Our first fight weekend of 2021 is in the books, heading into a really big PPV week for the UFC. The world’s biggest MMA organization kicked off 2021 with a Saturday show from Fight Island, and in the main event, Max Holloway put together one of the most stunning performances of his storied career with a virtuoso beatdown of Calvin Kattar.
I’ll have more on Holloway’s magnificence this week. But as is tradition, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock on Saturday.
Mixed martial arts is a very rough sport sometimes. At the end of 2018, Santiago Ponzinibbio was one of the rising stars of the welterweight division, putting together a seven-fight win streak that catapulted him into the top 10 of the rankings. His momentum was surging, and he looked at most two good wins away from a crack at the belt.
But a series of health issues forced Ponzinibbio onto the shelf for over two years, forcing him out of sight and out of mind. Ponzinibbio’s rise was stopped through no fault of his own. Then, when he finally works his way back into the Octagon, he gets thrown in there with an absolute savage, and gets knocked out in his first round back.
Sheesh, that’s a tough one. They really could have given Ponzinibbio an easier comeback fight than Li Jingliang, but that’s the way it goes sometimes – if you think you deserve to reclaim your spot in the rankings, you have to show that you can deal with a dangerous guy. And for his faults as a fighter – issues dealing with good grapplers, penchant for egregious eye-pokes – Li Jingliang is a dangerous guy. For better or worse, it’s worth tuning in when he’s in the cage.
Li presents a difficult stylistic matchup for plenty of fighters, and it was obvious that Ponzinibbio couldn’t really figure out how to get on the inside. Li’s movement is constant and kind of janky, and most of the fight’s 4:25 was spent with Ponzinibbio trying and failing to walk Li down and get him pinned, eating hard leg kicks for his troubles. The other thing about Li: when you really commit to a combination, you better make sure you hit him. Because if you miss, you’re probably going to end up like Ponzinibbio did, on the floor.
It was as clean as a KO gets. Ponzinibbio whiffed on a right cross and BOOM, there was Li, cranking him with a looping counter left hook that ended Ponzinibbio’s day. And instead of a triumphant return for a well-loved former contender, it’s Li Jingliang scoring the biggest name win of his career, in explosive fashion to boot.
The win is Li’s eighth in his last 10 fights, six of them by knockout – and like I said, for better or for worse, something violent always seems to happen when he’s in the cage. After a disappointing showing against Neil Magny back in March, this was exactly what Li needed to get himself moving forward again.
Li’s win finished a run of three straight first-round KOs to open the main card, following Alessio Di Chirico‘s badass head kick knockout of Joaquin Buckley in a little over two minutes. I’ve been high on Buckley since he arrived in the UFC – I even included him in my shortlist of 2021 breakout candidates, so that’s a great look for me – but the entire performance was very concerning, not just the knockout. Buckley has one mode: come directly at you and throw bombs, and it was alarming to see how easily Di Chirico was able to read his rushes and keep him at arm’s length. Buckley has a lot of great tools, but he’ll need to find a way to vary up his entries and his timing if he wants to be anything more than a fun prelim fighter.
But before that, Punahele Soriano cemented his status as a must-watch prospect at 185, knocking out undefeated Serb Dusko Todorovic seconds before the end of the first round. It’s a long flight from Oahu to Dubai, but Soriano brought the heat with him all the way to Fight Island, cranking Todorovic over and over with a megaton left hand before the referee finally stepped in and stopped the fight.
Todorovic, himself an intriguing young fighter, has in the past had one big thing working for him: deception. He fights with an easy, almost laconic style. He keeps his hands low, relying on good head movement to avoid opposing punches, and responds with shots that don’t look like they’re being thrown with a ton of force. When this approach works, like it did against Dequan Townsend in his UFC debut last year, Todorovic seems to lull his opponent into a false sense of security, then surprises them with his punching power.
None of that worked against Soriano, a hard-nosed fighter with a ton of pop who came into Saturday’s fight on a mission. Soriano took nothing for granted against Todorovic, coming in and swinging from the opening bell. He didn’t always land, but when he did connect with that left hand, he put Todorovic directly in the danger zone.
Soriano started the round really winging hooks to inconsistent effect. When he settled down and started focusing on setting up his straight left, he massacred Todorovic. Soriano dropped or buckled Todorovic three separate times with the straight left in the last minute of the fight, with the last one leading to Herb Dean calling the fight. I think we’ve seen Soriano’s bread and butter.
Watch out, world, Punahele Soriano is coming in hot. At 28 years old, he’s now a perfect 8-0 in his pro career, with first-round KOs in both his UFC appearances – he could be set up for a breakout 2021. At the very least, perhaps his opponents will learn they better keep their hands up.
For about 30 minutes, featherweight Austin Lingo was the leader in the clubhouse. When he walked back to the locker room after his unanimous decision win over Jacob Kilburn on Saturday, no one in the entire world had won more UFC fights in 2021 than Austin Lingo.
He’s now in a 10-way tie for first, but even so, first place! And although we saw plenty of great action after Lingo’s win, the victor of the first UFC bout of 2021 still ended up with one of the more impressive showings of the day, battering Kilburn on the feet and earning a pretty dominant unanimous decision.
Just like one of the big stories of the main event was Calvin Kattar’s chin, the story of the first fight of the night was Jacob Kilburn’s chin. But, of course, people only start praising your chin when you’re getting the absolute dogshit beaten out of you. And there were several sequences in the Lingo-Kilburn fight where I was shocked the referee never stepped in – especially a couple huge flurries in the first round where Lingo was just ripping Kilburn with everything.
Lingo, a 26-year-old Texan training out of Fortis MMA in Dallas, showed off a brilliant striking game in the first two rounds especially. He battered Kilburn with one-twos – the lead left hook followed by the straight right was money all day – and stayed successful by coming at him from different approaches and different angles.
Lingo tired a bit going into the third, but stayed ahead on the scorecards with his excellent takedown defense, stopping 17 of 18 Kilburn attempts – and when he let his hands go, he still connected. It was a fun fight and a strong performance for Lingo’s first UFC win, and while he probably isn’t going to finish the year leading the UFC in victories, you couldn’t start off 2021 in a better way.
The Big Fight 