Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. This week’s slate of fights is headlined by your weekly return to the UFC Apex on Saturday night, headlined by what looks to be a thrilling clash between two top bantamweight strikers. On Friday night, we also have Bellator action for the first time in a few weeks: in the main event, legendary featherweight murder machine Cris Cyborg takes aim at her next victim, Leslie Smith.
Neither show is especially packed, but we can expect some fun action. So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’m going to be watching closest this weekend:
Rob Font vs. Cody Garbrandt, UFC Vegas 27
Sometimes you look at a scheduled fight and you just know that it’s going to be a heater. Edson Barboza–Shane Burgos last weekend, for instance. Fireworks were promised, and fireworks were delivered. And Cody Garbrandt? That’s a man who only knows how to have heaters. Buckle in.
Whether he was storming his way to a UFC title, or getting knocked out over and over again, Cody Garbrandt provides us with something memorable every time he steps into the cage. And against badass Bostonian Rob Font, Garbrandt will face an extremely tough test of his striking style as he tries to build his way back to the top.
Four years ago, Garbrandt promised to potentially be a real breakthrough, mainstream UFC star. Aggressive and stunningly powerful, Garbrandt was 10-0 with 9 knockouts when he faced the great Dominick Cruz for the UFC bantamweight title at the end of 2016. Cruz had built his legend as the sport’s all-time greatest bantamweight with unparalleled movement, ringcraft and timing. But on that night, Garbrandt was in a completely different zone. He had an answer for every single thing Cruz did, solving questions that had befuddled an entire generation of 135ers.
Garbrandt took Cruz apart in that once-in-a-lifetime performance, winning the title in what felt like the birth of a new all-time great.
He then proceeded to get knocked out in his next three fights. While Garbrandt fought with an unreal level of discipline, awareness and incisive accuracy against Cruz, ensuing opponents T.J. Dillashaw (twice) and Pedro Munhoz wrote the book on how to beat him. Garbrandt is a powerful boxer who is absolute hell up close. But he also has a tendency to get carried away. Strikers who are willing to trade with him can draw him into wild exchanges where he swings hook after hook with his chin in the air. The problem: the chin in question isn’t really that great. Pure punching power has never been Cruz’s strong suit, and while he tagged Garbrandt good a few times in their bout, he didn’t have the force to put his lights out. Dillashaw and Munhoz did.
Garbrandt did the best thing he could after suffering several consecutive KO losses: he took some time off, sitting out over 15 months before returning against crafty veteran Raphael Assuncao. In a comeback performance that earned a lot of praise, a more restrained Garbrandt scored one of the knockouts of 2020, beating the second-round buzzer with a right hook that knocked Assuncao stiff.
It was a wonderful reminder of the absolute heat that Garbrandt is working with, but it didn’t completely solve the question of whether he’s really shored up his weaknesses. Assuncao is a very experienced, cagey fighter, one who’s very good at putting together gameplans, solving opponents and winning decisions. What he’s not is a fighter with significant knockout power, or one who fights with the rate of activity needed to made Garbrandt see red. Rob Font is both of those things.
One of the best pure boxers in the UFC, at any weight class, the 33-year-old Font has been on the run of his career over the past few years. Once considered a fringe top-10 gatekeeper-type, over his last three fights Font has looked exceptional against current Bellator champion Sergio Pettis, relentless wrestler Ricky Simon, and longtime top contender Marlon Moraes.
Font has terrific, clean technique with the hands, and he’s one of the most insistent and powerful jabbers this sport has. He throws the jab hard, constantly, and with intent to hurt. He usually does. When he fought Moraes – who’s appeared a bit chinny recently, in a similar fashion to Garbrandt – it felt like every single time Font touched him, Moraes was really feeling it. He’s going to keep up a good pace and test whether Garbrandt can take a punch.
But at the same time, Font can provide Garbrandt with some opportunities. “No Love” wants to fight in close and unleash havoc, while Font is a distance fighter, using his range and his technique to assert his will on opponents. He’s notably been much less comfortable trading in a phone booth, which is both Garbrandt’s greatest love and worst enemy. It just feels like some way, some how, this fight is going to produce something explosive.
Sounds like a pretty good main event then, yeah? I agree.
Jack Hermansson vs. Edmen Shahbazyan, UFC Vegas 27
One of my very first articles on this website concerned Edmen Shahbazyan, a very young, extremely talented middleweight who saw his hype train absolutely careen into a ditch this past summer. A perfect 11-0 with 10 first-round finishes, Shahbazyan was considered the next hot thing at 185, and hailed as a future world champion by head coach Edmond Tarverdyan – best known for developing Ronda Rousey.
Then Shahbazyan ran into Derek Brunson. One of the most battle-tested and powerful men at middleweight, Brunson is far more than just an elite gatekeeper. He’s one of the best 185-pound mixed martial artists on Earth, an aggressive, strong and athletic wrestler with thump in his fists. Lanky, just 22 years old, Shahbazyan looked like he had been tossed in there with a real man for the first time in his life.
Shahbazyan had little answer for Brunson’s explosive takedowns or top control, and Brunson’s ground-and-pound forced a stoppage early in the third round to send Shahbazyan to his first career defeat. Brunson asked some very, very important questions about Shahbazyan’s game, and he had little to say in response. Shahbazyan is a very exciting, impressive, diverse and smooth striker when he’s in his groove, but you can take him out of it. His gas tank is suspect. His takedown defense, his physicality, lacking. Finding those things out is why you put a guy in there with Derek Brunson.
But here’s the good part about all this: he’s only 23 years old. Edmen Shahbazyan has all kinds of time to improve, to learn, to work on the deficiencies in his game. Just look at the path Charles Oliveira took to UFC gold. But the fight game can be unforgiving, its fans quick to move on. People are going to want to see a lot more on Saturday, when he faces a very good veteran grappler in Jack Hermansson.
Hermansson seems poised to test Shahbazyan in some similar ways as Brunson, although he lacks the same kind of raw explosive athleticism. Hermansson excels when fighting like a bully, taking his opponents down, controlling them, beating them up. He’s done it time and time again. In August, Shahbazyan had all kinds of trouble with Brunson’s physicality. Well, guess what: here comes another mean, physical bastard.
Hermansson was last seen getting boxed up in Marvin Vettori‘s breakout performance in December, but it was just a few months earlier that he earned the biggest win of his career, taking only 78 seconds to tap out Kelvin Gastelum with a heel hook. This is a fighter very well equipped to exploit the weaknesses Brunson so thoroughly exposed.
Either that, or Shahbazyan proves that he’s learned and taken a step. Interesting stakes to come.
Alexander Shabliy vs. Alfie Davis, Bellator 259
This week’s Bellator card has a few interesting bouts scattered up and down the lineup, but in my mind, they’ve saved the best for first. Literally. Bellator has gone on a spree of signing talented Russians over the last several months: fighters like ace grappler Magomed Magomedov and undefeated spinning-kick maven Usman Nurmagomedov, who promise to be key fixtures of their divisions for quite a while to come.
The best of the bunch might be debuting on Friday night, when violence machine Alexander Shabliy enters the Bellator circle for the first time in the opening fight of the YouTube prelims. Undefeated since 2016 and winner of 11 of his last 12, Shabliy just finishes people. He left a trail of bodies all across Eastern Europe over the last few years, across a number of well-regarded organizations.
There are few fighters on the regional scene whose highlights I’ve enjoyed watching as much as Shabliy. Watch him in the cage, you’ll see the full gamut: knees thrown with the force of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, one-punch knockout power, tough ground-and-pound. You might even see him drop for a heel hook and rip a man’s ligaments to shreds. He is, and I try not to use this word lightly, a killer. Now, we get the excitement of seeing whether his talents can play up in one of the sport’s premier organizations.
They’re not giving him an easy out, either. A skilled and technical striker training out of London Shootfighters, Alfie Davis has emerged as one of the standout lightweights among Bellator’s European contingent. Davis is 5-0 in his Bellator career, and since signing with the organization full-time in 2019, has reeled off four consecutive unanimous decision wins.
Also, in 2016, he knocked a guy out with an axe kick!
A fight that Shabliy, if he’s for real, should win, but is an appealing stylistic matchup and is far from a gimme. Love the matchmaking. Love the fight. Looking forward to watching it.
Honorable mentions: Yan Xiaonan vs. Carla Esparza, Ben Rothwell vs. Chris Barnett (Huggy Bear made the big show!), Damir Ismagulov vs. Rafael Alves (I’m super high on Ismagulov’s potential, and it’s his first fight in two years), UFC Vegas 27; Cris Cyborg vs. Leslie Smith, Darrion Caldwell vs. Leandro Higo, Fabian Edwards (Leon‘s promising brother) vs. Austin Vanderford (Paige VanZant‘s undefeated husband), Bellator 259; Bryce Meredith (three-time All-American and Olympic wrestling hopeful making his pro debut) vs. Steven Merrill, LFA 108
The Big Fight 