Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. It’s a UFC pay-per-view week, and not just any UFC pay-per-view week: UFC 261 on Saturday night features three title fights, and a full crowd for the first time in over a year at the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville. It’s actually the second pay-per-view this year with three UFC title bouts – at UFC 259, only one belt changed hands, on Aljamain Sterling‘s still-shocking DQ win over Petr Yan for the bantamweight strap.
We’ll see if Saturday night’s show can best that mark. Here’s a look at this weekend’s three title tilts:
Kamaru Usman vs. Jorge Masvidal II
Kamaru Usman may be the single best mixed martial artist in the world, pound-for-pound. At 33 years old, he’s the UFC welterweight champion, a perfect 13-0 in the world’s biggest MMA organization, and he seems to be getting better. He’s back in the cage on Saturday. There’s nothing else you should need.
But I can keep going, if you want. Usman arrived in the UFC in 2015 as a heralded prospect, winning the 21st season of The Ultimate Fighter and earning his way into an immediate spotlight. Usman was highly regarded because of the traits he brought into the sport: his frame (6 feet tall with a 76-inch reach), his look (chiseled like a Greek statue), his physical strength (overwhelming) and his wrestling ability, which he honed as a Division II national champion at Nebraska-Kearney.
Usman rode those talents all the way to a world title in 2019, dominating opponent after opponent with a dirty wrestling torture chamber that wasn’t always compelling to watch, but was unbelievably effective. His striking game was slower to develop, but the wrestling was all he really needed. But you could always tell there was something there: when he threw, there was a natural pop in his hands that occasionally shone through.
Kamaru Usman was the champion of the world, but that didn’t keep him from working to improve. And over the past two years, his striking has come along, by leaps and bounds. Training under guys like Henri Hooft and Trevor Wittman will do that for you. It started when Usman broke Colby Covington‘s jaw and knocked him flat in the fifth round in Dec. 2019. And in February, against the powerful and explosive Gilbert Burns, Usman put it all together. After surviving a brief scare early in the first, Usman completely took the fight over with a brilliant jab, which served both to set up big power shots and to do significant damage to Burns on its own. Usman eventually dropped Burns with a particularly stiff jab early in the third, leading to a resounding TKO win over the top contender in the division.
The wrestling made Usman a superstar. The added striking skill will make him an all-time legend. So, naturally, for his next act the UFC is running back one of the least interesting fights of his title run, booking a rematch of his July fight against scrapper favorite Jorge Masvidal.
Masvidal carries more casual fan name recognition and name interest than any other contender at welterweight, although his actual credentials as a top fighter are somewhat tenuous: his rep mainly stems from his viral flying knee knockout of Ben Askren, most recently seen getting flattened and humiliated by a YouTuber in a boxing match, and the residual Conor McGregor bump that came from beating Nate Diaz for the apocryphal “BMF” title in 2019.
Masvidal is a legitimately dangerous and battle-tested striker who’s almost always been tremendously fun to watch, but I’d rank him in the lower top 10 if I was submitting a ballot for the UFC rankings (or if such a thing existed anymore). He’s 3-3 in his last six fights, with a close loss to a 40-year-old Demian Maia and two dominant decision defeats to Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson and Usman – his one win over a real contender was a legitimately awesome KO of Darren Till, who promptly moved back up to middleweight.
I still haven’t seen much to indicate that Masvidal is anything but what he’s always been: a really entertaining striker who you don’t want to get in a dogfight with, but is susceptible to powerful grapplers. That’s what happened when he met Usman last year: Usman spent 25 dull minutes bullying Masvidal against the cage, stomping on his feet, and negating everything Masvidal wants to do. One judge gave one round to Masvidal – the other two called it a clean sweep.
The idea when booking the rematch has been for Usman to prove he can do that again when Masvidal has a full camp: he took the July fight on about a week’s notice, after the original challenger, Burns, tested positive for COVID-19. Camp or no camp, I see absolutely no reason to believe that the second time around will go any differently, but you never know.
There’s another interesting subplot here, one that I’m not yet fully emotionally prepared to confront: Usman’s apparently rapidly approaching retirement. It’s been long known that Usman has had trouble with his knees. He’s had surgery on them multiple times – he had a relatively serious one after defeating Tyron Woodley for the title in 2019 – and even at that point, he hadn’t run in three years because it was too hard on his balky joints.
Add a growing physical discomfort to the pace at which he’s outpacing the rest of his competition, and you can start to see why Usman is starting to think about retirement. In fact, this week, Usman broached the subject publicly, hinting that his rematch with Masvidal could be his last. No one wants to see that – there are plenty more interesting fights for him at 170, whether it’s rematches with Leon Edwards or Covington, or a first-time meeting with the still-magnificent Thompson.
But this may be one of the last times we can appreciate Usman’s greatness. Take it in while you can.
Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas
It’s only fitting that in the UFC’s first show back with a full crowd, strawweight champion Weili Zhang is there. She was the last fighter to get a packed house roaring before the pandemic changed all our lives. A champion like her deserves to be one of the first to get that chance again.
Zhang last fought on March 7, 2020, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the most recent UFC card with fans in attendance. The 15,077 that filled the building that night got an all-time classic war, as Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk went toe-to-toe at a breakneck pace for five thrilling rounds. It might have been the best women’s MMA fight ever, and I named it my Fight of the Year for 2020. It was unforgettable and embodied everything we love about this sport.
And Zhang won. That’s pretty much all she does. In 2013, Zhang dropped her professional debut by unanimous decision to a pretty good wrestle-boxer named Meng Bo, who currently fights in ONE. She hasn’t lost since – 21 wins in a row, one of the longest streaks in the sport. I’ve missed watching her over the last year, but I’m glad she wasn’t wasted in front of an empty UFC Apex. There are few fighters more made for a roaring crowd.
There are few fighters on this planet that can both bring, and withstand, a torrent of violence like Weili Zhang. She seems almost inhumanly tough and durable – she seems made to keep moving forward endlessly, never backing down and wearing her opponent out – but she can get you early. Her submission acumen is often slept on, and when she senses weakness, you need a chainsaw to keep her off you. Just ask Jessica Andrade, whom Zhang massacred in 42 seconds to take the belt in Aug. 2019. Her striking background is in sanda, a Chinese style of boxing characterized by rapid, repeated strikes from in close. And if you let Zhang get close, she will certainly strike you rapidly and repeatedly.
She will bring the pressure on Saturday night against “Thug” Rose Namajunas, a longtime strawweight favorite who held the world title between Nov. 2017 and May 2019. It’s a shame that the discourse around this fight has mainly focused on Namajunas’ bizarre anti-communist comments from last week – seriously, saying the phrase “better dead than red” in 2021? Idiotic – instead of how exciting a matchup this is. Namajunas has never been one to back down, and she’s the most compelling challenger the UFC could have produced for Zhang at this stage.
Namajunas is extremely quick with a talent for striking at range and a strong submission game herself, and she’s flashed some real killer pop at times in her career. Zhang punched Jedrzejczyk in the face almost 100 times last year and couldn’t stop her – Namajunas needed only three minutes to put her down and out when she won the title.
One has to feel, however, like this could be a fight built for Zhang’s strengths. Namajunas has been notorious for gassing out midway through fights, while Zhang has showed a kind of durability that just seems levels beyond a normal person. Namajunas may enter the cage as the better technical striker, but she’ll have to maintain a strong pace over 25 minutes to keep Zhang at bay. It’s questionable if she’ll be up for it.
You know what that most likely means: takedowns. Both fighters are equipped to hit the mat, and whoever emerges stronger in the clinch positions may take the fight. But whatever happens, strawweight has been one of the most consistently exciting divisions in the UFC over the last couple years, and I’m excited to see which form the division’s next chapter takes.
Valentina Shevchenko vs. Jessica Andrade
We already have Kamaru Usman fighting in the main event – how about another proven pound-for-pound great? Valentina Shevchenko already holds honors as the greatest women’s flyweight fighter of all time, having won the UFC title in 2018 and clearly separating herself from the pack since. She’s getting dangerously close to clearing out her division. She has perhaps her strongest challenger ever standing in her way next.
When talking about Shevchenko, or her sister Antonina, you first talk about the Muay Thai. Both Shevchenkos are world champion strikers, with Valentina in particular being one of the most decorated Muay Thai stylists of the 21st century, winning eight world titles from 2003-14 and racking up a professional kickboxing record of 57-2. She’s marvelously technical on the feet, a precise and deadly counter-striker without compare. We’ve seen it many, many times in the Octagon. Hello, Jessica Eye. Goodnight, Jessica Eye.
But here’s the other thing about Shevchenko: she can grapple too. She’s actually really good at it. A black belt in judo, we’ve seen her effectively use those skills in the cage, giving her more than one way to dominate opponents. She actually has more career submissions than knockouts, as shocking as that may be to learn. She can take you down and keep you where she wants you, or artfully decimate you standing if she doesn’t feel like expending the energy. Since moving to 125 in 2018, she’s looked like an unsolvable problem.
In fact, since she debuted at flyweight, she’s barely been challenged. She outclassed Joanna Jedrzejczyk to win the title, and since has recorded two brutal KO wins (Eye and Katlyn Chookagian) and two decisions in which she’s lost a total of one round (Liz Carmouche and Jennifer Maia). She’s head and shoulders above the rest of the division. But in Jessica Andrade, she’ll be facing a former world champion with major strength and explosion, in the single most interesting fight of her title reign.
Andrade has had a fascinating career path, one that has mainly been guided by the limitations of what divisions the UFC actually offers her. Andrade signed with the UFC back in 2013, as one of the original crop of fighters brought in when the UFC decided to finally promote women’s MMA. At the time, bantamweight was the only women’s division the UFC had on offer. At 5-foot-1, Andrade was tiny for 135 pounds, but that was the biz. She did fine, but not great.
In the meantime, however, the UFC added a 115-pound division. Options! Andrade made the move down 20 pounds in 2016, and her career immediately skyrocketed. Andrade is pound-for-pound one of the most physically strong fighters, man or woman, in the UFC, and her power played huge at 115. And in 2019, she became a world champion, joining Frank Shamrock as the only fighters to win via slam KO in a UFC title fight.
Andrade los the title to Zhang three months later, and dropped the rematch with Namajunas in July. 115’s a shark tank, easily the deepest women’s division in the UFC and one of the deepest overall. And even though she was a much better fit at 115, she’s relatively thickly built, and the weight cut was a tough one: it’s not as big of a deal when a light heavyweight decides to cut 20 pounds to make 185, but when you’re talking about a 135-pound woman cutting 20 pounds to make 115, it gets a lot harsher.
But options, baby, options! In 2017, the UFC at long last began promoting a women’s 125-pound division. (I still have no idea why it took them so long.) Andrade debuted at her third different UFC weight class in October, and they threw her right into the deep end, giving her one of the top contenders in the division, Chookagian.
Andrade was good at 135, and great at 115. But seeing her at 125… it just felt right. It felt like Andrade had finally found her home. Andrade completely owned Chookagian in one brilliant round, showcasing her power and explosiveness, and making Chookagian’s liver quiver with a series of brutal body shots that ended her night early.
A fighter with fantastic physical attributes, finishing skill, and championship experience who may have finally found her true weight class. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty damn good challenger to me. But is it enough to climb the mountain against one of the world’s most dominant fighters? I absolutely cannot wait for this one.
The Big Fight 