Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. Just like last week, this week’s slate of fights is absolutely loaded up: ONE on Wednesday night, Bellator on Friday night, UFC on Saturday night, and all kinds of face-punching in between. This is what we live for.
So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest over the next few days:
Robert Whittaker vs. Kelvin Gastelum, UFC Vegas 24
While Israel Adesanya plays around at fighting at light heavyweight and Twitter feuding with Jon Jones, the UFC middleweight division that he rules over is starting to get a little interesting. Marvin Vettori, who gave Adesanya one of the toughest fights of his rise to the top, has slowly and steadily turned into a star. And now, the man whom Adesanya knocked out for the world title in 2019 may be coming back to haunt him.
At 30 years old, Robert Whittaker is already a legend. But Adesanya knocking him out, in front of a shocked stadium crowd in Whittaker’s home nation of Australia, would shake any fighter. Indeed, it seemed to send Whittaker into a crisis of confidence, and the former champion was open about his struggles with depression in the face of such a crashing loss.
Whittaker returned to the cage last July, beating Darren Till in a showing that was solid, but appeared somewhat removed from the fighter who took the world by storm. He just didn’t seem to quite be all the way back. But in October, facing a fighter on a great run in Jared Cannonier, Whittaker dispelled any idea that Bobby Knuckles was going anywhere.
Whittaker put on an exceptional all-around striking performance against Cannonier, using his great movement, sense of angles and complete stand-up arsenal to win a unanimous decision. Whittaker was lively and first to the punch, ripping Cannonier over and over again with a fantastically effective jab and nearly finishing Cannonier with his trademark head kick in the third.
It was exactly the kind of reminder that the world needed: they named this man Bobby Knuckles for a reason. That performance seemingly put Whittaker right back in line for a rematch with Adesanya, only for the champion’s excursion to 205 to put a delay on things. Whittaker was then scheduled to fight Paulo Costa, who was knocked out and humiliated by Adesanya last summer, but Costa withdrew due to illness.
These kinds of things happen to Whittaker. For every fight he actually competes in, there’s one he’s booked for that falls through. So, keeping with the bit, the UFC reached back in time and booked a fight that we were all raring to see in 2019: Whittaker and one of the division’s most entertaining warriors, Kelvin Gastelum.
You might remember. Whittaker was scheduled to defend his world title against Gastelum in 2019, in front of a sold-out crowd in Melbourne. Instead, Whittaker was forced to pull out just hours before the scheduled fight having gotten laid up in the hospital by severe bowel issues. UFC 234 instead became the main-event showcase for Adesanya, and Gastelum never received a shot at the undisputed title.
This all led to the unforgettable war between Adesanya and Gastelum for the interim belt in April 2019, one of my favorite fights ever, so I’m not complaining too much. But Gastelum’s career has never quite recovered from that: he followed his loss to Adesanya with defeats to Till and Jack Hermansson, only recently breaking his losing streak with a unanimous decision win over Ian Heinisch in February.
There were some nervy moments in that fight as well, especially when Heinisch took Gastelum’s back in the third round. He looked fine in that fight, leaning on his pressure wrestling to keep Heinisch, a crafty anti-grappler, on his back for much of the fight. But we haven’t seen the Gastelum of 2018 in quite a while: a tough-as-nails scrapper with punching power and the heart of a lion.
He has a chance here to reclaim every bit of his lost pedigree, against a contender who’s done quite well to rebound from his own loss to Adesanya. And despite Vettori’s rise, it seems quite likely that the winner will be right back in there with the champ. I can’t wait.
Vadim Nemkov vs. Phil Davis II, Bellator 257
The Bellator Light Heavyweight Grand Prix kicked into gear last week, as former 205-pound champion Ryan Bader wrestled his way to a quarterfinal win over Lyoto Machida in the first fight of the tournament. We’ll really get it going on Friday, with two of the remaining three quarterfinal bouts: Vadim Nemkov’s rematch with Phil Davis, and Corey Anderson taking on relative unknown Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov.
And when looking at the field, much has been made of the former UFC stars throughout. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and Yoel Romero will make high-profile Bellator debuts. There’s Bader, a longtime UFC contender. Same with Anderson, who’s my personal pick to win the tournament. But in my mind, not enough is being made of Vadim Nemkov, one of the most talented young light heavyweights in the world, and a the reason why we have to call Bader a former light heavyweight champion.
Nemkov will be making his first defense of the Bellator light heavyweight title on Friday, about eight months after he knocked Bader out to become world champion at the age of 28. It wasn’t a shock to see Nemkov win: there were questions about how Bader would fare cutting weight for the first time in several years, and Nemkov had looked every bit ready to be champion in his previous few fights. It was a bit shocking, however, to see just how badly Nemkov kicked his ass.
Nemkov is a protege of Fedor Emelianenko, the greatest Russian fighter of all time and still, arguably, the sport’s best-ever heavyweight. He has crisp, sharp, powerful striking – as displayed by his battering of Bader – but he comes from a very powerful wrestling base. Nemkov has won four world championships in combat sambo, and despite his relatively unimposing frame – 6-foot even, a 76-inch reach – it’s the wrestling that’s his bread and butter.
One of the fighters who has tried and failed to exploit Nemkov in that area is Phil Davis, who lost a split decision to Nemkov in Nov. 2018. Davis has been outwrestling opponents since Nemkov was in his teens. A former NCAA Division I national champion with the Penn State Nittany Lions, Davis has, under the radar, been one of the most successful 205-pounders of the last decade due to a fighting style that is tailored around using his advantages: his wrestling ability and his 79-inch reach.
Davis is rarely exciting, but more often than not victorious. He was one of the UFC’s top contenders before signing with Bellator in 2015 and winning the title soon thereafter, and his career record reads as a sea of unanimous decisions. Only, in Nemkov, he found a fighter he couldn’t bully with his long frame and wrestling skill. And after smoking Bader, the bully of all bullies, I doubt Nemkov is ever going to let anyone bully him in this cage.
Still, Davis has finely calculated his fighting style around what he does well, and few know better how to grind out a win. He’ll be a tough out for any fighter, even an incredibly talented champion.
Christian Lee vs. Timofey Nastyukhin, ONE on TNT 2
ONE’s debut on TNT last week didn’t go as anyone planned. Flyweight GOAT Demetrious Johnson‘s first attempt at a ONE world title ended with him knocked out for the first time in his career, and ONE’s other big-name former UFC champion, Eddie Alvarez, wound up losing on an incredibly specious disqualification.
Last Wednesday was ONE’s debut in the big-time, and they built it all around the most well-known names they have. Those well-known names both lost. So, how does ONE possibly follow that? Giving us one of the best fights the organization can possibly give us is a start. Christian Lee and Timofey Nastyukhin don’t have near the same mainstream cachet as Demetrious Johnson or Eddie Alvarez, but they’re two marvelously talented and exciting young fighters who will likely give us a banger in Wednesday’s title fight.
These are names that the MMA world needs to know. Lee has the potential to be one of the biggest stars for both ONE and the lightweight division overall: just 22 years old and already the champion of one of the biggest promotions in the world, Lee has emerged as one of the most promising young fighters anywhere in the world.
Lee’s as blue-chip as blue-chip gets, a national champion in pankration (a sport that serves as one of the ancient bases of modern MMA) as a teenager with a flair for quick finishes. Lee has won five in a row, four within the first six minutes of the fight, and became one of the world’s youngest champions by knocking out one of the sport’s all-time submission legends, 56-fight veteran Shinya Aoki, when he was still just 20 years old.
What’s striking about Lee is just how resourceful he is despite his age, his knack for finding ways out of tough positions, and just how merciless he is when he senses an opening. Against Aoki, he was as screwed as screwed can be: he had one of the most prolific submission masters in the history of MMA all over him in the first round, and Aoki nearly finished him with a deep armbar. Somehow he survived, and swarmed on Aoki early in the second to finish him with strikes.
Things weren’t looking great early for Lee in his last fight either, against then-undefeated Iuri Lapicus. A very strong judoka, Lapicus tossed Lee to the ground in the opening seconds with an excellent throw and put him in a very troubling position. But Lee fought his way up, took Lapicus down, and when Lapicus exposed himself by rolling for a leglock, he pounced on that opening to knock his opponent out.
Lee has an incredible career in front of him and seemingly has all the physical and mental talents you could want from a championship caliber fighter. And on Wednesday, he’ll get the single most fascinating and competitive fight he can get in the ONE lightweight division: Timofey Nastyukhin, a man so violent that many believe he’s the reason why ONE banned soccer kicks.
Nastyukhin is best remembered as the man who spoiled Alvarez’s hyped ONE debut by knocking the former UFC champion out in round one. And as stunning as that knockout was, it was, like Nastyukhin’s 10th most impressive looking highlight. He has one mode: come forward, throw bombs with every ounce of power and pain in his body, and try to kill you.
He has some nasty, nasty power, and has the kind of cardio where he can keep throwing these wild, exaggerated punches for an extended period of time without winding himself. That’s what he did his last time out against long, skilled Dutch kickboxer Pieter Buist, bringing the pressure for 15 minutes en route to a unanimous decision.
Nastyukhin has been one of the most fun guys to watch in ONE for years, and it’s thrilling to see him finally get his shot at gold. Killing a former UFC champion will do those kinds of things for your career. It’s just a shame that it has to come against a fighter like Lee, who I enjoy so much. I wish both of these guys could win – but I’ll take sitting back and seeing what’s going to unfold.
Honorable mentions: Drakkar Klose vs. Jeremy Stephens, Alexander Romanov vs. Juan Espino, UFC Vegas 24; Corey Anderson vs. Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov, Paul Daley vs. Sabah Homasi, Viktor Nemkov (Vadim’s brother, a pretty good fighter himself) vs. Karl Albrektsson, Pedro Carvalho vs. Jay Jay Wilson, Bellator 257
The Big Fight 