Happy Turkey Day, everyone. While Thanksgiving week traditionally fills our bellies with mashed potatoes, stuffing and football, fight fans looking for the good shit are going to be left starving this week. The only MMA card of any real note this weekend is one of the weakest UFC cards of the year, which is set for Saturday night on ESPN 2. Still, we’ll be watching it, because we’re all freaks who can’t just turn down an opportunity to watch people punch each other in the face.
So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights on Saturday that I’ll be watching closest:
Derrick Lewis vs. Curtis Blaydes
Almost none of the fights on Saturday have any real relevance, and many of the fighters booked at the Apex will merely be fighting to keep their UFC careers alive. But you can’t say that they haven’t given us a good main event, featuring two top-five heavyweights in a bout that could have very interesting consequences at the top of the big-beefy-boy division.
Stipe Miocic is the world champion, and having conquered Daniel Cormier in a highly acclaimed trilogy fight in August, reigns as the undisputed greatest UFC heavyweight of all time. But outside of Miocic and Cormier, the top of the heavyweight division has been more or less paralyzed for a long, long time. Miocic hasn’t fought anyone not named Daniel Cormier in nearly three calendar years.
Top contender Francis Ngannou has put together a streak of four straight knockouts in an average time of 40 seconds each, and he’s the obvious choice to face Miocic next. But the arrival of light heavyweight legend Jon Jones at heavyweight has thrown everything into question: will Jones, arguably the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, jump the line for a superfight with Miocic? If he does, who fights Ngannou next? If he doesn’t, who does he fight first at heavyweight? This fight may provide the answer.
Blaydes and Lewis have been floating around the top 5 at heavyweight for so long that I’m kind of surprised that they’ve never actually fought before. It’s a matchup between one of the best straight-line wrestlers in the UFC, against one of the most physically powerful anti-grapplers we’ve ever seen. Both guys have knockout power. Stylistically, it’s a very interesting matchup.
Blaydes is absolutely one of the very best heavyweights in the world, a dominating double-leg machine with some of the most brutalizing ground-and-pound in the sport. Dutch legend Alistair Overeem can tell you all about how not-fun it is to fight Blaydes, who turned his face into hamburger with elbows in 2018.
Blaydes’ highlight reel is filled with finishes just like that: he takes you down, plants you on your back, then unleashes some of the most vicious elbows in MMA until it’s all over. He knows exactly what he’s really good at, and implements it ruthlessly. Only one man has been able to stop him: Ngannou, who is responsible for both of the losses on Blaydes’ pro record.
There’s no shame in losing to Ngannou, a man of uncommon physical talents. But the physical talents of Derrick Lewis are pretty damn uncommon as well. Lewis has always been a bit of an enigma, one of the types of quirky characters that can seemingly only exist in mixed martial arts. But it cannot be denied that he is a freakishly strong human being, a trait that drove him to a heavyweight title shot against Cormier in 2018.
Lewis is a boxer who has never really shown any special skill in any grappling art. You can take Lewis down. The problem is, you might be on top of Derrick Lewis, and then he’ll just decide to stand up. When he makes that choice, it doesn’t matter if there’s a 250-pound man pressing all his body weight on top of him. Derrick Lewis will just stand the fuck up. And if you’re a grappler, what do you do when Derrick Lewis decides that grappling isn’t real?
Lewis’ last fight, against venerable Russian Alexey Oleinik in August, was a science experiment. What if we put Lewis in the cage against one of the most celebrated heavyweight grapplers in MMA history? Is it possible to neck crank a grizzly bear? The answer was no. Oleinik took him down, and he did in fact attempt to neck crank this grizzly bear. He seemed to have it pretty tight, too, but Lewis didn’t seem fazed at all. He waited it out until the round ended, then knocked Oleinik dead in the opening seconds of round two.
Lewis is a striker who isn’t even particularly technical on the feet. He’s just an old-fashioned swang n’ banger, and if he touches your chin with one of his massive paws, you’re usually screwed. But I feel like I don’t know exactly what to expect out of Lewis on Saturday – there are rumors that he’s actually training other aspects of his game, and he’s made funny comments about wanting to outwrestle Blaydes to a decision win.
That’s probably not going to happen. But I view this as an experiment along the same lines as his fight with Oleinik. Much like how Japanese fight promoters spent years trying to figure out how much damage it was possible for Kazuyuki Fujita‘s iron skull to absorb, the UFC is again running a test on Lewis’ freakish physical qualities. We’ve found out that it’s impossible to neck crank him. But can a world-class ground-and-pounder hold him down long enough to elbow him to death? Blaydes is the guy to find this out.
In a five-round fight, it may ultimately come down to whose gas tank is better. Lewis’ has been questionable throughout his career, while Blaydes tired badly late in his five-rounder with Alexander Volkov in June – while he won anyway, it got him in some real trouble late. At the end of the day, it’s still heavyweight MMA. But if and when these guys get tired, who the hell knows what this fight looks like?
Whether it’s Ngannou or Jones getting the next shot at Miocic, one of either Lewis or Blaydes is going to be in a real big fight pretty soon. This main event is the step to get there. But I’ve got a feeling that it isn’t going to happen in a remotely normal way – and that’s a pretty exciting prospect.
EDIT: Blaydes got the COVID! This card sucks!
Saturday’s UFC event is pretty much a one-fight card, but if you really squint, there are a couple bouts with some minor stakes. One of them is set to happen early in the main card between Miguel Baeza and Takashi Sato, two relatively young welterweights who have shown flashes of being pretty exciting early in their UFC careers.
For Sato, Saturday seems pretty important. The Pancrase product has gone 2-1 in the UFC since signing with the promotion last year, but the Baeza fight is the last on his current contract – he spoke this week about how he’s fighting out this deal and hoping to use this performance as a springboard for a better-paying one. That’s cool, respect. But that means you better bring it, Takashi.
There hasn’t really been a relevant Japanese fighter in the UFC since Kyoji Horiguchi went home to rule Rizin in 2017. And while Sato has a ways to go in a deep 170-pound division, he’s got some spark. Sato is a judo black belt with thumping power in his fists – he’s got a great straight one-two that’s been responsible for both his UFC wins, most recently Jason Witt back in June.
But his opponent on Saturday looks pretty dangerous himself. The 28-year-old Baeza earned a contract on Dana White’s Contender Series last year and has taken to the UFC quickly, earning knockout wins in his first two outings in the Octagon and sitting at a perfect 9-0 in his pro career.
Baeza is still just a prospect, but he looks like a relatively promising one. Like Sato, he’s got a black belt in a grappling art – his is in Brazilian jiu-jitsu – but a flair for scoring KOs. The Floridian slugged it out with one of the UFC’s all-time Lords of War, Matt Brown, back in May, blasting the veteran’s lights out with a crispy left hook. Brown’s chin ain’t the same as it once was, but it still looked pretty damn impressive.
Sato is fighting for the next contract. Baeza is fighting to be recognized as one of the best young welterweights around. Both guys have pop. I think those are the ingredients for something pretty interesting Saturday night.
Just a couple years ago, Anthony Smith was one heck of an underdog story.
Smith was the kind of double-digit loss journeyman who almost never makes it big in a prime-time organization like the UFC. In his early days on the Midwestern regional circuit, he lost six of his first 11 pro fights. He bounced around for years, popping up here and there – I remember very well him getting owned by Adlan Amagov on a Strikeforce Challengers card in 2011, back when Amagov looked like he was going to be a big star at middleweight – but didn’t manage to stick in the UFC until 2016, after nearly a decade and 36 pro fights.
But in 2018, Smith put together the run of his life. After moving up to light heavyweight for the first time in his career, he knocked out two former UFC champions, Rashad Evans and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, choked out perennial contender Volkan Oezdemir, and rocketed himself from relative obscurity to the top of the 205-pound rankings.
After years of losing to guys like Josh Neer and Jesse Forbes, Anthony Smith earned a UFC title shot in March 2019 against the great Jon Jones. He was completely dominated in the fight, but just in doing so he reached a peak that only a few years before seemed impossible to envision. But times since haven’t been so kind to Smith – Glover Teixeira gave him a brutal beating over four-plus rounds in May, while rising star Aleksandar Rakic wrestled him to a decisive unanimous decision in August.
Teixeira and Rakic are two of the world’s best at 205 pounds, but Smith didn’t look competitive at all in either loss. Smith has always had a talent for violence, but he needs to prove that it hasn’t completely deserted him – he’s somehow still just 32 years old, but Saturday will be his 50th professional fight. That’s a lot of miles.
He’s racked up those miles because he just can’t help staying busy. Smith actually took this fight as an injury replacement for Shamil Gamzatov last month, in doing so providing a big step up in name recognition for Devin Clark. The 30-year-old Clark is a great wrestler who’s been bubbling under a bit at light heavyweight for a while. He’s 6-3 since moving up to 205 in 2016, but all three losses have been to guys who were going places – current champion Jan Blachowicz, Rakic, and Ryan Spann, who was in the middle of an eight-fight win streak that pushed him into the top 15.
Clark is a former junior college national champion wrestler who knows how to grind out a decision, but he’s also uncommonly tough on the feet. In his last fight, he faced one of the division’s most powerful punchers, the hyped Alonzo Menifield, and survived some absolute nukes taken directly on the chin. Menifield seemed moments from a knockout win but found that he simply couldn’t quite put Clark away – Clark regrouped to outlast Menifield over the last two rounds and win a decision.
This could be crucial for both fighters: Clark for fueling his ascent, Smith for arresting his descent. I don’t know if it’ll be especially entertaining, but at least to these two guys, it means something a little extra.
The Big Fight 