Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. This weekend is our first without a UFC show in seemingly forever – instead, here comes Bellator back into the breach, as the USA’s second-biggest MMA organization debuts in 2021 with its first show on Showtime.
I’m excited to see Bellator back in action, and the first few weeks of its 2021 season promises some really interesting fights. That all starts Friday night. And as such, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest this weekend:
Patricio Pitbull vs. Emmanuel Sanchez II
There’s no better way to start off Bellator’s 2021 than with Bellator’s GOAT. Patricio “Pitbull” Freire locked up that title with a 61-second knockout of Michael Chandler to win the Bellator lightweight championship in 2019 – a two-division titleholder who’s been one of Bellator’s banner-carrying stars since the promotion’s birth, Pitbull is the single most accomplished fighter in the organization’s history. If he can win the Bellator Featherweight Grand Prix, he’ll put that honor out of reach for a very long time.
And he’s well on his way. Pitbull’s road to the tournament title is halfway done, and he’s looked as impressive as ever: Pitbull dominated current bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta en route to a unanimous decision in the first round, before blasting 25-year-old Pedro Carvalho in a little over two minutes to clinch a berth in the semifinals. A date with budding superstar A.J. McKee awaits in the finals, and a Pitbull-McKee showdown would be perhaps the single biggest fight Bellator can make.
Only one hurdle remains before that superfight. It’s a pretty steep one. Pitbull has looked absolutely unstoppable over the last couple years, and should be included in any reasonable ranking of the world’s most elite pound-for-pound fighters. But the last guy to really give him a test was Emmanuel Sanchez, an energetic and talented pressure striker who took a pair of rounds off Pitbull when they faced off in 2018. That same Sanchez stands across the cage from Pitbull on Friday night.
Their first encounter was, all told, a rather inspiring performance from Sanchez. The younger American managed to drag Pitbull into a grueling five-round war, testing the champion’s durability, surviving his most powerful blows, and landing a few really great shots of his own. Pitbull’s superior strength, ring generalship and poise pushed him to a unanimous decision victory.
Neither man has lost since. Sanchez has gone 3-0, most recently turning in one of the most overwhelming performances of his career against two-time title challenger Daniel Weichel in the quarterfinals. Sanchez never let Weichel get settled for a moment, averaging well over 100 strikes attempted per round en route to a lopsided decision win. A couple years after his first unsuccessful shot against Pitbull, he looked more than ready for Round 2.
And as for Pitbull? Let’s just let those legendary fists do the talking.
At 33 years old, Pitbull appears to be peaking as a fighter: he’s developed such a high level of experience competing at the top level, so much composure and fight intelligence, that it only augments his fantastic punching power, physical strength and underrated ground game. He may be the best featherweight in the world, full stop. He is as killer as a killer can be. But Sanchez has proven a stiff test once, and should again: he excels at pushing a feverish pace for an extended period of time, and has already shown that he can put the pressure on Pitbull.
Patricio Pitbull is the big-time favorite, and rightly so. But Emmanuel Sanchez is going to make him earn it. That’s all you can ask for.
Neiman Gracie vs. Jason Jackson
If you know your history, you know that the Gracie family is the first family of mixed martial arts. At every important stage of the sport’s development, the Gracies are there: whether it’s family patriarch Helio competing in freestyle fights in front of tens of thousands in Brazil, Rorion playing a vital behind-the-scenes role in the founding of the UFC, Royce becoming the sport’s first big star in America, or the family’s rivalry with Kazushi Sakuraba helping Pride blast into mainstream popularity in Japan.
All that’s great and wonderful. But when you think about it, it’s really been about 20 years or so since we had a Gracie be truly relevant in mixed martial arts. The Gracies have stayed the original masters of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but the game evolved and left them in the dust. You can’t only be good at one thing, scorn even the idea of training in other disciplines, and stay on top.
32-year-old Neiman Gracie, however, might be something different. Maybe it’s because his last name isn’t actually Gracie: his mother is a Gracie and he’s descended from Helio’s brother Carlos Gracie, but his real last name is Stambowsky, after his father, legendary Brazilian jiu-jitsu master Marcio Stambowsky. But whatever it is, Neiman is the closest we’ve gotten to an actual, honest-to-God Gracie contender in decades, and it’s because he’s not a one-trick pony.
Now, yes, he’s of course an absolutely brilliant submission grappler. That comes with the Gracie lineage. Gracie has nine submission wins in 11 pro fights, he’s a second-degree BJJ black belt, and he’s medaled numerous times in the world competitive stage. But unlike many of his relatives, he’s shown signs of meaningfully adapting that skillset to the MMA meta: he has some athleticism and physicality, and he really knows how to straight-up wrestle. He showed that off in his last fight, an absolutely brilliant performance against former longtime UFC contender Jon Fitch, where Gracie repeatedly put one of MMA’s most accomplished wrestlers on his back before finishing him with a heel hook.
Gracie is 10-1 in his pro career, with his only defeat coming in a very credible 2019 showing against Rory MacDonald, who’s been a top contender every single place he’s gone. When Bellator released its inaugural rankings this week, Gracie sat pretty at No. 3 in the welterweight division. There are a couple rungs to climb on the ladder – Douglas Lima, Michael “Venom” Page and Yaroslav Amosov aren’t going anywhere any time soon – but we could, in the very near future, see a Gracie contending for a world title in the 2020s. What a world.
He’ll first have to get through Jason Jackson, a 30-year-old Sanford MMA product who’s biggest asset is that he’s, well, big. Jackson has very similar physical dimensions at 170 than UFC champion Kamaru Usman, who just looks like the biggest guy in the world when he’s in the cage: Jackson is 6-foot-1 with a 77.5-inch reach, which is about on par with what you get with Usman. That’s not to denigrate Jackson’s skillset, which is largely based around on effectively using that size and length advantage. He’s very good at doing so.
Jackson has won three in a row under the Bellator banner, all three against UFC veterans: after beating Kiichi Kunimoto in Dec. 2019 and Jordan Mein last July, Jackson earned the biggest win of his professional career in November, controlling all three rounds of a unanimous decision win over former UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson. Bendo has never really been big or strong enough to succeed at 170, and fighting Jackson put that in very stark quality. Jackson physically overwhelmed Henderson, never spending a moment in a position he didn’t want to be in.
And while Gracie has shown the ability to get fighters to the ground when they don’t want to be there – a very critical skill – that’s going to be a tough ask against a fighter with the size and strength of Jackson. I like the matchup: it’ll be a meaningful test. Let’s see just how legit this Gracie is.
Kana Watanabe vs. Alejandra Lara
Ever imagine what it’s like to be so fucking strong that you could bend a frying pan with your bare hands? Kana Watanabe doesn’t have to.
How goddamn cool is that? But Kana Watanabe is far from just an attractive woman in a bikini performing feats of strength: she’s one of Coker’s canniest signings in a long time. A former elite judo competitor who made the full-time transition to mixed martial arts after falling short of qualifying for the 2016 Olympics, Watanabe is undefeated through 10 professional fights and looks to be one of the next women up to contend for the title at 125.
That crazy strength that you see in that gif up there? It shows up in her fights. Judo has been proven time and again as a great base for MMA, and she excels in the clinch and grappling skills that come along with it. But she also carries with her some real pop in the fists when she can land clean. For example: here’s her booping the much more experienced Shizuka Sugiyama right on the button with a counter right for an 11-second knockout on New Year’s Eve 2018.
Watanabe’s judo skillset looks like it could be a force to be reckoned with at 125, but she’s still a work in progress on the feet: she looks awkward when exchanging blows, and Ilara Joanne pieced her up in the early goings of her Bellator debut at the end of 2019. Watanabe weathered the storm, got Joanne down, and finished her with ground and pound late in the third. She’s had over a year to work on those shortcomings, and if she’s made meaningful strides, she’ll be really, really dangerous.
As it stands, she could be in the title picture sooner rather than later. Juliana Velasquez shocked the world by winning the title from Ilima-Lei Macfarlane as a major underdog last year – while I expect a rematch at some point this year, Friday’s fight between Watanabe and Alejandra Lara could go a long way towards helping to determine who gets the next crack after that. Lara’s got no bad losses on her record: her three defeats are to current UFC mainstay Sabina Mazo, Macfarlane and in a split decision to Velasquez.
She’s rebounded extremely well from the consecutive losses to Macfarlane and Velasquez, and she’s shown she has the stuff to test Watanabe where she’s weakest. Lara is a scrappy striker who will push after Watanabe on the feet, and make it imperative that the Japanese standout prove that she’s worked on her striking over the last year.
I love Watanabe as a prospect, but these are the kinds of tests you need to face. We’ll see if she passes.
Honorable mention: Usman Nurmagomedov vs. Mike Hamel, Magomed Magomedov vs. C.J. Hamilton, Fabio Aguiar vs. Khalid Murtazaliev, Roger Huerta (!!!!) vs. Chris Gonzalez, Bellator 255
The Big Fight 