Another fight weekend is in the books. The last couple nights of MMA action were headlined by a UFC card Saturday night on ESPN+, which was highlighted with another classic Derrick Lewis one-punch knockout over Curtis Blaydes.
I’ll have more on Lewis’ stunning win, which puts him right back in the title conversation three years after his championship defeat to Daniel Cormier, this week. But for now, as always, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock in a big way.
The UFC’s Saturday show was filled with fantastic action and big knockouts, and nothing was bigger and more fantastic than the murderous uppercut that Derrick Lewis landed on Curtis Blaydes in the main event. That moment of magic followed a co-main event that was terminally boring: an important women’s bantamweight matchup between two talented fighters attempting to build their stock back up after big KO losses, Yana Kunitskaya and Ketlen Vieira, which turned into what seemed like an interminable lay-and-pray fight.
Vieira took Kunitskaya down in the first round and laid on her. Then Kunitskaya took Vieira down in the second round and controlled that frame. In the third, Vieira took Kunitskaya down again, and dominated the positions. It looked like Vieira was going to end up taking a 29-28 decision, open and shut. But then, Kunitskaya swept her, and got on top – in the fight’s sole big moment of action, the Russian unleashed a brutal series of elbows, bloodying Vieira and hurting her bad in the final seconds. Kunitskaya might have gotten the finish, but simply ran out of time.
Going into the reading of the scorecards, I desperately wanted Kunitskaya to be rewarded. Vieira, an excellent offensive grappler with a great judo game, fought a clearly negative fight. Her intention was to take Kunitskaya down, hold her down, and do little else. She never let loose with any ground-and-pound, didn’t seem to be trying to advance positions and go for a submission, didn’t really appear particularly interested in going for the finish.
Kunitskaya, on the other hand, didn’t stop working throughout the fight. When Vieira was on top in the first round, Kunitskaya stayed busy with punches off her back. When she was on top in the second round, she brought ground-and-pound and seemed to be making a real effort to make something happen. And, of course, in the third, even though she was on the defensive most of the round, she managed to get real close to finishing Vieira.
Kunitskaya ended up outlanding Vieira by a ridiculous 215-35, even though she spent about two-thirds of the fight on her back. Even so, I expected the judges to reward Vieira’s control. But, a funny thing happened: the judges got it right! Kunitskaya won a unanimous decision, taking the second and third rounds on all three scorecards. In doing so, she’s earned one of the biggest wins of her career.
Kunitskaya was about one good win away from a bantamweight title shot when she was knocked out by Aspen Ladd in Dec. 2019, and she’s now right back where she was before that defeat. I’d previously feared that the only potential challengers for Amanda Nunes at 135 were people she had already beaten – now, with Kunitskaya’s reappearance at the top level, along with Ladd’s expected 2021 return from a serious knee injury, maybe we’ll be able to avoid that situation.
It’s nice to see hard work rewarded.
Here’s the list of people who have submitted former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski in his 22-year professional mixed martial arts career:
- Josh Barnett, a fellow former UFC champion and one of the most accomplished heavyweight grapplers of all time, in 2016.
- Tom Aspinall, on Saturday.
Arlovski has occupied an important role in the UFC heavyweight hierarchy over the last few years. Whenever a young heavyweight puts together a couple impressive wins against the lower levels of competition, the UFC puts them in the ring with Arlovski, and sees whether or not they can clear the first gate on the way to contention.
Even in his early 40s, Arlovski is still good enough to teach the young lions a thing or two. For fighters on the way up, beating Arlovski means something. And Aspinall, one of the most promising heavyweights the UFC has added in a while, got it done with aplomb on Saturday. Aspinall nearly finished Arlovski with a big flurry of punches in the first round and then didn’t waste any time in the second, scoring a lightning-quick choke.
Aspinall moves extremely well for a man his size: 6-foot-5 and about 250 pounds, and on Saturday he showed a grappling slickness we hadn’t really seen yet. Only 10 seconds passed in between Aspinall initially shooting for the takedown and him locking in the rear-naked choke. You don’t tend to see heavyweights motor like that.
But what impressed me even more was how Aspinall managed his energy. Aspinall entered the fight having only twice been into the second round in his career, and none of his wins had ever taken longer than 1:35. Aspinall is quite accustomed to putting guys away early and going home happy. When Aspinall hurt Arlovski in the first round and went in for the kill, one could very easily conceive of him throwing everything he could into that flurry and gassing himself out.
But instead, Aspinall realized that Arlovski wasn’t going down and eased off the gas pedal, clinching up and riding out the rest of the round instead of dumping everything into one hope of getting the quick finish. Submitting someone in the second round pays just as well as knocking him out in the first. Aspinall switched up his plan and got the job done, and did it without burning more energy than he needed to.
In a division where it seems like almost everyone is constantly on the verge of passing out, Aspinall showing that awareness was one of the encouraging things I could have seen for his future development. The heavyweight division has a new contender who looks like he’s here to stay.
Aspinall might not be the only one. While the 27-year-old Brit received more of the media attention heading into the weekend – from yours truly included – Saturday’s show proved to be a springboard for another rising heavyweight. Chris Daukaus entered Saturday in essentially the same place as Aspinall: 2-0 in the UFC with two first-round KO wins, and looking at the biggest opportunity of his career against an established name in his early 40s who still has something left in the tank.
The opponent: Alexey Oleinik, the Boa Constrictor, a 43-year-old grappling legend and neck crank machine who ranks as one of the most prolific submission specialists in the history of the sport. Fighting Oleinik carries with it unique dangers: he’s a poor striker despite his 25 years of experience as a professional mixed martial artist, but if he manages to catch hold of a limb, or God forbid, a neck, he’s death.
Plan A, B and C for Oleinik is to catch you in a submission. Chris Daukaus did not let himself be caught.
In the two minutes or so of fight that we got, Oleinik tried a few different tricks to latch on to a limb. He tried to pull guard, he tried to flail about like a snapping turtle on its back, anything to get Daukaus into his danger zone. But Chris Daukaus wasn’t falling for any of it: he knew quite well that letting Oleinik get you on the ground could be suicidal. He deftly stepped out of all of it, trapped him against the fence, and let the fists fly.
In the short time we’ve gotten to know the 31-year-old Philadelphia police officer in the Octagon, we’ve seen that he has heavy hands, very tight striking, and a good instinct for the finish. His punches come fast, straight and direct. And when Daukaus got his chance to let those hands go, he absolutely battered Oleinik en route to a first-round KO.
Like Aspinall, Daukaus has punched his ticket to some of the money fights at heavyweight: if they’re not in the top 15 when the new rankings are released this week, they’ll soon have an opportunity to get there. In traditionally one of the weaker divisions in MMA, it’s nice to have some new faces that matter.
The Big Fight 