Unpopular Opinion: Next Weekend's Event is Still Really Good
Despite suggestions to the contrary, the UFC event on May 8 remains a strong collection of fights
In the last 24 hours of so, two prominent names have been forced to withdraw from next weekend’s UFC event in Las Vegas, resulting in a new main event being booked.
Tuesday afternoon, former bantamweight champ TJ Dillashaw announced he was out of his return bout opposite Cory Sandhagen due to a gnarly cut suffered in training:
During the day on Wednesday, it was announced that Diego Sanchez had been forced out of his showdown with former teammate Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone:
The pair of announcements prompted a chorus of doom and gloom tweets about the state of the fight card, best summed up by the number of “Ns” my friend Shakiel Mahjouri from Fightful including when sharing his thoughts on the complexion of next weekend’s lineup:
But here’s the thing: I think Shak and anyone that feels this fight card is thin or shallow or weak is reacting exclusively to losing Dillashaw and Sandhagen and not taking a close enough look at the actual fights that are still set to hit the Octagon on May 8.
Would this card be better if Dillashaw didn’t get cut and we could still see him return against Sandhagen, a former training partner and rising star in the bantamweight division? Of course it would be, and no one would logically argue otherwise.
However, as far as late replacement fights go, a main event pairing between ranked strawweights (fighting at flyweight) Marina Rodriguez and Michelle Waterson is pretty solid, considering that Rodriguez is coming off her blistering second-round knockout win over everyone’s favourite effervescent Brazilian upstart, Amanda Ribas, and Waterson is a permanent fixture in the title picture that beat Angela Hill last time out.
Both of those women are slated to compete on Saturday night as well — Ribas and Hill — which means the main event shift has turned this into a critical event in the tremendously intriguing 115-pound weight class that just saw a new champion crowned last weekend.
Secondly, if losing Diego Sanchez is any more than 5% of the reason you think a fight card has taken a dip in quality in the year of our Lord 2021, we need to have a long conversation about how you judge the quality of a fight card because it’s been some time since “The Nightmare” was a relevant fighter in the welterweight division. He’s a name people recognize, sure, but again, judging the merits of a fight card based on Sanchez being a familiar face / name and not the performance and standing of the athletes involved is at the very least misguided.
Additionally, there is a very good chance that Cerrone stays on the card since the old gunslinger would fight literally anyone at the drop of a dime, so the “A-Side” of that engagement is most likely sticking around. Even then, this is late career “Cowboy” that we’re talking about and not “Vintage Contender Cowboy,” as the 38-year-old hasn’t earned a victory in his last five tries.
Is he a name to draw eyeballs and a consistently entertaining addition to any fight card that would certainly add a little more oomph to next weekend’s festivities? Absolutely, but if you viewed Cerrone versus Sanchez as the second-best fight on this card behind the scuttled main event, I don’t know what to say.
As mentioned above, this event includes a strawweight pairing between Ribas and Hill that seems to be getting none of the love it would have gotten if it was booked at the start of the year.
Everyone had Ribas pegged as a future superstar heading into her bout with Rodriguez and January, but now that she’s lost, it seems like all her vocal advocates have abandoned shipped and are no longer all that hyped to see her step into the Octagon. As for Hill, she had a breakout year in 2020, fighting four times, cementing herself as a Top 15 talent in the process before rebounding from her loss to Waterson with a victory over Ashley Yoder back in March.
This is a matchup between the fighters currently stationed at No. 11 and No. 12 in the deepest, most competitive division on the women’s side of the roster and it’s being completely overlooked and undervalued.
But wait… there’s more!
Next Saturday’s fight card also features the long-awaited, once-delayed return of Gregor Gillespie, whom everyone was super-pumped to see compete last month when his bout with Brad Riddell was scrapped at the 11th hour. Now he’s back and set to face Carlos Diego Ferreira and people are acting like it’s no big deal, which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
Ferreira, who currently sits at No. 12 in the lightweight division, is coming off a split decision loss to Beneil Dariush in a fight that rocked and ended his six-fight winning streak. With all due respect to Riddell, the Texas-based Brazilian is a more established, more experienced fighter and a more dangerous assignment for Gillespie, which makes this a much more intriguing and compelling fight than the matchup everyone mourned a month ago, so why is this one now being overlooked and undervalued in assessments of this lineup?
And guess what? We’re not finished yet!
The May 8 fight card at the UFC APEX also includes a welterweight scrap between divisional workhorse Neil Magny and Ferreira’s Fortis MMA teammate Geoff Neal, who are currently stationed at Nos. 9 and 10 in the UFC rankings.
Each man fought in the main event last time out — Magny lost to Michael Chiesa in January, Neal dropped a decision to Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson — and if this fight served as the main card opener last weekend at UFC 261, everyone would have been pumped. Instead, it takes place two weeks later on a card that lost its main event and folks are acting like it’s a nothing fight on a terrible card.
I’m genuinely perplexed by this line of thinking because even if you’re not someone that can find 10 Things I Like about literally any fight card, I don't understand how you can look at these three matchups — Rodriguez v. Waterson, Magny v. Neal, Ribas v. Hill — coupled with Cerrone likely staying on the card and the additionally intriguing pairings and individual fighters that I still haven’t mentioned and think, “Yeah, this card is weak.”
I get that not everyone cares as much about prospects and upstarts and long-range outlooks as I do, but the middleweight matchup between Phil Hawes and Kyle Daukaus is a terrific clash of emerging talents in the 185-pound weight class, with both showing Top 15 potential.
I know that he missed weight for his promotional debut last fall, but Ludovit Klein looked impressive stopping Shane Young in 76 seconds and is another promising name to keep tabs on in the talent-rich featherweight ranks.
And Tafon Nchukwi is one of my favourite dark horse prospects in the entire UFC, as discussed below with Dan Tom on the Protect Ya Neck podcast. The unbeaten 26-year-old Contender Series alum is still developing, but his upside is through the roof and he’s facing a solid test in the form of “The Iron Turtle,” Junyong Park next Saturday.
This feels like one of those instances where the immediate, popular reaction was to call this card weak or thin or mediocre because everyone is bummed out about losing the original main event and a lot of people are just running with it, even though a quick look at what remains reveals a pretty good Fight Night lineup.
Every time I see/hear reactions like this, I’m reminded of Brian Regan’s second appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee where he and Jerry Seinfeld have a discussion and laugh about how everyone’s new metric for judging things is, “I wasn’t blown away,” as if every experience has to be some kind of earth-shaking, monumental interaction.
That’s how I feel a lot of people judge UFC fight cards these days — everything that isn’t top-tier, can’t-miss, must-see gets categorized as average or below and it fucks up the whole grading system.
Like if an event with three matchups between Top 15 competitors plus a fan favorite like Cerrone and a handful of quality prospects is “just average,” what constitutes “above average” these days?
Is there such thing as a great Fight Night card?
And how do you rate the events that are really short on intriguing matchups?
Ironically, I haven’t seen or heard too much push back against this weekend’s lineup, and I would argue Saturday’s card is slightly weaker than the refurbished slate scheduled for the following weekend.
Is that because the main event remains intact?
Is it because people love Cub Swanson and Merab Dvalishvili?
Did I miss the part where everyone suddenly agreed to be real excited about Sean Strickland as a dark horse in the middleweight division and curious to see what Luana Pinheiro can do in her debut or the prospect clash between Loma Lookboonmee and Sam Hughes?
I know I’m jazzed for all of those things, but I’ve usually been alone in being excited for a great deal of those things, so it’s weird to think others might feel the same way.
Or is it just that there weren’t any real high-profile names pulled from the event that made it easy to criticize the UFC for putting out another fight card that doesn’t leave everyone blown away, even though the card is actually quite good?
One last thing:
I get a lot of shit for writing stuff like this because a lot of people interpret it as me saying I’m a better fan or more plugged in or have a deeper appreciation of things and wanting everyone to get on my level, but that’s not it.
I honestly think we need to change the way we talk about these athletes and these events because — in my opinion — we’re too dismissive of too many good fighters, good fights, and good cards and it has a serious impact on the way people perceive these athletes and events.
We lament the UFC’s inability to build new stars, but frequently discourage people from watching preliminary card fights where almost every star in the UFC began their careers.
We bemoan people not being hyped about our favourite unheralded talent, but only get around to advocating for them once they’ve got three, four, or five consecutive victories under their belts.
We wonder why no one is paying attention to that prospect we love, but spend infinitely more time parroting the boisterous claims of the latest “fighter of the moment” and talkative superstars than signing their praises in advance on the platforms we inhabit.
If we, the people that cover this sport and consume this sport and know a great deal about this sport and its athletes, collectively state that next Saturday’s event that includes three Top 15 pairings and some solid secondary elements is weak or thin or sub-par, why are we confused or confounded when fans are slow to buy into the men and women that frequently populate these types of events?
I’m not suggesting that we need to be unabashed cheerleaders that never have anything critical to say about an event, an athlete, or the UFC in general, but I do think we need to recalibrate how we view things and how we talk about things because it feels off to me and the sport, its athletes, and our coverage of both suffer as a result.