Another fight weekend is in the books, one that featured all kinds of great action from all over the world. The UFC headlined the weekend with a pay-per-view that had two flyweight title fights, with champions Deiveson Figueiredo and Valentina Shevchenko adding to their legacies with decisive wins.
I’ll have more on both 125-pound superstars this week. But for now, as always, here are looks at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock this weekend:
A.J. McKee entered Bellator’s Featherweight Grand Prix semifinal on Thursday as one of the preeminent young prospects in mixed martial arts. He left as perhaps one of the best featherweights in the world. McKee validated every single bit of his hype last week, tapping out former bantamweight champion Darrion Caldwell in just over a minute in amazingly inventive fashion.
Caldwell is one of the most athletic and skilled lower-weight grapplers in the world, an elite collegiate wrestler who uses every trick in the book to smother and dominate his opponents. The question was, would McKee would be able to stay off his back? The answer was no, but as it turns out, it didn’t matter:
What the hell! In the biggest fight of his life, A.J. McKee tapped out the best and most decorated opponent he’s ever faced by pulling out a neck crank from guard, something we’ve basically never seen before in this sport. I’ve personally never seen this submission even tried, and I’ve so far found no recorded instances of it being used to get a finish in an MMA fight before Thursday.
I looked into it, and what McKee did is a concept that exists in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, where it’s usually called the “100%.” Even in BJJ, it’s almost never actually used to tap someone out – instead, the position is employed to use the threat of the neck crank to sweep your opponent and get on top. Caldwell did McKee a favor by moving his head towards McKee’s armpit at the beginning of the clip, but the 25-year-old grabbed onto it and just went for it, securing a stunning submission.
McKee did more than just earn a trip to the finals of the featherweight tournament. In beating Caldwell, he earned a shot at the Bellator championship, which will be contested in the coming months between Patricio Pitbull and Emmanuel Sanchez, a bout that Pitbull will enter as the decisive favorite to retain his belt.
Pitbull’s reign of dominance over the last several years has earned him accolades as one of the top pound-for-pound fighters on Earth, organizations aside. All along, he’s been prohibitively favored to win the tournament and smash all comers, and he’s halfway towards doing so. But A.J. McKee continues to improve by leaps and bounds every time we see him.
He’s so damn talented that he’s basically taunting us with it at this point. He has graduated from hot young rising star to maybe the most must-see 145-pounder in mixed martial arts. He’s now set the stage for what could be the biggest Bellator fight in years – and he’s still just 25 years old. I’m not going to count this kid out.
The next time I talk about Brandon Moreno, he might have a belt around his waist. The flyweight division always features the fastest fighters in the world, and now it’s moving faster than ever. Deiveson Figueiredo finished the first defense of what looks like it could be a dominant title run on Saturday, and when it was over, he knew exactly who he wanted next: Moreno, who finished fast-rising Brandon Royval in the first round in UFC 255’s featured prelim.
Figueiredo vocally expressed his desire to face Moreno, not Cody Garbrandt, whom he was originally scheduled to face on Saturday. Well, hey, the fight just ended and everyone’s still in Vegas. Why don’t we just take care of business right now?
I genuinely can’t think of a faster turnaround between title fight-> callout of next challenger -> that fight being agreed -> the fight actually happening in UFC history. If it holds, with the Petr Yan–Aljamain Sterling bantamweight title fight recently being postponed, Figueiredo will become the first fighter since Tito Ortiz in 2005 to headline consecutive UFC pay-per-views. And Brandon Moreno will go from the prelims to a PPV main event.
There’s little doubt he’s earned it. Moreno went from being the 16-seed in the Ultimate Fighter flyweight tournament in 2016, to getting cut from the promotion in 2018, to returning last year and surging to the top of the rankings. The 26-year-old Tijuana native looked to make himself the next title challenger with a win over Royval, who has also catapulted himself to the 125-pound elite in short order.
Royval is a really tough dude to deal with – he’s a whirling dervish of constant motion and energy who hunts a finish with his every breath. Moreno, known himself for being a busy and aggressive striker, shut him down. Moreno took Royval down twice in the first round, the second time expertly reading the spinning elbow that Royval used to drop Kai Kara-France in their epic battle in September, latching onto the American and getting his back.
Moreno nearly locked in a twister before ending up in guard – when Royval tried to roll for a leg, Moreno sat down and blasted Royval with hammerfists until the referee had to stop in just a second before the first round bell. Royval left with a dislocated shoulder, while Moreno left with a title shot.
Deiveson Figueiredo may be, pound-for-pound, the most violent man in the business. But Brandon Moreno is pretty damn violent himself. It’s going to be a great title fight.
On Saturday night, Joaquin Buckley proved that he’s more than just one incredible highlight. Buckley made himself a household name a couple months ago with his epic spinning kick KO of Impa Kasanganay, in what has been called perhaps the greatest knockout in UFC history.
That one moment is going to follow Buckley around for the rest of his life, and it’ll live forever on every MMA highlight reel ever made. But in the meantime, Joaquin Buckley is still on the rise, and he’s still got asses to kick. And in his follow-up effort to the knockout that made him famous, Buckley didn’t need a kick from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie to earn another Performance of the Night bonus. His own two fists will do just fine, thank you:
At 5-foot-10, Buckley’s going to be looking up at a lot of fighters in the middleweight division. He’s going to be giving up a lot of reach. He even came in a few pounds under the middleweight limit, weighing in at 182 on Friday – clearly he doesn’t really care about cutting weight. Why should he? The man has hammer power in his fists, and he throws everything with evil intent. He blends sudden quickness with monstrous force. And he looks like one of the next must-see stars in the UFC middleweight division.
His opponent on Saturday, Jordan Wright, entered the fight at 11-0 in his career with 10 first-round finishes, having knocked out former heavyweight Ike Villanueva in a very impressive UFC debut in August. But Wright had very little for Buckley on the feet – Buckley is so powerful, and loads up his punches with such heat, that you had the feeling that when he finally landed one, Wright was going to die.
Buckley finally landed a clean power shot at the very end of the first round, dropping him with a huge right hand, although Wright managed to barely hang on for the bell. Wright came out looking still wobbled in the second round, and all it took was one big combo to send him packing. Put another one on that highlight reel.
Even Buckley’s lone UFC loss was head-turning: coming in on short notice in August against Kevin Holland, who might be quite high in the middleweight rankings as soon as next month, Buckley looked dangerous and gave Holland all he could handle before Holland sniped him with a laser right hand in the third round. It looks more and more impressive for both fighters as time goes on – Buckley for what he did against a fighter of Holland’s caliber with little time to prepare, and Holland for getting Buckley out of there.
I have a hunch we may see those guys square off again down the road. At that point, both fighters might have numbers next to their names.
The Big Fight 