Another fight weekend is in the books. On Saturday, Alistair Overeem‘s One Final Run at a UFC heavyweight championship came to a screeching halt via a second-round KO from Alexander Volkov, breaking my heart and the hearts of all the little Overeemaniacs all across the world. We also had an action-packed ONE show on Friday, main-evented by rising atomweight contender Stamp Fairtex blowing a locked-up decision win by tapping out to a Alyona Rassohyna guillotine choke with seven seconds left, then claiming that she never tapped in the first place. (She totally tapped.)
I’ll have more this week on the UFC main event, which I still haven’t emotionally recovered from. But, as usual, here are looks at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock this weekend.
In previewing Saturday’s co-main event fight, I brought up rising bantamweight superstar Cory Sandhagen’s scintillating wheel kick knockout of Marlon Moraes last year, saying that it will “go down as one of the highlights of his career.” I didn’t say it, but I was thinking that it would almost undoubtedly go down as THE highlight of his career. There’s always the chance that Sandhagen could eventually do something cooler than that, but how likely is that really?
Uh, yeah, about that.
Sandhagen’s wheel kick against Moraes elevated him to a different class of contender. His absolute erasure of the legendary Frankie Edgar with a jumping knee, in basically the only move of the fight, does something else entirely. It’s made him a stone-cold lock for a shot at the winner of the Petr Yan–Aljamain Sterling title bout next month, and it’s turned him overnight into one of the UFC’s must-watch action stars.
It’s easy to forget now how easily Sterling moved through Sandhagen only about seven months ago. At that point, I felt like we had gotten a pretty decent feel of who Sandhagen was: a lanky pressure fighter with very good cardio and strong technique on the feet. Someone who was going to be a factor in the upper reaches of the the 135-pound division for quite a while, but not necessarily a guy who you really expected to do ninja shit.
The Moraes KO was so stunning in large part due to the fact that it came completely out of nowhere. Sandhagen had looked excellent striking in the early minutes of the fight, but with the way the bout was progressing, I was kind of expecting him to chug his way to a strong unanimous decision. Then, he busted out the wheel kick, and we all screamed. We knew Sandhagen was pretty good, but we didn’t know he was capable of that.
Ditto the Edgar fight. Edgar is one of the toughest, scrappiest dudes in UFC history, and he showed against Pedro Munhoz last year that he can still take a hit, especially at 135. Sandhagen came into the fight with zero first-round KOs at the UFC level. And what, we’re throwing flying knees right away, now? Who are you, Kid Yamamoto? Get the hell out of here, Cory.
What we’re seeing is a talented young fighter growing into his ability and start to fight with an amazing degree of confidence. Since the Sterling fight, it’s been tremendous to watch. And Cory Sandhagen is far from finished.
It’s very rare that a weekly ESPN+ card has so many interesting looking fights as the one this Saturday did, but when previewing the show I didn’t even get to Beneil Dariush-Diego Ferreira. Dariush and Ferreira was a great meeting of under-the-radar lightweight contenders about one win away from getting somebody with a name, and it was really the sleeper fight of the night.
Dariush, an unassuming-looking Assyrian savage who brings the action every single time he’s in the cage – he entered Saturday on a five-fight win streak, the last four of which via finish. Ferreira is an elite grappler who has only suffered because he’s in such a deep division with so many top names – he entered Saturday having won six in a row, most recently beating former champ Anthony Pettis by second-round submission last January.
I was amped for the fight. And on a show that featured boring decision after boring decision for about the first two-thirds of the night, Dariush and Ferreira delivered on the action. It was the easy Fight of the Night winner – not that we’d expect anything less from a Beneil Dariush fight.
When looking ahead to the Dariush-Ferreira fight, I felt that in conveying Ferreira’s considerable grappling bona fides – he really is a great BJJ player, a third-degree black belt with multiple no-gi world medals – people were understating Dariush’s. The 31-year-old competed at a high level himself before starting his pro MMA career, winning world titles at blue, purple and brown belt. Dariush can more than hang when the fight hits the mat. Still, I had zero expectation that Dariush would outfox Ferreira on the ground, staying one step ahead of the Brazilian star en route to a decision win.
It officially went down as a split decision, which was kind of a joke: Dariush clearly won at least two rounds, and I personally had him winning all three. Dissenting judge Jerin Valel, who was working his first-ever UFC show, was roundly criticized and hopefully isn’t invited back. Still, that shouldn’t take away from how fun the fight was, and how strong Dariush’s performance was all around.
Dariush mixes slick jiu-jitsu with wild but powerful standup, and a willingness to slug it out in back-and-forth exchanges. He just steadily plugged after Ferreira all night, consistently landing the better shots when he was able to lure the Brazilian into trading with him, at one point hurting him real bad with a knee to the body late in the first round. Dariush took some hits, but he dished out a lot more. It’s what you come to expect from him.
But where Dariush really shone was in the ground exchanges. Dariush asserted control with his takedowns, repeatedly engaging an excellent submission grappler on the mat and winning. Dariush landed some good shots on the feet, but at the end of the day, he won the fight with his wrestling, testing his mettle in Ferreira’s active guard – Ferreira was constantly working for subs, but could never pin Dariush down.
You just love seeing a fighter attack someone at their strength and win, especially when it’s against an athlete the caliber of Ferreira. Now on his sixth win in a row, Dariush is tied for the second longest win streak in the UFC – behind Charles Oliveira’s eight – and he’s getting to the type of lofty position in the rankings he’s never before reached. He’s should a much bigger name next time he steps into the Octagon: what do you say, how about someone like Dan Hooker?
Cory Sandhagen’s jumping knee KO of Frankie Edgar was undoubtedly amazing, and the stand-out highlight of Saturday’s show. Sandhagen got him in just 28 seconds, which by the end of the year will likely be one of the quickest UFC KOs of 2021. But, as it turns out, it wasn’t even the fastest knockout on Saturday’s show!
Say hello to the “Jamaican Sensation,” 29-year-old featherweight Ode Osbourne:
I just love seeing a guy catch a high kick and come back by blasting their opponent with an overhand. There’s some one-shot power for you! I had to run some errands around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and figured I’d get home in time to catch at least most of the night’s first fight, Osbourne’s meeting with Jerome Rivera: instead, I arrived to find that the fight was already over. That’s some one-shot power for you.
The timing was a little bit off for yours truly, but it couldn’t have been better for Osbourne. Osbourne won his UFC contract on Dana White’s Contender Series in July 2019, looking great in a first-round armbar win over Armando Villarreal and putting himself on some people’s radars. But Osbourne’s debut didn’t go as planned: he was paired up with slick veteran Brian Kelleher on the undercard of the Conor McGregor–Donald Cerrone fight last January, and tapped to a guillotine choke in less than three minutes.
It was a tough draw, and a tougher showing. But what Osbourne did on Saturday was restate his position as an interesting young talent to watch, and allow that finishing talent to shine through. A few more of those, and he’ll be going somewhere.
The Big Fight 