’ve been right.
Raquel Pennington vs. Macy Chiasson
Q: You know this is just a featherweight one-off, right?
Every time a fight gets listed as being in the women’s featherweight division, Twitter has a moment where it wonders aloud if the fighters, in this this case Pennington and Chiasson, are moving up to the 145-pound ranks permanently, when the obvious reason for the shift in divisions is readily apparent.
Pennington was originally scheduled to face Julia Avila here in a bantamweight contest, but Avila was forced to withdraw 10 days ago. Chiasson is stepping in, but given the short notice nature of the pairing, they’ve agreed to compete at ‘45 instead of ‘35.
This happened a lot more last year with last-minute pandemic subs, but still happens from time-to-time in other divisions, and there is rarely the same “what does this mean?” reaction. My guess is that’s because featherweight consists of four, maybe five fighters at the moment and Chiasson worked her way into the UFC by winning the featherweight tournament on TUF 28, but even then, how many competitors have won a season of TUF up a weight class and dropped down as soon as they joined the roster?
Either way, this is an intriguing fight with legitimate divisional significance at bantamweight — even more now that there is a new queen upon the throne, and even though it’s being fought at featherweight.
Pennington looked sharp last time out against Pannie Kianzad, and Chiasson has won back-to-back tilts since suffering the first loss of her career and seemed primed to get after Aspen Ladd when their whole thing was going on a couple months ago.
This should be fun, and the fact that neither is senselessly trying to get down to ‘35 when they don’t need to is great!
Don’Tale Mayes vs. Josh Parisian
Q: This is for the DWCS heavyweight title, right?
I kid, but between them, Mayes and Parisian made five appearances on the Contender Series, combining to go 4-1 with four finishes and infuse me with optimism about their upside in the UFC heavyweight division.
That optimism has been stamped out, and now that they’re facing each other (it was always going to happen), I’m trying to figure out whether their big stage struggles are a reflection on them as individuals, the divisions as a whole (at the lower end), or just a weird confluence of events that has turned two guys that showed a little something into struggling talents trying to extend their time on the UFC roster.
Though Mayes looks the part of the superior prospect, he always felt like a classic “all muscles” guy to me, but Parisian is the one that has really stumped me because he looked really good in his two Contender Series wins. Granted, I should know better than to put a ton of stock in beating Greg Rebello (regional standout) and Chad Johnston (shiny record), but Parisian had me convinced he was someone with a little upward mobility heading into his debut late last year, but man was I wrong.
Now that I’ve said all that, watch him go out and look terrific this weekend.
This sport really is silly some times.
Jordan Leavitt vs. Matt Sayles
Q: Where does Jordan Leavitt mix in at lightweight?
Here’s how my thoughts have progressed on Leavitt dating back to his appearance on DWCS a couple years back:
Seems like a solid prospect and I’ve seen people I trust say good things about him
Looked great earning his contract, still undefeated; definitely someone to keep tabs on
DID YOU SEE THAT SLAM?! I like me some Jordan Leavitt!
Huh, that wasn’t what I expected of him here, especially not against someone that hasn’t fought in nearly two years
That Claudio Puelles loss looks different now; maybe I need to re-evaluate my Jordan Leavitt position
And here we are, a handful of days out from Leavitt’s third UFC appearance. I have an open mind, no expectations, and want to see how he handles himself against the returning Sayles before once again trying to sort out where he stands in the lightweight ranks.
My feeling is that he can be someone that enjoys a lengthy career in the Octagon, living in that vast middle class in the 155-pound ranks where his grappling skills will always serve him well and produce enough wins to stick around long term — think Nik Lentz without the over-commitment to chasing guillotines — but he needs a bounce-back effort here.
As much as the Puelles loss looks better now that “El Niño” has added another win to his resume, Leavitt didn’t have much to offer in that fight and can’t come out flat against Sayles this weekend, or else he risks putting himself in a spot where his one win — impressive as it was — came against a faded veteran in a weird way, but he struggled against people that are more his contemporaries.
We shall see.
This is why every fight is of interest to me.