Another fight weekend is in the books. Last week’s slate of fights featured UFC and Bellator shows, with exciting-on-paper main events both turning into boring staring contests. (Fucking John Kavanagh somehow managed to make JOHNNY WALKER boring. Get this man out of the sport!)
You coulda skipped the whole thing and it would have been fine, but there was still some interesting stuff that transpired. So, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock this week.
Lightweight Jamie Mullarkey had to dig deep on Saturday. In the first round, opponent Devonte Smith had him outgunned – Smith, a potent striker, hit him with some strong punches and looked like the quicker, more dangerous fighter. Mullarkey went into the second down a round, and needing to
So Mullarkey dug deep. And he turned it the fuck up.
Goddamn, there are few things more beautiful than a fighter just ROASTING his opponent’s body. Smith was a step ahead of Mullarkey throughout the first round – Mullarkey responded by pushing himself a few steps forward in turn. Mullarkey put Smith into a torture chamber of pressure and clinch punishment, pounding him with knees, body blows and kicks, before finally putting Smith away after three brilliant second-round minutes.
Mullarkey doesn’t have astounding physical gifts, but he’s revealing himself to be a very tough, gritty and actually somewhat stylish striker who’s rapidly becoming a fighter you can’t miss at 155. He was thrown into the deep-end in his debut, losing to a debuting Brad Riddell – Riddell was another class on the feet, but Mullarkey gave him one heck of a tough fight in an extremely entertaining decision loss.
After then losing a controversial decision to Fares Ziam, Mullarkey responded by explosively knocking out the powerful Khama Worthy with a left hook in less than a minute in March. And on Saturday, he proved that deep within him he has a whole new gear. One of the most important traits a fighter can have is the ability to make adjustments in the heat of battle, and find that extra gear when the pressure is on. Mullarkey showed that.
And when you’re in your mid-20s and have been tested against strikers the caliber of Riddell and Alexander Volkanovski – who beat Mullarkey during their pre-UFC days, when Mullarkey was just 22 – are you going to be intimidated by anyone in that cage? Is anyone going to stop you from pushing forward and turning it up? I don’t think so. And that’s why Jamie Mullarkey is someone to watch.
Poor Casey O’Neill. The 23-year-old Scottish-Australian flyweight hasn’t done a single thing wrong in her UFC career. Far from it – she’s a perfect 8-0 as a pro, and has emerged as one of the most promising young prospects the UFC women’s divisions have to offer. And yet, every single hurdle she surmounts, I view it with a sense of dread.
That’s because O’Neill is a flyweight, not a strawweight. She’s in the most desolate, cleared-out division in the UFC. And this girl is going to get thrown in there with Valentina Shevchenko way before she’s ready.
Especially after what happened on Saturday night. Now there’s a a little but of a built-in Narrative, considering O’Neill’s latest victim on her rise to the flyweight top 15 was the champ’s sister, Antonina Shevchenko.
O’Neill has impressed immensely early in her career with the breakneck pace she fights at, and her amazing cardio. That sort of weaponized pace has drove her to wins over Shana Dobson and Lara Procopio earlier this year, but Shevchenko – although a pale shadow of her sister – is a higher level of pure talent. Shevchenko has followed the same learning pathways as her superior sibling, and is an accomplished Muay Thai striker in her own right.
And in the first round, Shevchenko seemed to be doing a better job of anyone at dealing with O’Neill’s oncoming pressure. O’Neill, at this stage of her career, is not yet a great technician, and Shevchenko was able to outmaneuver her throughout much of the early goings. But O’Neill never stops coming. And in the second round, she finally ran Shevchenko down. The beating commenced, and victory was achieved shortly afterward.
The flyweight pecking order is slim enough that O’Neill’s pure perspicacity may be enough to drive her forward very far in a very short time, especially as she gets out of her early 20s and continues to improve. But that specter is there – the UFC may be so desperate for challengers to Valentina that I could easily see her being put in that spot in just a few fights, when she still isn’t ready for such a spotlight.
O’Neill has fantastic promise, but she’s years away from being ready for that kind of opportunity. That opportunity is approaching all the same. I can’t wait to see how good she is at 30 – but for now, I’ll suffice for seeing how far she can make it on this undefeated run.
I’m leaving Page at the bottom here because I still don’t think he proved all that much in Friday’s Bellator main event. Page prevailed over former welterweight champion Douglas Lima in a bore of a split decision – Lima has become more and more Tyron Woodley-like in his nonaggression as the years have gone on, and Page didn’t ever really extend himself, even in front of his home London fans.
I personally thought Lima deserved the decision nod. It felt like most of the real moments of the fight belonged to him. Page bowled him over on the feet a couple of times, but largely did little of real impact. Lima had a decent amount of time spent on top during the first and third rounds and some solid ground-and-pound at times, even though he fought what’s now become a typically low-output fight.
It’s telling when the thing that has most people talking about your fight is something that almost happened – in the second round, Lima came about an inch from perfectly re-enacting his memorable knockout of Page in their first fight, knocking him to the ground with one of his famous leg kicks and coming up just a hair short on an uppercut.
But still, whether the decision was home-cooking or not, Page is the one fighter this weekend who can say that they secured a title shot in a major promotion, and that earns him a spot on this list. In beating Lima – and “avenging” his May 2019 defeat, still his only career loss – Page has announced himself as the clear first challenger for champion Yaroslav Amosov.
I’ve made no bones about how I’ve always enjoyed Page as a fighter, and his striking style is very entertaining to watch – although it’s telling that when facing real top fighters like Lima and Paul Daley, he’s appeared much less confident in opening up. It’s also inarguable that he’s been protected to a pretty ridiculous degree in Bellator. The more chances we get to see Page against actual talent, the better – those chances have been vanishingly few throughout most of his MMA career.
What we saw against Lima – his uninspiring takedown defense and his apparent complete inability and lack of urgency in getting up from bottom – gives me no confidence that he won’t just spend 25 minutes on his back against Amosov, same as what happened to Lima. But we have a title fight, and it’s one that at the very least will have an interesting and unique challenger. That’s something.
The Big Fight 