Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. After a one-week layoff, the UFC is back on Saturday night, with one of the more stacked Fight Night cards that I can remember. Where most ESPN+ shows have one, maybe two relevant fights, this one has five – and in choosing just three bouts to preview this week, I had to make some tough choices.
So, as usual, here are looks at the three fights I’ll be watching most closely this weekend:
Alistair Overeem vs. Alexander Volkov
In 2021, there is no single MMA storyline that has me more invested than Alistair Overeem’s one final run. Overeem has had a career for the ages. The “Demolition Man” was a Strikeforce world champion, a K-1 kickboxing Grand Prix winner, the purveyor of more classic highlights than we can count over two marvelous decades. He’s never won a UFC title. He’s making one final go, and over the last two years, he’s looked pretty darn good.
Like most Overeem fans, I’m still kept up at night thinking about Sep. 10, 2016, the night Overeem challenged Stipe Miocic for the championship in Miocic’s hometown of Cleveland. Overeem dropped the champ with a straight left hand about a minute into the fight, but paradoxically elected to go for a guillotine choke instead of following up with more punches – he didn’t finish the choke, the moment passed, and Miocic went on to win.
At the time, it felt like Overeem, approaching his late 30s, had blown his one chance. Well, Alistair Overeem is now 40 years old, and he’s still got his eyes set on one last shot. Overeem knows quite well that he isn’t the same physical specimen that he used to be. He knows he can’t fight the same way he once did, and he doesn’t try to. But this new Overeem – dubbed “Econoreem” by some Internet fans – has proven to still be a high-level heavyweight.
This new Alistair Overeem isn’t storming through fools in the first round anymore. Instead, he’s leaning on his unparalleled experience and ring generalship, his still-sharp technical kickboxing, great cardio, and a renewed focus on wrestling and ground and pound. Overeem showed those sides of him in a great performance against Augusto Sakai in September, weathering an early storm and asserting control, taking Sakai down and blasting him with elbows to eventually force a fifth-round stoppage.
At the end of the day, however, Overeem is only going to go as far as his chin lets him. Overeem has absorbed 14 knockout losses in his MMA career, and more in kickboxing. Plenty of times his skills have built leads that his chin couldn’t hold onto – just look at his fight with top contender Jairzinho Rozenstruik in Dec. 2019, where Overeem was KO’d just seconds away from cinching up a decision win. He’s been getting by the last few fights, but only just. Walt Harris and Sakai both rocked Overeem early in his last two UFC outings, but he worked through it. It’s easy to see a badass striker like Alexander Volkov finishing what they couldn’t.
About Volkov. The towering, 6-foot-7 Russian stands as one of the biggest hurdles on Overeem’s final run at a UFC title, and it’ll be a very meaningful test. Volkov – once a Bellator heavyweight champion, seemingly a lifetime ago – has 21 KOs in 32 career wins, and has gone 6-2 since joining the UFC in 2016. He’s established himself well as a top-10 heavyweight, with his only Octagon losses coming to Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis – and he was winning the Lewis fight before getting swanged and banged within the last 15 seconds.
Volkov is a big guy with a massive back tattoo and bad intentions. He has an 80-inch reach and knows how to use it – he punishes you as you get into range, and his punches land with a thud. He’s patient, and has a great pair of hands. Volkov was last seen on Fight Island in September, where he wasted Harris with a nasty body kick and a flurry of right hands.
Volkov carries the same promise of being able to hurt Overeem on the feet, but is less likely to gas out going for the finish. In turn, this could be another fight where Overeem leans on his perennially underrated wrestling ability – Volkov has proven susceptible to being taken down in the past, and was dominated in that aspect in June against Overeem’s training partner, Blaydes.
An older version of Alistair Overeem would likely have entered this fight trying to throw down and establish dominance on the feet. But this is a different Overeem. A thinking man’s Overeem. An Overeem who knows that to accomplish his final goal, he needs to find a way past this Russian monster. I expect him to have something up his sleeve.
Cory Sandhagen vs. Frankie Edgar
In the bantamweight co-main event, two different generations of mixed martial arts collide with the winner likely getting the next shot at the champion. 135-pound champion Petr Yan is expected to finally defend his title against Aljamain Sterling on March 6, and failing a line-cut by former champion and steroid cheat T.J. Dillashaw, either Cory Sandhagen or Frankie Edgar has dibs on the winner.
We all know who the sentimental favorite is going to be. Frankie Edgar made his UFC debut when Sandhagen was a freshman in high school, and in 2010, he beat B.J. Penn for the lightweight title in what was considered at the time one of the biggest championship upsets in UFC history. He spent the next decade proving that it was no fluke, through the epic wars with Gray Maynard, the rematch win over Penn, and a very successful featherweight run that included two title shots and victories over guys like Charles Oliveira, Chad Mendes and Yair Rodriguez.
Edgar’s greatest attributes have always been his never-say-die spirit, unstoppable workrate and incredible heart. At 39 years old, he still has those qualities in spades. Even after getting violently ejected from the featherweight title picture by Chan Sung Jung in Dec. 2019, Edgar returned at bantamweight in August against top 10 contender Pedro Munhoz and looked like… Frankie Edgar. Although Munhoz landed plenty of hard hits – he got the slight edge on my personal scorecard – Edgar outlanded the Brazilian over five exciting rounds, never slowing down and doing enough to earn a split decision win.
With a win over Sandhagen, Edgar can put himself in position to be the first fighter ever to challenge for UFC titles in three different weight classes. That, of course, is going to be way easier said than done. Edgar is going to be in there against one of the consensus top bantamweights in the world, a man 11 years younger and reaching the top of his game.
Sandhagen signed with the UFC in Jan. 2018, immediately embarking on a five-fight win streak that elevated him to the upper ranks at 135. Sterling seemingly halted his rise by choking him out in just 88 seconds in June, but Sandhagen still exited 2020 in a better place than he entered it: scoring one of the knockouts of the year against a fighter like Marlon Moraes will do that for you.
Sandhagen’s wheel kick KO of Moraes will go down as one of the highlights of his career, but don’t let it overshadow just how good he looked in the fight leading up to that moment. Sandhagen was controlling the bout with his length – he’s tall for the division at 5-foot-11 – movement and kicking game, doing well to avoid Moraes’ power and consistently score.
It was the kind of performance that Sandhagen needed to re-establish his position after getting so thoroughly owned by Sterling. I personally called for putting him in a title eliminator fight with Dillashaw, who came off his USADA suspension in January, but a fight with Edgar will do the same thing for him: give him the chance at a signature win over a former champ that should put him next in line.
It’ll be a fight between two tough, skilled volume strikers who can keep up a good pace all night long. I doubt this one is going to be boring, and whoever wins will deserve a look at the gold.
Alexandre Pantoja vs. Manel Kape
It pains me to leave off one of my personal favorites, Beneil Dariush, but this flyweight fight is just too good. The UFC 125-pound division has been killing it over the last year, and now yet another exciting young stud is finally arriving in the Octagon: former RIZIN champion Manel Kape.
Last month, I mentioned Kape as one of my top candidates to be one of the big breakout UFC stars of 2021. On Saturday, we’ll figure out if all my hype was worth it. Kape is trying to follow the trail that Jiri Prochazka blazed last year: RIZIN champion -> UFC signing -> immediate win over established top contender -> big-time money, baby.
Like Prochazka did when he blasted Volkan Oezdemir unconscious in July, Kape can elevate himself into the top five right away. Is he good enough? I think he is. Kape thrived in a RIZIN bantamweight division that’s filled with world-class talent, and has seemingly improved radically over the last few years. The 27-year-old Angolan is athletic, exciting and looks like a sharper and sharper striker every single time we see him. In his last fight, on New Year’s Eve 2019, Kape won the RIZIN title with a knockout of action machine Kai Asakura, matching his lightning speed and deftly countering his dangerous rushes with some absolute lasers.
Kape feels like he’s starting to reach his prime, providing a more polished package to his considerable natural gifts. Of course, the UFC is a completely different animal. And speaking of animals, he’s fighting Alexandre Pantoja in his first UFC fight. Welcome to the show, kid.
Pantoja’s still relatively young at 30 years old, but that belies the amount of top-level experience he has. Pantoja made his pro debut at the age of 17, and by 20 he was tangling with fighters like Jussier Formiga. He’s been a pillar of the UFC flyweight division over the last four-plus years, having made his way to the organization in a stacked Ultimate Fighter: Tournament of Champions cast that also produced top names like Brandon Moreno, Kai Kara-France and Matt Schnell.
Pantoja is a born scrapper who loves fighting in a phone booth, has both knockout power and submission skills, and has been in a number of extremely exciting fights since joining the UFC. Pantoja made current champion Deiveson Figueiredo work real hard in a great 2019 scrap, and a few months later slept Schnell with a nasty counter right hand that earned him a $50,000 bonus. Pantoja is going to be a perfect introduction to the UFC: tough, talented, and willing to bring the fight straight to him. Kape better be ready.
We could have a new flyweight star launched on Saturday night. Or, just as likely, the “Cannibal” – seriously, that’s Pantoja’s nickname – will claim another victim. I’m so psyched to finally see this fight.
Honorable mentions: Cody Stamann vs. Askar Askar, Carlos Diego Ferreira vs. Beneil Dariush, UFC Vegas 18; Stamp Fairtex vs. Alyona Rassohyna, ONE: Unbreakable 3
The Big Fight 