Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. For UFC fans, your cup overfloweth over the next two weeks: back-to-back numbered events, the first on ESPN+ on Saturday from Fight Island, and the second next Saturday on traditional pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden. Both shows are absolutely loaded. Over an eight day span four UFC titles will be contested. Let that number sink in.
It all starts Saturday, on a show littered with international stars. (Notably, just two Americans – Cory Sandhagen and middleweight Andre Petroski – will be competing.) So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest at UFC 267.
Jan Blachowicz vs. Glover Teixeira
Jan Blachowicz was already one of the greatest Cinderella stories in the history of mixed martial arts. But on Saturday, he’ll find himself in an unfamiliar position: as the betting favorite in a main event fight.
Blachowicz had already defied the odds numerous times just to get this far. You know the story: the 38-year-old Polish light heavyweight had lost four of five and was on the brink of getting cut from the UFC four and a half years ago. Then he reoriented his game around his significant punching power and launched his career into the stratosphere – he capped an 8-1 run by knocking out Dominick Reyes last September to become an unlikely UFC champion.
At every turn, Blachowicz blew every expectation and every doubt out of the water. And then, in March, he did it again. In a champion vs. champion matchup against undefeated middleweight king Israel Adesanya – one of the best MMA strikers of all time and a heavy favorite, despite going up 20 pounds in weight – Blachowicz showed that in his late 30s, he’s fully arrived as one of the best mixed martial artists in the world.
Blachowicz made his name off the Legendary Polish Power that earned him a great highlight reel over the last few years, with crushing KOs over the likes of Reyes, Corey Anderson and Luke Rockhold. But the Adesanya fight showed that Blachowicz is more than just big-time power – he has an incredibly smart approach to the sport.
Make no mistake, Jan Blachowicz didn’t just win that fight because he was bigger. (It helped, for sure – one of the big differentiators was Blachowicz’s ability to take Adesanya down and hold him there.) Blachowicz was winning the striking exchanges, fighting a brilliant and cautious defensive fight, never letting Adesanya draw him into a situation he wasn’t comfortable with. He was landing throughout with the jab and the straight punch to the body, making Adesanya respect his power, accuracy and approach. He never landed the big bomb, but he didn’t need to. By fighting smart, staying disciplined and being able to more or less match Adesanya’s reach, he made an otherworldly striker look shockingly ordinary.
Jan Blachowicz, the man who almost lost his job a few years before, had just become the first man ever to beat Israel Adesanya. Now, the secret is out. No one is going to be overlooking Blachowicz anymore. And now, he’s defending the title against the man who should have been getting that opportunity all along: Glover Teixeira, an evergreen legend on one of the best runs of his storied career.
To make a very arcane NBA reference, I’d call Glover Teixeira perhaps the Arvydas Sabonis of mixed martial arts. Sabonis was the star center of the Soviet Union basketball team in the 1980s, and everyone who watched him called him one of the greatest talents of all time. But he was prevented for years from signing with an NBA team due to the Cold War – he was 31 when he finally began playing for the Portland Trail Blazers in 1995. By then, he was still an All-Star caliber player, but the question always remained: what would it have been like if he was there in his prime?
Teixeira is a similar story. Glover was a known quantity long before he signed with the UFC, as he rampaged through competition in Brazil and earned acclaim as the best unsigned light heavyweight in the world. Recurring visa issues meant that he couldn’t debut with the UFC until 2012, when he was 32. He’s gone on to a great career – he’s been in the top 5 or 10 basically the entire time he’s been in the UFC, and this will be his second world title challenge. But the question always remains: what would it have been like if he got there just a couple years earlier?
Even so, Teixeira should be regarded as one of the great light heavyweights of all time, although he’s still never won a world title. Even as he gets older – he celebrated his 42nd birthday on Thursday, and was serenaded by Blachowicz and the media day crowd – he’s still highly dangerous, and his five-fight win streak is his longest since the 20-fight run that made him a star over a decade ago.
Teixeira just does it differently than he used to, and differently from anyone else. Some people have called him the “Homer Simpson of MMA,” a reference that may seem insulting, but isn’t wholly inaccurate. Like Homer Simpson did in the classic boxing episode “The Homer They Fall,” Glover has been winning fights by weathering the storm and turning the tables. Glover’s chin is inhuman, and several times during his recent run – most notably against Ion Cutelaba, and in his most recent fight against Thiago Santos – Teixeira has looked in dire trouble early in the fight, before pulling the “call the ambulance, but not for me!”
The key is that Glover is almost impossible to put away, and knows how to capitalize on his opponent’s aggression to turn the momentum suddenly. When he gets the opportunity, he buries his opponents with smothering top pressure and either his acclaimed submission skills – he was a legitimately high-level BJJ competitor in the past – or violent ground-and-pound. Ask Anthony Smith what it feels like to have Glover on top of you – Glover was bashing Smith’s teeth out of his face by the end of that fight.
Glover has faced extremely hard punchers and kept on moving, although a few have broken through against him, most notably Anthony “Rumble” Johnson. But the key to Blachowicz’s success hasn’t been just the Legendary Polish Power – it’s been how refined and cerebral his striking game has become. This is not a man who rushes in wildly or overextends himself. He fights smart, much smarter than he may get credit for. In doing so, he may take one of Glover’s biggest advantages – his ability to bamboozle a fighter who sees an opening – away from him.
Glover may have had to wait a little longer due to Adesanya’s dalliance at 205, but he became the clear-cut deserving No. 1 contender after he beat Santos just under a year ago. At 42, he’s running out of time. Can the man with the Legendary Polish Power break through and put Glover down for the count? Or can Glover do the damn thing again and cement his legacy as an all-time great? Great, great main event.
Petr Yan vs. Cory Sandhagen
There are some fights that get announced and you just need to lean back in your chair and exhale. If you smoke, go out and rip a cig. This is one of them. Aljamain Sterling‘s continued inability to defend the bantamweight title he won by disqualification in March has resulted in one positive outcome: Petr Yan and Cory Sandhagen facing off in what should be an absolute feast for the MMA fan.
Yan and Sandhagen are two of the very best bantamweights in the world, and two of the most skilled and pleasing strikers to watch in the entire sport. And with former champion T.J. Dillashaw – who beat Sandhagen in a highly disputed split decision in July – unable to fight due to a knee injury, this became the clear-cut matchup for an interim title match.
I’m usually negative on the concept of interim titles, especially as the UFC often uses them to undermine champions with whom it’s having disputes. (See: Francis Ngannou.) But this is an example where it’s justified: Sterling won the title by DQ in a fight Yan was winning handily, and while it was a completely justified disqualification and Yan deserved to lose his title, no one will mistake him for the top bantamweight in the world. Sterling has since battled a neck injury that puts his immediate future in question, and we have no idea when he’ll be able to defend his belt. So let’s make as appealing a matchup as possible, toss it on the co-main, and we’ll figure all that out later. Deal?
Deal. The Yan discourse over the past six months has been dominated by the illegal knee and his subsequent feud with Sterling, and I feel like some fans have forgotten just how nasty a fighter he is. I’ll always boost the work of MMA Internet extraordinaire Jack Slack, who broke down what makes Yan great better than I could:
Yan is one of the best pure pressure fighters that exists in the sport of MMA, outworking countless opponents with his extremely well-developed switch-hitting striking game that employs a number of different looks, as well as punishing clinch attacks and some strong wrestling. When he’s on his game, Yan looks like an unstoppable force – he has a complete arsenal, and has shown tremendous ability to make reads and adjustments throughout fights to solve problems.
And, as Slack notes, he’s only ever lost as the result of fouls: the DQ that took his title away from him earlier this year, and a point deduction due to low blows that directly resulted in a split decision loss to Magomed Magomedov in his pre-UFC career. The man simply loves to break the rules. But cup checks or no, he may be meeting the one other bantamweight in the world who can contend with him for five rounds on the feet, and force him to change his calculus.
Yan excels at continually pushing his way into the edge of his opponent’s range and making them uncomfortable. That’s going to be much tougher against Sandhagen, who will be one of the longer opponents Yan has ever faced. Sandhagen is an aberration for the 135-pound division with his 5-foot-11 frame and his 70-inch reach, and while he knows how to use it, he’s most comfortable pushing forward himself, using a similarly on-point stand-up style that excels in both southpaw and orthodox stances, and brims with pure creativity.
Sandhagen doesn’t just fight with pace, volume and style, he’s also a mean son of a bitch with sharp finishing instincts. While Dillashaw won the fight on the scorecards – I thought it was a major failure of the 10-point must system, and Sandhagen was the better fighter that night – it was Sandhagen who sliced Dillashaw’s face to pieces, forcing Dillashaw to keep one hand glued to the side of his face to keep his eye from falling apart.
These are two striking styles that can play off each other incredibly well – they both have very effective approaches from both sides – and create an extremely high-level stand-up battle that should be a fighting nerd’s dream. And key to the proceedings might be Sandhagen’s takedown defense. If Yan gets in trouble, he has the tools to change the area of engagement, but Sandhagen is coming off the best takedown defense performance of his career: Dillashaw converted on just two of *19* attempts in their five-round bout.
Either way, this is a fight between two elite talents that seems guaranteed to produce fireworks. Can’t ask for anything more.
Li Jingliang vs. Khamzat Chimaev
For about a month last year, everyone on Earth was talking about Khamzat Chimaev. He was a ready-made superstar who exploded out of absolutely nowhere, ready to kick someone’s ass any time, at any weight, as many times as he could. Then, as quickly as he arrived, he was gone, spending over a year on the shelf and attracting questions of whether he’d ever fight again. Chimaev returns to the ring on Saturday, and brings with him one huge query: will Khamzat Chimaev turn out to be one of MMA’s all-time great what-ifs?
Chimaev was an under-the-radar prospect when he made his UFC debut at middleweight last July – the kind of guy sparring partners raved about, but few but the absolute diehards of diehards had ever seen. He dominated John Phillips, then the loser of three in four, in an impressive first Octagon tilt. Then, he turned around and did something no one has ever done before in modern UFC history – he turned around 10 days later, made 170 pounds as an injury replacement, then destroyed Rhys McKee in three minutes.
It’s the fastest turnaround between UFC wins since the days of single-night tournaments. And when he knocked out Gerald Meerschaert with the first punch of the fight just over a month later, the Chimaev hype train was reaching incredible speeds. It shouldn’t be forgotten that just months after his debut, Chimaev was booked to fight top 5 welterweight contender Leon Edwards – and almost surely would have gotten a title shot against Kamaru Usman had he won.
This was a fighter who truly captured the imagination. But the Edwards fight never happened. Chimaev tested positive for COVID-19 in December. Details were sparse over the coming months, but social media gave us hints of an arduous recovery – in March, Chimaev posted and later deleted an Instagram photo that appeared to be blood coughed into a sink, with a caption announcing that he was retiring from the sport. That was almost eight months ago. Now, Khamzat Chimaev will be stepping back into the cage for the first time in over 13 months, and he carries with him a ton of uncertainty.
By all accounts, the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but we’re still years away from learning the full toll that the disease has taken on elite athletes that struggled with the disease. Many tested positive and resumed their careers with seemingly little issue. But there are plenty of accounts of athletes who returned from COVID battles and spoke of not feeling like the same person – it’s simply too soon to get a full account. There are few MMA fighters who seemingly had as difficult a time as Chimaev. For a fighter who stood out for crushing strength and power, getting back to his former ability could be an incredibly difficult proposition.
The UFC matchmaking hasn’t done him a ton of favors either. Beating Leon Edwards would have gotten him a shot at gold. Not so here. Instead, he’s facing a lower-ranked fighter – No. 11 Li Jingliang – who happens to be one of the most violent motherfuckers around. Li might have earned the ire of MMA fans for feloniously gouging the eye of Jake Matthews back in 2018, but if Chimaev doesn’t come correct, he risks getting knocked out. Li is coming off a thunderous first-round KO of another talented welterweight coming off a health issue – Santiago Ponzinibbio – and is a very dangerous man on the feet.
It’s the kind of challenge that Chimaev is set up to win, considering Li’s past issues with takedown defense. But when you look at Chimaev’s resume closer, you worry. Two of the three men he beat are since out of the UFC, and Meerschaert has also eaten quick KOs from the likes of Ian Heinisch. At the end of the day, he hasn’t proven much more than his pure talent. And after horrible health problems and a dodgy weight cut – he needed the extra hour to make 171 on Friday – Li seems like a large ask.
It’s quite possible that Khamzat Chimaev comes out on Saturday and reinvigorates the hype. But for the first time since he signed with the UFC, there’s quite a bit working against him.
Honorable mentions: Islam Makhachev vs. Dan Hooker, Alexander Volkov vs. Marcin Tybura, Magomed Ankalaev vs. Volkan Oezdemir (fuck, lotta Russians fighting tomorrow!), Amanda Ribas vs. Virna Jandiroba, Albert Duraev (absolutely love this prospect) vs. Roman Kopylov
The Big Fight 