Another fight weekend is in the books. Last weekend’s UFC show was headlined by an absolute joy of a featherweight main event between Giga Chikadze and Edson Barboza – Chikadze won a career-making TKO victory in the third round, in one of the most entertaining and technical striking battles you’ll ever see.
I’ll have more on Chikadze’s continued breakout this week. But for now, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock Saturday.
Am I gonna keep putting Daniel Rodriguez in here every time he fights? You bet. I absolutely love D-Rod, one of the toughest and most fun additions to the UFC welterweight division over the past year or so, and he keeps rising to the occasion. And no occasion was bigger for Rodriguez’s career on Saturday, when he rallied to beat former hyped lightweight contender Kevin Lee by split decision.
There are always going to be reasons you can talk this win down a little bit for Rodriguez. Lee is moving up in weight. Due to injuries, he hadn’t fought in 17 months, and hadn’t been tearing it up at lightweight even before his disappearance. But Lee was by far the biggest name Rodriguez has ever faced in his career, and a major test of his defensive grappling. This is the kind of win that puts you on the map.
And even with all those issues, Lee was going to be a major challenge. In the first round, Lee managed to take Rodriguez down and largely control the frame. Going into the second, Rodriguez needed to prove he could stay off his back. He did so, slipping out of a body triangle and standing up out of a difficult position, and then asserting the boxing game that has brought him to the dance.
As a pure striker, everybody knew that D-Rod was going to be on a different level from Kevin Lee. And once he started defending Lee’s takedowns, we saw it in action. D-Rod owned the open space, cutting angles masterfully, popping Lee with punches and moving out just in time, beating Lee up to the point where you saw the bigger name fighter become truly desperate.
He even brought back an old favorite: the Kevin Lee stanky leg, after D-Rod wobbled him with a tight left hand near the end of the second. No one stanky legs like Kevin.
Rodriguez quite simply has a fantastic feel on the feet, and he’s a very bad man. He comes to throw down, and does not mess around. His boxing is as pure as it comes right now, and Saturday’s performance showed that he can continue to implement it against a very strong offensive wrestler – that’s always the big test for almost any striker. We can get into the numbers: right now, D-Rod is top among active UFC welterweights in strikes landed per minute and strike differential, and his takedown defense is top 10. That. Will. Play.
It played against the lower reaches of the division, it played against a well-regarded guy like Lee, and it’s going to play in the top 15, in which Rodriguez will shortly reside. I really, really hope the world is finally tuning into how good this guy is, and his trajectory is soaring.
Speaking of classy, criminally underrated strikers who fight all the time and who have been on a nice run of wins, light heavyweight Dustin Jacoby was also back in the winners’ column on Saturday night. But while Rodriguez’s win will get more pub, Jacoby did something D-Rod didn’t: finish his opponent, and in the first round to boot.
That’s the similarly ever-present Darren Stewart on the receiving end of a Jacoby ass-beating about three minutes into the first round, representing a nice step-up win for the veteran kickboxer. Stewart’s record hasn’t been super great in the UFC, but he’s been in there with formidable guys: Kevin Holland, Eryk Anders, Edmen Shahbazyan. While those fights have vacillated from thrilling to incredibly boring, he’s always been very competitive. No one has kicked his ass the way Jacoby did on Saturday.
But Jacoby saw his opening and seized it, stunning Stewart again and again with heavy punches until referee Jason Herzog finally saw enough. It was Jacoby’s third win in four fights since returning to the UFC last year – the lone outlier was a razor-close split draw with Ion Cutelaba in May.
Jacoby is an example of a fighter taking an unorthodox route to achieve his potential. The 33-year-old from Colorado originally debuted in the UFC way back in 2011, losing both of his initial Octagon appearances and getting released. He bounced around for a while, had an unsuccessful Bellator run, kept spinning his wheels.
Starting in 2013, however, he had started competing as a pro kickboxer parallel to his MMA career, and after losing two consecutive Bellator bouts, decided to commit himself to kickboxing full-time starting at the beginning of 2015. His kickboxing career almost instantly took off: he competed for Glory’s middleweight title the next year and ranking among the better middleweights in the world. When he decided to return to MMA in 2019, he had honed his striking game immensely, and finally tasted success on the highest level of combat sport.
That breakthrough seems to be exactly what Jacoby needed. He’s become a very sharp and dangerous striker in space, with heavy leg kicks and a technical approach. It’s still early, but this time around, Dustin Jacoby looks like he has what it takes to be a factor. Expect him to get a decently well-known guy next time he’s in the cage.
Filed under Could Be A Guy: 30-year-old Philadelphia featherweight Pat Sabatini, who kind of just keeps winning. Sabatini has lost twice in the last six years – one via split decision and one due to an arm injury he suffered within the first minute. And after winning respected Philly-area promotion Cage Fury Fighting Championship’s title last December, Sabatini has so far lived up to the hype in the UFC.
Sabatini debuted in April, using the strong offensive grappling that he became known for on the regional scene to outpoint Tristan Connelly in Jacksonville. But Sabatini has really earned acclaim for his submission skills – he entered Saturday night with 10 subs in 14 pro wins. I bet he hadn’t had one quite like the one he had against Jamall Emmers the other night.
Emmers – an intriguing talent who notably gave Giga Chikadze a very tough fight last March – got Sabatini in a hole early, rocking him with an uppercut and parlaying that into a dominant position, taking Sabatini’s back within the first minute. But then Emmers made a zero-IQ move: selling out to go for a toehold, a move that’s rarely attempted and even more rarely successful in modern-day MMA.
He ended up in a position where he and Sabatini could trade leglocks, a spot that doesn’t often result in an actual finish. Emmers, to his credit, did seem to have that toehold pretty well locked. But that meant Sabatini had the chance to lock in a heel hook, a move that actually finishes fights. Heel hook > toehold any day. In the end, it was Emmers tapping out in agony.
It would do future opponents very well not to play around with Pat Sabatini on the ground. He’s dangerous. And a skilled offensive grappler and submission specialist like him is another very welcome addition to a featherweight division spoiling with talent. Keep an eye out for him in the future.
The Big Fight 