Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. Saturday features the second UFC pay-per-view of 2021, with a welterweight title main event that stands as the first championship fight of the year. It’s pretty bare for a pay-per-view card – it’s been hit pretty hard by COVID and injuries – but there’s still plenty of good shit to watch.
So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest at UFC 258:
Kamaru Usman vs. Gilbert Burns
UFC 258 is one of the weakest pay-per-view cards we’ve seen in quite a while, but we are getting a title fight in the main event, so you can’t complain too much about that. 2021’s first UFC championship bout will feature one of the foremost physical forces in welterweight history and an exciting challenger who rocketed to the top in a breakout 2020.
If anything, Kamaru Usman is underrated in the UFC pound-for-pound conversation. The 33-year-old world welterweight champion is a perfect 12-0 in his UFC career, and has dominated basically every single one of his fights in the Octagon. In a welterweight division that hasn’t had much forward momentum in recent years, he could be settling in for the most dominant reign we’ve seen at 170 since Georges St-Pierre ruled the roost a decade ago. He’s done it by just being too big, too strong, and too powerful for his competition.
Usman is six feet tall, looks like he was chiseled out of marble, and big-time wrestling chops: he won a Division II national championship as a senior at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, and had Olympic hopes before injuries sidelined his wrestling career. He’s an incredible physical specimen, and he’s used those wrestling skills to overpower opponent after opponent in his UFC career. It isn’t always pretty – I’m sure most fans weren’t super into watching him bully Jorge Masvidal against the cage, dirty-boxing him and stomping on his feet for five rounds in July – but buddy, there isn’t shit you can do about it. Kamaru Usman imposes his will.
And at times, he’s displayed some real thump in his fists. Usman won his Dec. 2019 title defense against Colby Covington with his boxing, matching the challenger’s endless pitter-patter of volume punches with some powerful shots, eventually breaking his racist psycho opponent’s jaw and finishing him in round five.
Usman has the chance to carve out the kind of championship legacy matched by very few in the UFC’s history. When you survey the welterweight division, you don’t see many people who look to be any kind of physical match for the “Nigerian Nightmare.” Plus, 170 has moved at an absolutely glacial pace over the last few years – many of the division’s best have fought rarely, and haven’t been fighting each other.
It takes someone special to break through that morass. And since moving back up to 170 a year and a half ago, Gilbert Burns has been special. After an up-and-down stint at 155 from 2015-19, Burns returned to welterweight in Aug. 2019. At the time, Burns was on a two-fight win streak at 155 and hadn’t made any indications that he was planning a move. But when he was offered a welterweight fight on short-notice against the undefeated Alexey Kunchenko, he took the chance, and won. Then, he was offered another short-notice welterweight bout against grappling ace Gunnar Nelson the next month, and won again.
Any thoughts of Gilbert Burns returning to 155 were done after that. Burns then kept his momentum surging through the first half of 2020, needing just 2:34 to knock out Demian Maia in March and then putting on the performance of his career against Tyron Woodley in May, storming through the former world champion and dominating every aspect of the fight.
Those four resounding wins happened in just a nine-month span, rapidly pushing Burns to the top of the heap. He was originally booked for a title shot with Usman in July, but COVID-19 did what no UFC fighter could do over the previous year: halt Burns’ surging momentum. A positive test meant that he had to sit and watch as Usman beat Masvidal instead, meaning Burns will have to work harder to recapture the magic that got him here so quickly.
What brought Burns to the dance is his marvelous BJJ bona fides: the 34-year-old Brazilian is a second-degree jiu-jitsu black belt who’s succeeded at an elite level, winning multiple world championships and medaling in the 2015 ADCCs. But don’t mistake Burns for your typical BJJ specialist. Burns has showcased big-time pop in his hands from the beginning of his MMA career, and he’s perfectly comfortable throwing leather.
Burns has the tools to stop opponents no matter where the fight goes, and it sounds like he’s intent on submitting the wrestler. But beyond their stylistic differences, there’s a greater philosophical war at play here, one I thought Burns distilled very well this week: according to the challenger, Usman wants to dominate his foes, while Burns wants to finish them.
The two fighters simply value different outcomes. Usman’s 12-0 UFC record features nine unanimous decisions: the champion wants to physically and psychologically break down his opponent over the course of the fight, leaving no doubt who is the better man. Burns is more explosive, more kinetic. He has plenty of decision wins on his record as well, but he never stops working for the finish, and is building a much more entertaining highlight reel.
It’s this clash of MMA ethos that makes this fight so interesting, even without getting into all the other dynamics at play: Usman and Burns were teammates at Florida’s Blackzilians gym and later Sanford MMA for a number of years, before Usman left to train under Trevor Wittman in 2020. The two are longtime friends, their children grew up playing with each other, and have sparred an estimated “hundreds” of hours against one another.
Although Burns made it to the UFC first, Usman was the stud prospect, the golden boy, and eventually the champion. Now, it’s Burns’ chance to get out from his old training partner’s shadow and build his own legacy. There may not be much bloodlust in that cage on Saturday night, but I can think of few things that would motivate a challenger more.
A reigning UFC champion did not lose a single fight throughout all of 2020. We’re overdue to have that streak broken. With Burns’ combination of history and talent, he has as good a chance as any.
Kelvin Gastelum vs. Ian Heinisch
Like I said, UFC 258 is one of the weakest pay-per-view cards in recent memory, and it only got weaker after COVID forced the postponement of former middleweight champ Chris Weidman‘s meeting with Uriah Hall and a pretty interesting bantamweight fight between Jimmie Rivera and Pedro Munhoz. The co-main event is a showcase for Dana White favorite Maycee Barber, who got completely owned by a 37-year-old Roxanne Modafferi last January and looks like a hype job.
Out of all the decent undercard fights originally slated for UFC 258, only one has survived to this point. But if I was going to choose one to make it, it would be this one. Kelvin Gastelum is one of the real entertaining scrappers we’ve seen in the middleweight division over the last few years, a tree stump-shaped tank with punching power, an underrated ground game and a great chin.
And in April 2019, Gastelum pushed Israel Adesanya, now the undefeated world middleweight champion, further than anyone ever has. Their encounter was one of the best and most dramatic UFC fights of all time, one that never gets old no matter how many times you watch it. Gastelum went toe to toe with Adesanya from the opening bell, and took perhaps the single most gifted fighter in the world to his limit.
Gastelum did more damage to Adesanya than the current champion has taken in maybe every single other UFC fight he’s been in combined: heading into the epic fifth round, Adesanya was literally muttering “I’m ready to die” under his breath. But Gastelum absorbed a ton of punishment in the process, and his career has been in a funk since. Gastelum struggled to figure out Darren Till‘s striking style in a split decision loss in Nov. 2019 and, in his only fight of 2020, got caught in a Jack Hermansson heel hook in just over a minute in June.
It’s not that he’s looked washed or anything since the Adesanya fight, but his career could use a shot in the arm. It could get the help it needs on Saturday, when he’ll face Ian Heinisch, an interesting under-the-radar middleweight contender with a very unique skillset. Heinisch is a 32-year-old Coloradan who got into MMA after serving a sentence at Rikers Island for drug trafficking, making his way to the UFC through Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018 and starting with two impressive wins.
Heinisch faltered with a step-up in competition, entering 2020 off consecutive losses to a pair of tough, established wrestlers in Derek Brunson and Omari Akhmedov. Like Gastelum, Heinisch only fought once last year, knocking out Gerald Meerschaert in 1:18 in June. Heinisch has displayed precise and powerful striking so far in his UFC career, and he’s stood out as one of the trickiest and most inventive anti-grapplers in the UFC, rolling out of clinches like a Dark Souls character. Gastelum has tried to attack opponents with takedowns in the past, and that’s one aspect of the fight I’m looking forward to seeing.
You have to love fights like this: both fighters need it badly, but for different reasons. Gastelum needs this win to arrest a losing skid and get himself back into contention. Heinisch needs it because it’s the biggest opportunity of his career, a chance to put himself on the map by beating a big name. Saturday is going to be a really big night for one of these men.
Ricky Simon vs. Brian Kelleher
To me, “hard” and “complicated” mean two completely different things. Something may seem very complicated, but once you figure it out, it doesn’t turn out to actually be that hard. On the flip side, something may be very straightforward and easy to conceptualize, but still really damn hard to do. Take the sport of mixed martial arts: the concept isn’t very complicated. You get in the ring with another person, and your goal is to defeat them in unarmed combat. It’s very, very hard to do. Only a few people in the world are really any good at it. That may make it seem more complicated than it really is: there are many ways to win or lose, and so many facets to success. Still, at times, certain fighters come along that remind us that, at the end of the day, this whole thing isn’t really that complicated.
Any of the shit I just said make any sense? I hope so, because I’m trying to make a point about Ricky Simon. Yes, mixed martial arts is an extremely hard thing to be good at, but Simon is one of those fighters who reminds you that it isn’t always as complicated as it may seem. In Simon’s case, all you need is a damn good double-leg takedown. Simon is one of the most prolific wrestlers in bantamweight history, and he goes into the cage with one plan of attack: he’s going to take you down again and again. He’s excellent at it, and it’s driven him to a 17-3 pro record and four wins out of six UFC appearances.
Simon ruthlessly deployed his grappling skill last month, when he ragdolled outmatched Gaetano Pirrello around the cage before submitting him in the second round with an arm-triangle choke. There is a straight line between Simon and success: you know exactly what he wants to do.
It’ll be Brian Kelleher’s job on Saturday to stop Simon’s tried-and-true gameplan. A 33-fight veteran with a bunch of finishes on his record, he probably isn’t going to be equipped to stuff Simon’s takedowns all night, but he can threaten Simon in a lot of other ways. In recent fights he’s shown off both knockout power – he slept Hunter Azure with a left hook last May – and submission acumen, most recently catching Ray Rodriguez in a guillotine choke in just 39 seconds in September.
Kelleher has generally been in very entertaining fights since signing with the UFC in 2017, and Simon will have to be very careful in Kelleher’s guard, a place he plans to spend quite a bit of time at UFC 258. Another aspect: Simon is moving up to 145 pounds for this fight, his first bout at featherweight in the UFC and first since 2017. Kelleher has similar physical dimensions to Simon – he’s not a particularly big featherweight – so it’s doubtful the jump in weight will have a huge impact, but we won’t know until the bell rings.
Still, this is a fun matchup, and it’s about time we see these two in the cage together. The UFC tried and failed twice over the last few months to book this fight, and it’s finally happening. This should be a good one.
The Big Fight 