Another fight weekend is in the books. Although the UFC’s Saturday night show was short on names, it was long on action – all five main card bouts ended in stoppages, with Islam Makhachev turning in another dominating performance in the main event. Meanwhile, in Bellator, flyweight champ Juliana Velasquez needed both hands to hang onto her world title, as she barely edged out a game Denise Kielholtz by split decision.
I’ll have more on Makhachev’s future prospects this week. But for now, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock on Saturday:
Goddamn, is strawweight looking hot right now or what? World champion Rose Namajunas has three great former world champions – Zhang Weili, Carla Esparza and Joanna Jedrzejczyk – at the top of her contenders list. Mackenzie Dern and Marina Rodriguez are going to fight in October to determine who joins that stratosphere. There are plenty of other really fun talents, like Amanda Ribas, Virna Jandiroba, and Yan Xiaonan sprinkled through the mix.
And I haven’t even gotten to the girl who’s just starching everyone she fights. Meet Amanda Lemos, who’s not too far from becoming the new hotness at 115.
That’s Lemos knocking out Montserrat Ruiz so bad that Ruiz had no idea that she was knocked out, and needing only 35 seconds to do so. I mean, wow, how perfect was that straight right as Ruiz came in? That’s a special pair of fists. Now, I’m not going to claim that knocking out Ruiz is a paradigm-shifting moment for Lemos: Ruiz entered with only one career UFC fight, having beaten Cheyanne Buys in March by literally just head-and-arm throwing her over and over for 15 minutes and keeping her in a headlock.
It was one of the funniest fights in UFC history mind you, and if you can beat someone by literally just doing one move, why not? Ruiz is, at the very least, a very accomplished and talented wrestler with a good top game. Lemos didn’t afford her the opportunity to even remotely implement her game. Her hands are too fast and too powerful, her timing too sharp.
The win was Lemos’ fourth in a row, three by first round stoppage – in March, she finished Livinha Souza via strikes in three and a half minutes to steal Souza’s ranking towards the low end of the top 15. Notably, Lemos is undefeated in her career at strawweight: she came up fighting as an undersized bantamweight, lost to the much larger Leslie Smith in her UFC debut in 2017, then made the 20-pound cut and has seen her career take off.
But that’s not why Lemos excites me. Lemos excites me because of how stylistically distinct she is from the other contenders at 115. The best strawweights in the game currently are generally strikers who win with technique and pace (Namajunas, Zhang, Joanna, Yan), good wrestlers (Esparza, Claudia Gadelha) or grappling aces (Dern, Ribas, Jandiroba). Not a one with killshot fists. You don’t see a lot of smaller women who have the type of pure punching power Amanda Lemos has.
Right now, Lemos appears to be hitting with a different level of pure potency than you’ve come to expect in that division. The UFC strawweight division is as fun of a group of fighters as currently exists in the sport of MMA, and a little more variety is only going to make it sweeter. I can’t wait to see how Lemos fits into the hierarchy.
When Mateusz Gamrot inked with the UFC last year, hardcore MMA fans took notice. At 17-0 in his pro career, Gamrot had grown into one of the top stars of the Polish promotion KSW, one of the top MMA organizations in Europe – he had a variety of impressive wins and performances on his record, and as he approached his 30s, he’d become recognized as perhaps the top unsigned talent on the continent.
Gamrot’s lofty undefeated record didn’t last long in the Octagon. Gamrot dropped his first UFC fight against another well-regarded European prospect, Guram Kutateladze, by a razor-close split decision in October. It couldn’t have been easy to lose for the first time, but it wasn’t a performance that dimmed his hype too much. And ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to inform you that Mateusz Gamrot is right back on track.
Gamrot’s boxing has developed to such an impressive degree that it was almost easy to forget what brought him to the dance: his fantastic grappling, which has won him a number of titles across Europe and earned him multiple qualifications to the ADCCs. Jeremy Stephens, one of the most experienced mainstays of the featherweight division, had absolutely zilch for him once the fight hit the mat.
The fact that Gamrot was even in there with Stephens is an encouraging mark for his future UFC career. Stephens has always been a favorite of UFC management, despite the fact that he’s an odious piece of shit, and he’s historically been a huge danger to fighters who aren’t up to snuff. And while he was winless in his last five heading into the Gamrot fight, he had only been in there against elite contenders: Jose Aldo, Zabit Magomedsharipov, Yair Rodriguez (twice), Calvin Kattar.
Not only is Stephens a big step-up in terms of pure name recognition for Gamrot, but he managed to turn him into a highlight in impressive and dominant fashion, just three months after he knocked out respectable veteran Scott Holtzman in the second round. The UFC seems to know what it has with Mateusz Gamrot. I think we’ll be seeing him in some big fights sooner rather than later.
The heart of the sport of mixed martial arts are the hand-throwers. The tough, badass dudes who walk into the cage with the express purpose of giving the fans what they want: face-punching violence. We live for the entertainment they give us, because we don’t need to make MMA more complicated than it is. We love the human chess match, and we respect the complexities that make it a fascinating sport to watch. But at heart, we’re all savage freaks, and we want to see blood.
That’s why we love the hand-throwers. And I think it’s about time that Daniel Rodriguez gets some shine: he’s about as pure of a hand-thrower as exists in the UFC right now. This is literally just a man who shows up to throw some damn hands. His hands happen to be very dangerous hands. The dudes he’s throwing them at are in big, big trouble.
26-year-old Preston Parsons, making his UFC debut on short notice replacing the injured Abubakar Nurmagomedov, was actually giving Rodriguez a bit of a workout in the opening couple of minutes. Then D-Rod threw a straight right hand that very obviously screwed up something in Parsons’ face – I haven’t seen any medical updates, but my immediate thought was a broken orbital. From that point on, baby, it was punching time. Rodriguez let his fists fly with confidence and precision, battering Parsons mercilessly until the the tough rookie finally could take no more.
Hardcore UFC fans have started to expect these kinds of performances from Rodriguez, who has emerged as one of the busiest and most consistently entertaining welterweights populating UFC undercards over the last year. Rodriguez debuted in February and has already fought six times in the Octagon, going 5-1 in that span. At every turn, he’s showcased a loose, powerful and effective boxing style that brims with confidence.
If he keeps going like this, the 34-year-old southpaw is going to become a fan favorite – all he needs is for the fanbase to finally catch on. It hasn’t helped him that almost the entirety of his run has come in an empty UFC Apex. But with crowds starting to return, the time may soon be coming for Daniel Rodriguez to finally have his moment.
Rodriguez may not ever end up being more than what he is right now: a lower-card fighter with an entertaining style. That isn’t a problem. The world needs fighters like that. The world needs hand-throwers. Daniel Rodriguez could carve himself a nice, long career out of doing just that.
The Big Fight 