Another fight weekend is in the books. The last few days of fights was packed with action, including a big UFC pay-per-view Saturday night, Bellator Friday night, the return of RIZIN, PFL on Thursday, and all other sorts of assorted nonsense. The whole deal was headlined by a pair of UFC title fights: Israel Adesanya had the lightest of work in sweeping the scorecards against Marvin Vettori to retain his middleweight title, while Brandon Moreno completed his Cinderella story with the performance of a lifetime in his flyweight title win over Deiveson Figueiredo.
I’ll have more on both champions this week. But for now, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock this weekend:
In the months that I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve done this column almost every Monday. No one has gotten a spot off a losing performance. But, there’s no one in the sport of mixed martial arts like Nate Diaz. In their five-round feature bout on Saturday night, Leon Edwards beat Diaz from pillar to post. He outclassed him. Small surprise, considering Edwards is younger, bigger, and much more technically skilled.
There’s probably no version of Diaz, in his prime or otherwise, who could have beaten Leon Edwards. The scorecards, and the flow of the fight, reflected that: 49-46 Edwards across the board. Edwards left the cage on Saturday night one of the tippy-top welterweights in the world, although still seemingly behind Colby Covington for the next shot at champion Kamaru Usman. But it’s Diaz who left the bigger star, with thousands more fans than he had when he entered the Octagon.
Diaz has been beloved for his shit-talking, never-say-die attitude, and gamebred brawling. In recent years, it’s turned him into one of the UFC’s biggest stars, even though he’s almost never been a real title contender. And Saturday was the perfect Nate Diaz fight: he got beat up, he bled everywhere, he never quit, never let Leon Edwards break him.
And with a minute left, in one of the most heart-stopping moments in mixed martial arts all year long, he hurt Edwards with a one-two and sent the crowd into a frenzy.
The crowd in Glendale, Arizona Saturday night was absolutely rabid for Nate Diaz, and I can’t stop thinking about what might have happened if he had actually rushed a wobbled Edwards and finished the fight, rather than just pointing at him and letting the moment pass. The whole place might have exploded. The energy for Nate Diaz in that building was so insane that if he had pulled that off, I think he could have overthrown the United States government if he wanted. It would be exactly what the CIA thought the Bay of Pigs was going to be: Diaz rolls into Washington, DC with 50 dudes from Stockton, and the entire nation rises up in spontaneous revolution and sweeps him into the Oval Office.
We were alarmingly close to a President Diaz on Saturday night. Instead, after 24 minutes of getting elbowed in the face by one of 170’s best technicians, he didn’t quite have the juice to get it done. And that’s fine, at the end of the day. Diaz’s rabid fans, of which there are very many, will get to claim that he was the real winner anyway. No one is quite so good at winning in the eyes of the fans, and losing the actual, real fight he’s competing in, than Nate Diaz.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way. There may never again be another Nate Diaz. I hope he fights for another 20 years.
What’s better than scoring a knockout in your UFC debut? How about scoring a knockout in your UFC debut, in just seven seconds? How about scoring a knockout in your UFC debut, in just seven seconds, after taking the fight on just a few days’ notice? How about scoring a knockout in your UFC debut, in just seven seconds, after taking the fight on just a few days’ notice, and then celebrating so rapturously that you injure your own knee?
Actually, Terrance McKinney could have left that last part. We’re certainly not going to forget it anytime soon, though.
That’s about as clean as it gets, isn’t it? The first strikes of the fight, a one-two straight down the pipe, the left sending Matt Frevola bouncing off the mat. It’s one of the fastest knockouts in UFC history, and it’s become par for the course for one of the most interesting young stars to emerge during 2021.
When McKinney was named as a short-notice replacement for Frank Camacho last week, those in the know marked it down as one of the more interesting developments on UFC 263’s undercard. The 26-year-old lightweight out of Washington’s Sikjitsu gym had come close to the UFC before in 2019, but lost a Contender Series opportunity to the impossibly lanky Sean Woodson – three months later, he lost by triangle choke to top-notch veteran grappler Darrick Minner, also now of the UFC.
McKinney took all of 2020 off after those two defeats, and returned in March on a tear. McKinney has fought four times already in 2021, all four of which were first-round KOs, and three of which – including the Frevola KO on Saturday – have come inside of 20 seconds. The exception came on June 4, when Michael Irizarry survived a little over a minute before McKinney blasted him unconscious with punches from guard.
Lightweight is historically an insane shark tank, but the win over Frevola is a great first step: the 31-year-old has been previously regarded as a relatively bright talent. And if nothing else, 155 has a new knockout artist to watch. No matter what happens, that’s always going to be welcome.
Hey, no one ever said it had to be pretty. But Yaroslav Amosov only knows how to do one thing: win. And on Friday night, Amosov’s undefeated record – perhaps the most lopsided in all of mixed martial arts – earned another notch, and some gold.
Amosov has spent his Bellator career outwrestling All-Americans and NCAA national champions. The fact that he did it to Douglas Lima shouldn’t have come as a shock. Amosov was in complete control from the opening bell in Friday night’s main event, keeping Lima on his back for almost 25 full minutes, running his record to an almost unheard-of 26-0, and winning Bellator’s welterweight title.
Lima’s talent has shown through quite often during the decade he ruled the Bellator welterweight division: concussive knockout power and underrated jiu-jitsu. But over his last few fights, he’s become more and more reticent to engage. We saw it in his win over Rory MacDonald in 2019, and it was really bad in his defeat to Gegard Mousasi last year. On Friday, Amosov took advantage of it repeatedly.
Lima had little to offer to stop Amosov’s takedowns, and little off the back to keep Amosov from pinning his shoulders to the mat and racking up the 10-9s. It wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing fight – Amosov was content to put him down and keep him there. But you can’t deny Amosov’s skill and strength, and it’s rare that you see a title challenger have such an easy night at the office.
We’ve seen Amosov in some really entertaining fights in the past, most recently his really close tussle with four-time All-American Logan Storley in November. Bellator’s welterweight division offers some interesting matchups who could draw out something a little more kinetic: Jason Jackson is a massive welterweight and won’t be easy to take down, Michael “Venom” Page‘s sui generis striking style is a problem for anyone, and an eventual rematch with Storley could be quite intriguing indeed.
Now that the belt is finally around Yaroslav Amosov’s waist, I can’t wait to see who’s going to be strong enough to take that 0.
The Big Fight 