Another fight weekend is in the books. This week’s action was headlined by a UFC pay-per-view on Saturday night, the time every month or so that the MMA world stands still. And even though UFC 258 was one of the weaker pay-per-view cards in recent memory, we had a very memorable main event, where welterweight champion Kamaru Usman put on a career-defining performance with a third-round KO of Gilbert Burns.
I’ll have more on Usman’s win this week. For now, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock on Saturday:
Belal Muhammad’s nickname is less of a nickname and more of a request: “Remember the Name.” To be honest, it’s kind of a shitty nickname. Even so, it’s advice you should heed. The 32-year-old Roufusport product has been bubbling under for a while as one of the UFC’s top rising welterweights to watch, and he put on a showcase performance on Saturday night.
Pressure fighters are taking over MMA, and the higher and higher you go up the weight scale, the fewer fighters there seemingly are who can keep up with someone who can throw out a great output and set a consistently fast pace. It’s one of the main reasons that a prime Cain Velasquez seemed so unbeatable: it seemed inconceivable that a heavyweight could keep going at that rate for 25 minutes and never get tired.
Even at 170, we’re finding that many fighters are having a really, really tough time keeping up with someone like Muhammad. Having broken into the top 15 of the welterweight rankings off the back of a three-fight win streak, Muhammad overwhelmed Dhiego Lima with a torrent of combinations in one of the standout showings from UFC 258.
Muhammad kept after Lima for 15 minutes, never letting his opponent breathe en route to a unanimous decision. What made things more impressive is that Lima did everything he could to slow Muhammad down: he battered Muhammed with leg kicks and made him chase him around the Octagon. He seemed to succeed in tiring out Muhammad a little bit, but even a tired Belal Muhammad never stops coming. By the third, Lima didn’t have anything left.
Muhammad hurt Lima a few times in the first and third rounds – take 109 significant strikes to the head, and at least a few of them are gonna bother you – but he doesn’t have that much power in his hands. With his talent for pressure, he might not need it. Muhammad’s win on Saturday took him to eight in his last nine in the Octagon, with the only loss in that span coming in a great fight with fellow talented contender Geoff Neal.
After his win over Lima, it was unanimously agreed that it’s high time Muhammad gets a fight with someone ranked next. Whether that’s Li Jingliang, whom he called out after the fight, or someone else, it should be on any UFC fan’s radar. Belal Muhammad is a name you should remember.
For fans of slick subs and great grappling, the UFC strawweight division is for you. It seems like 115 has more than its fair share of really excellent BJJ specialists – Mackenzie Dern, Virna Jandiroba, Livinha Souza to name a few – and on Saturday, it was Polyana Viana’s turn to show what she’s got.
The 28-year-old Brazilian earned a decent amount of press attention a couple years ago for beating up some idiot who tried to mug her on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. I imagine it looked a little something like what she did to Mallory Martin on Saturday. Just in case you’re not a grappling expert, arms aren’t supposed to bend this way:
Viana tapping Martin out seemed like an inevitability from the opening bell. Viana pulled guard off the first clinch position of the fight and had Martin in the danger zone from that moment on before eventually finishing the armbar at 3:18 of the first round.
For people who really enjoy watching high-level submission grappling, it was a beautiful display. Viana chained together submission attempts like it was no problem at all: it felt like she could tap Martin with whatever she wanted. After threatening her with a triangle, a triangle armbar (bashing her with some nasty elbows for good measure) and an americana, she finally dropped back into the armbar and finished things up.
After a rough start to her UFC career, Viana – who previously was the only defeat on the record of the very highly regarded Amanda Ribas – seems to have settled in. And as we’ve seen at 115, great jiu-jitsu can play at a high level. Those skills may take Viana a long way.
A little context, first. Rodolfo Vieira is considered by almost everyone to be one of the premier grapplers in the world today. Vieira is a former ADCC submission wrestling gold medalist, a five-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion, and a seven-time World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Cup champion. He entered Saturday with a perfect 7-0 MMA record, with six submission wins.
In over a decade in world-class BJJ competition, he had only taken one recorded submission loss, to the great Dean Lister in 2011. And according to journalist Guilherme Cruz, out of the 19 former ADCC champions who have fought in the UFC over the course of its 27-year history, not a one had ever been submitted.
So the idea that Anthony Hernandez would tap out Rodolfo Vieira on Saturday night was absolutely ludicrous on its face. Sportsbooks offered odds of upwards of +3000 for Hernandez by sub. Naturally, that’s exactly what happened.
In a lot of ways, Hernandez tapping out Vieira is one of the most insane and inconceivable results to come out of a UFC event in quite some time. Vieira has been compared to the Kevin Durant of jiu-jitsu. Hernandez is a purple belt. These things aren’t supposed to happen. But as Hernandez made repeatedly clear after the fight, he didn’t give a single shit who Rodolfo Vieira is.
It helps when the opponent that you’re not supposed to beat gasses out in the middle of round one. Vieira took Hernandez down almost immediately and got into mount – with a guy like that on him, you figured it was going to be a straight line to a Vieira victory. Only Hernandez managed to escape the danger and get back standing, and it seemed like the heavily muscled Vieira suddenly didn’t have anything left in his tank.
We’re talking three minutes into the fight, and Vieira is basically dead. Hernandez, game from the opening bell, took things over from that point on. Hernandez hurt Vieira a few times on the feet and threatened a couple different submissions before sitting into a guillotine choke in round two: with seemingly no energy left in his body, Vieira had little else he could do but tap out.
Hernandez had flashed some serious submission talents in the past, but there are levels to this game, and he was not supposed to be on Vieira’s level. It’s entirely possible that, if Vieira had better cardio, he still wouldn’t be. That doesn’t matter a single bit. Anthony Hernandez is going to go down as the guy who tapped out Rodolfo Vieira. Not bad for a purple belt.
The Big Fight 