Another fight weekend is in the books. Saturday’s UFC card was short on highly-ranked stars but long on action, turning into one of the most entertaining Fight Night shows of 2021. And in the main event, Chan Sung Jung put together the kind of wily, veteran performance that has become his new trademark, earning a big decision win over a game Dan Ige.
I’ll have more about Zombie this week. But, for now, here’s a look a three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock last weekend:
Saturday’s UFC show was a joy to watch, despite the lack of big names. I woke up that morning needing to see Korean Zombie win, and he did. Marlon Vera–Davey Grant II was a complete banger. And the night was filled with concussive knockouts: whether it was Violence Legend Matt Brown turning back the clock (and turning out Dhiego Lima‘s lights) with one big right hand, Ricky Glenn returning after almost three years on the shelf with a 37-second KO, or Bruno “Blindado” Silva smashing Wellington Turman with some of the most powerful ground-and-pound you’ll ever see.
For my money, Brown’s was my favorite – he’s always been one of the UFC’s most entertaining scrappers, and he was losing that fight handily until he landed the out-of-nowhere killshot. But it was arguably only the second-best one-punch KO on the main card.
Friends, meet Seung Woo Choi, all-caps STRIKER.
Julian Erosa entered Saturday night having won stoppages in both his fights since returning to the UFC last year, and appeared to be finally putting together the run of Octagon success that had eluded him in his three UFC stints to date. Then he ran into Choi, who’s just a cut above on the feet. Choi established himself as a very high-level Muay Thai competitor before starting his MMA career, and his striking ability is starting to really shine through.
Choi debuted in the UFC in 2019 and was handed a really tough draw right out of the gate: Movsar Evloev and Gavin Tucker in his first two fights, both losses. But still just 28 years old, Choi has started to settle in against slightly lesser competition, and the Erosa fight was not only his third win in a row, but his first stoppage. And a beautiful stoppage it was.
At six feet tall with a 74.5-inch reach, Choi has uncommon height and length for the featherweight division, and his technical ability on the feet is impressive. He looked clearly the better striker against Youssef Zalal in a February decision win, and showed the heat in his hands against Erosa on Saturday. He’s young, has good tools, and is starting to string together some wins. That alone is worthy of notice.
I always talk about how featherweight is a shark tank, and it certainly is. But Seung Woo Choi, high-level striker, is starting to feel comfortable, and start to display his skills. That may be very bad news for the rest of the division.
OK, what is up with the horrible limb violence in the UFC over the last few months? First, you had Chris Weidman graphically shatter his leg into a billion pieces against Uriah Hall in April. Just last week we saw Paul Craig rip Jamahal Hill‘s arm out of its socket, then punch him in the face repeatedly with the remains of Hill’s disjointed limb flopping all over his body.
Then, you had what Virna Jandiroba did to poor Kanako Murata on Saturday night:
That’s the risk you run when you get into the Octagon with Jandiroba, an elite strawweight jiu-jitsu stylist who’s standing out even in one of the most talented divisions in the UFC. Jandiroba’s matchup with Murata was one that was going to be decided on the mat: Jandiroba’s jiu-jitsu black belt skills against Murata’s extremely strong wrestling and judo.
It became clear very quickly, however, that Jandiroba was just a superior mixed martial artist. Murata doesn’t have any real striking skills of note, while Jandiroba looked confident with her movement and combinations early on. Midway through the first round, Murata finally managed to pin her down against the fence, and Jandiroba pulled guard, bringing the fight to the arena we expected it to be decided.
For most fighters who are competing at an elite level, pulling guard is a really bad idea – most high-level fighters are schooled enough that they know how to defend submissions at least passably well, and judges are mostly likely to see the guard-puller on their back, getting controlled, and score the round for the fighter on top. It’s especially dangerous against a fighter like Murata, a powerful top-control grappler, who wants to be exactly where Jandiroba put her.
But when you have jiu-jitsu skills like Virna Jandiroba, pulling guard doesn’t quite sound so dumb. Jandiroba is a shark with her back on the mat, and she gets into her submission attempts suddenly and violently. Almost immediately she was attacking with her legs, catching Murata in an armbar that didn’t finish the bout in the moment, but won Jandiroba the fight just as surely as if Murata had tapped out right there.
Although Murata survived and escaped, it was clear in the second that the damage was done. Murata’s left arm was screwed. She couldn’t raise it past a 90-degree angle. And Jandiroba, whose striking skills are underrated, took full advantage, tagging her with right hands through this gaping hole in her guard until the doctor finally stopped the fight after the second round was over.
Jandiroba hasn’t had the big win streak yet, but she’s lurking. A former Invicta champion, she had the misfortune to make her UFC debut in 2019 against Carla Esparza – a ludicrously tough draw for a debuting fighter, since Esparza is a former world champion who’s now on one of the runs of her career, but Jandiroba gave a very admirable performance in a decision loss. She bounced back with two straight submission wins, but entered Saturday off another competitive loss to a top-ranked contender: in December, she was matched up with another elite jiu-jitsu threat in Mackenzie Dern, which naturally turned into a fun kickboxing match that Dern edged.
Jandiroba’s most likely to get a third shot at a contender after what she did to Murata on Saturday, and this time, I’m not betting on her to come up short.
Don’t look now, but the UFC’s finally got a decent crop of young flyweights coming up the pipe. In the last couple months I’ve profiled the extremely athletic and talented Miranda Maverick, who may be in the title picture sooner rather than later, and French karate stylist Manon Fiorot, who looks like the type of explosive striking threat the division has been lacking.
And just like that, here comes another potential star. Just 23 years old, “King” Casey O’Neill was born in Scotland, trains out of Australia, and has something I like to call “weaponized pace.” This girl does not get tired and does not break. And with her entire career in front of her, we may be in for many, many fun Casey O’Neill fights in the years to come.
After seeing off Shana Dobson in her UFC debut in February, O’Neill was given a difficult second opponent: Lara Procopio, another promising young fighter, a 25-year-old physically strong Brazilian who can take down opponents and grind them out. Both fighters like fighting at a high pace. And after a grueling first round which saw Procopio outwork her on the feet and take O’Neill down, the Brazilian faded a little bit. O’Neill was only getting started.
It was extremely impressive to see O’Neill continue to come at Procopio for three rounds, wearing her opponent down, seemingly not losing an ounce of freshness. In the second, O’Neill started to turn the momentum around in the stand-up, got a couple takedowns of her own, and threatened her with ground-and-pound. She got her down again to start the third, maneuvered her way into dominant positions, then finished Procopio with a rear-naked choke.
O’Neill’s youth and relative inexperience mean that there are still holes in her game – she looked a bit too hittable and defensively unaware at the start of the fight, and she’s the first to admit that she has a problem with starting slow. But she already has one of the more difficult parts of fighting down: never letting up and never getting tired. It’s how she’s still undefeated in her MMA career, and how she’s looking all of a sudden like one of 125’s best potential prospects.
Her win over Procopio was, for my money, one of the most entertaining scraps on Saturday’s card. It was also the first fight of the night. Something tells me we won’t be seeing Casey O’Neill jerking the curtain many more times after this.
The Big Fight 