UFC Vegas 75: About Saturday's Action...
Running down everything that happened inside the Octagon on Saturday at the UFC APEX and the ramifications of those results
Record-Setting Performance
Jared Cannonier established a new record for significant strikes landed in a middleweight contest on Saturday night, battering Marvin Vettori over five rounds to register a unanimous decision win in the main event.
Vettori won the first after hurting Cannonier early in the round, continuing to pressure the recent title challenger and stinging him later in the frame as well. But the MMA Lab representative responded exceptionally well, hurting Vettori in the second and chasing a finish, piling up a whopping 90 significant strikes landed in the frame. While Vettori fought through and survived to the final bell, this was all Cannonier from the first round on.
This was a tremendous showing from “The Killa Gorilla,” who has clearly made adjustments and improvements since his fight with Israel Adesanya last year. He’s upped his output and did well to mix things up more, utilizing more leg kicks and a handful of takedown entries to keep Vettori off balance.
It felt like people were cool on this fight going in given that each man has faltered against the top two fighters in the division, but Cannonier and Vettori turned in a thoroughly entertaining battle and showed that bronze medal fights still carry a great deal of meaning and value, even at middleweight.
Lightweight ‘Boogeyman’ Batters Brazilian
Arman Tsarukyan navigated a dicy moment in the second round to collect a third-round stoppage win over Joaquim Silva in the co-main event.
The lightweight standout ate a massive shot from Silva in the second that put him on shaky footing, but he was able to recover well after driving through a much-needed takedown and clearing his head. In the third, Tsarukyan was relentless in his pursuit of Silva, taking the fight to him and putting him back on the deck, pounding out the finish with a storm of punches and elbows from mount.
Tsarukyan is the dude no one wants to fight at the moment and this isn't going to make anyone more keen to step up to the challenge. He merits a date with a Top 5 opponent, but honestly, I don’t see any of the guys ahead of him in the rankings rushing to accept that fight without a great deal of added incentives from the UFC. He’s a miserable matchup for most people, continually getting better, and still just 26 years old. Tsarukyan is a problem and that’s not going to change any time soon.
Let’s just hope he gets the kind of opportunity his efforts merit next time out.
Petrosyan Plays Spoiler
DWCS grad Armen Petrosyan bounced Christian Leroy Duncan from the ranks of the unbeaten on Saturday, collecting a unanimous decision win on the back of sound fundamentals and steady output.
Duncan came out looking for spinning attacks and creative connections, but Petrosyan wasn’t bothered, sticking to the basics to out-land the Brit throughout each of the first two rounds. There was nothing flashy about his efforts — just sharp, clean fundamentals, with low kicks, heavy body kicks, and a steady diet of punches that never allowed Duncan to find a rhythm. While “CLD” found some success in the third, busting up Petrosyan with an elbow, the Armenian kickboxer responded with a takedown that shut down Duncan’s momentum.
This was a sharp effort from the unheralded Petrosyan and the kind of performance that raises questions and concerns about Duncan’s upside in the division, with his next appearance taking on increased importance following his first professional loss.
Sabatini Shines
Pat Sabatini bounced back from his first UFC loss in convincing fashion this weekend, mauling Lucas Almeida from the outset before finally dispatching him less than two minutes into the second round.
The Philadelphia native brought the fight to the canvas almost immediately and showed his class right away, eventually moving to mount and smashing home elbows and punches that nearly ended the fight in the first. Almeida survived, but not for that much longer, as Sabatini quickly put him back on the canvas and locked in the arm-triangle choke, securing the tap and the stoppage win.
After getting knocked out by Damon Jackson last time out, this was the kind of emphatic return to action you want to see from someone like Sabatini, who is class on the ground and a legitimate “Second 15” talent in the featherweight division right now. This performance allows him to gain back some of the momentum lost in his fight with Jackson, and should lead to another tough assignment against a more established name next time out.
Goddamn, Manuel Torres!
We have a new UFC Knockout of the Year contender courtesy of Manuel Torres, who sent Nikolas Motta to the ancestral plane with a step-in elbow less than two minutes into the opening round.
The Dana White’s Contender Series grad got hit with a sharp left hook in the early stages of the fight, which instantly bloodied his nose. But the shot also seemed to let “El Loco” know that he was in a fist-fight, prompting him to push forward and take the fight to Motta. As they stood in the pocket and let loose, Torres came with the elbow, landing flush to the middle of Motta’s face, sending the Brazilian falling to the canvas unconscious.
I called this the “Low Key Banger of the Week” in the Fight-By-Fight Preview and it exceeded my expectations. Not to get all “look how smart I am” or anything, but the “I don’t know these folks and will therefore mock the matchups” set really need to subscribe to Keyboard Kimura or find better sources of information, because it was easy to know this was going to be a fun fight, even if neither man has a Wikipedia page or much UFC experience.
Dalby Controls Battle of Quality Veterans
Nicolas Dalby took control of his clash with Muslim Salikhov in the final moments of the opening round and never gave it back, cruising to a unanimous decision win to extend his winning streak to three.
This was one of those matchups between old heads with loads of experience that never gets a lot of pre-event love, but always delivers, and showed why you absolutely have to have dudes like Dalby and Salikhov on the roster. The Danish veteran used his insane conditioning to keep a torrid pace, which allowed him to distance himself from “The King of Kung Fu” as the fight progressed. While Salikhov hung tough and never stopped looking to land, Dalby was the better man and rightfully collected the unanimous decision win.
Dalby is now 5-1 with one no contest since returning to the UFC, and 22-4 with two no contests overall in his career. He’s not going to be a contender, but holy hell is he a tremendous useful hand to have in the 170-pound weight class. He asked for a date with a ranked opponent next, and if Jack Della Maddalena wasn’t already booked, that’d be a fight I’d happily watch. As it stands, a meeting with an emerging talent needing a veteran test (Mike Malott?) would make a great deal of sense.
Preliminary Card Thoughts
Pay attention to Alessandro Costa.
Saturday night, the Brazilian flyweight put a beating on Jimmy Flick, dispatching him a minute into the second round in a fight that was one-sided from the outset. “Nono” made his promotional debut back in December with a solid showing in a short-notice loss to Amir Albazi, who has since risen into the Top 5, and this weekend, he showed what he’s capable of with a full camp and facing the right level of competition.
Costa battered Flick from the jump and mixed up his attacks exceptionally well. He took out his lead leg with serious kicks, but was also working thudding hooks to the body, and fluid striking overall. This was an excellent showing — the thing you want to see from young, fresh names in matchups like this — and should have everyone circling Costa as one to tune in for next time out.
Every week, I talk about the importance of veteran competitors and quality tests for young, unproven fighters, and Saturday night, Kyung Ho Kang showed exactly why I harp on these things by submitting Cristian Quinonez.
Things started well for Quinonez, who had Kang hurt early, but as soon as he got loose and out-extended, the South Korean veteran made him pay. Kang landed a shot that rocked him, creating a grappling entanglement, and kept working through until he found the fight-ending rear-naked choke. It was a costly learning experience for Quinonez and a “this is why you keep these guys around” moment for Kang.
I said it on One Question on Wednesday, but guys like Kang, who is now 8-2 in his last 10 UFC appearances, merit so much more respect than they deserve and performance like this are precisely why.
Carlos Hernandez beat the hell out of Denys Bondar on Saturday, and yet it was how the fight ended that people fixated on instead.
Hernandez hit a beautiful sacrifice throw in the final seconds, with the two men’s heads clashing as they hit the canvas. Bondar went out, Hernandez smashed him with elbows, and referee Jerin Valel stopped the action, immediately identifying the clash of heads. The bout was sent to the scorecards for a technical decision as the clash of heads was deemed to be the fight-ending blow, Hernandez earned a unanimous decision, and folks largely wanted to talk about Valel and the finishing sequence.
This never makes sense to me: it was handled correctly, the right guy won, and none of the machinations at the end of the bout do anything to take away from the fact that Hernandez looked outstanding, and yet all that gets tossed aside so people — many of whom clearly don’t know the rules and regulations — can be big mad about on action, handled correctly, in a quality 15 minute effort from Hernandez.
Saturday’s sophomore meeting between Tereza Bleda and Gabriella Fernandes illustrated how the UFC’s roster expansion has changed the landscape in the sport, as neither athlete honestly feels ready to be competing at this level outside of facing off with one another.
Fernandes did well on the feet and had Bleda in a bad spot early in the third, but her inability to stay upright and work back to her feet killed her, as Bleda was able to put her on the deck and climb to dominant positions in all three rounds. Conversely, the 21-year-old Czech prospect needs significant work on both her conditioning and striking defence, because she was a sitting duck on the feet, particularly late, and would have gotten finished by just about anyone else in the division.
If folks were willing to accept that the lower tier of each division is now developmental territory, fights like this might be more well-received, but as it is, they feel like bouts that highlight many of the things people don’t like about the UFC right now.
The bantamweight fight between Dan Argueta and Ronnie Lawrence was halted prematurely when referee Keith Peterson thought Lawrence had tapped to a mounted guillotine choke midway through the opening round. He didn’t, the sequence was reviewed, and the bout was declared a no decision.
While the outcome sucks for all parties — Argueta because he seemed close to finishing, Lawrence because he hadn’t tapped and who knows how things play out going forward, and Peterson because he made a mistake — this situation was handled perfectly in terms of checking the replay and correcting the mistake, and we have to acknowledge and appreciate that. For all the times we bang on officials for mistakes and commissions for their handling of complicated moments, we need to give them credit when they do everything right and this was one of those times.
Pay Argueta his win bonus, get them re-booked for August or September, and run it back in order to see how it all shakes out.
Modestas Bukauskas picked up his second straight win since returning to the UFC in Saturday’s opener, edging out Zac Pauga on the scorecards. He landed the more telling blows in both the first and third, in my opinion, but it feels like Bukauskas made this fight more difficult for himself than it needed to be, and I think that speaks to where his ceiling rests.
While he still has room to grow and develop, “The Baltic Gladiator” is 29 years old and 20 fights into his career, so expecting him to really re-shape things is a big ask. If he were to put a clean jab into the mix and up the volume a little more, Bukauskas could make a little run in the light heavyweight division, but if some of those changes don’t occur, this feels like how most of his fights are going to go, just like in his first tour of duty in the UFC.