Another fight weekend is in the books. Saturday’s UFC show was one of the best of the year, featuring two title fights and a host of other great bouts up and down the card. In the main event, 42-year-old Glover Teixeira defied the odds, and Father Time, by beating Jan Blachowicz to become a world champion for the first time ever, while Petr Yan bested Cory Sandhagen to win the interim bantamweight title in a fight that was every bit the technical masterpiece it promised to be.
All that stuff was great, and I’ll have more on it this week. But for now, as usual, here’s a look at three fighters outside the main event who boosted their stock Saturday:
Superstar. That’s the main word that comes to mind when one thinks of Islam Makhachev. The hype has been real for quite a while for the Dagestani grappling whiz, who seems poised to become the successor to his trainer and mentor, Khabib Nurmagomedov. In the most marquee fight of his career, Makhachev dominated yet again on Saturday, taking another step towards the top.
Dan Hooker is a fighter’s fighter, an established top 10 lightweight who may not be world-title class, but who’s proven that he can at the very least give an extremely tough test to the best of the best. Makhachev moved through Hooker like he was nothing, finishing him with a nasty kimura in just over two minutes.
It was a complete lack of fucking around on Makhachev’s part. He doesn’t get paid by the hour. Makhachev took Hooker down quickly, advanced position, decided he wanted the arm, and then the arm was his. Makhachev has been talked up big by both analysts and fans over the last year especially, at least since Khabib’s retirement – I actually can’t remember seeing a fighter previously lacking a win over a top name be talked about the way Makhachev has. He showed us why on Saturday.
He’ll always be compared to his mentor Khabib, who was in his corner again on Saturday. You understand why – aside from Makhachev’s personal connection to the Nurmagomedov family, he’s a dominant, grapple-heavy lightweight from Dagestan who’s running through the competition. But the two are different fighters, and I actually think there are things Makhachev does more dynamically than Khabib did.
Still, his rise carries the same feeling of inevitability that Khabib’s did. You knew Islam Makhachev was going to get here eventually. Square in his prime at 30 years old, he’s right on time. By next year, Islam Makhachev is going to be fighting for a world title. And he very well might come out of it with gold around his waist.
Khamzat Chimaev’s return after over a year out of the cage carried with it a lot of excitement and just as many questions. Would his highly publicized UFC career-opening hot streak a real view into how dominant a fighter he is, or a fluke against (in retrospect) pretty low-level competition? Would the effects of 13 months on the shelf and a very harsh battle with COVID take a physical and mental toll on the talented 27-year-old? Was Khamzat Chimaev, at the end of the day, really worth all the hype that has been laid on him over the last year?
Then, in the first moments of his fight with No. 11 ranked Li Jingliang, Chimaev answered every one of those questions. He slipped behind Li, grabbed a body lock, lifted him in the air, walked him over to where UFC president Dana White was sitting cageside to talk shit, then slammed him down.
Oh. Oh shit. You’re not supposed to be able to do that to a professional mixed martial artist.
About two and a half minutes later, Chimaev had choked Li unconscious and once again blasted his hype rocket away at the speed of light. Yes, you can quibble about the opposition. John Phillips and Rhys McKee aren’t in the UFC anymore, Gerald Meerschaert is a substandard striker, and Li has often struggled with his takedown defense during his UFC run. But…. fuck, man. Four UFC fights, four stoppage wins, with ONE TOTAL STRIKE taken across that span. At a certain point, it doesn’t even matter anymore who exactly you do that against. We have just witnessed a run of pure dominance that simply has never occurred before in the 28-year history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
You’re not supposed to be able to come back from a COVID battle so bad that you nearly retired from the sport and still be that explosive and strong. You’re not supposed to be able to handle and destroy PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS like that. Whoever he might have been fighting, Khamzat Chimaev is doing things you simply aren’t supposed to be able to do. And he’s been doing it with such fire, such energy, such aplomb that he appears ready-made as a breakout mainstream superstar.
For all his greatness, Islam Makhachev comes off as a relatively soft-spoken and reserved guy – you wonder if his profile would be the same if he didn’t have the association with Khabib, one of the UFC’s greatest stars ever. Chimaev isn’t like that at all. He’s not just an animal in the cage, he’s animated, comfortable on the microphone, wanting to seemingly fight anyone, anytime, anywhere, as many times as possible. We haven’t seen him deal with adversity in the cage, but we haven’t yet found someone good enough to challenge him even slightly. That story, in and of itself, will drive even more interest in his career.
We’re still early in the story of Khamzat Chimaev. He could become a dominant double champion who drives the UFC into a new era. He could still flame out and turn out to be nothing more than a flash in the pan. But that’s kind of the point: Khamzat Chimaev is the kind of fighter where it seems like absolutely anything is possible. And even if he never wins another fight, we’ll always have this run.
For the first five minutes of his prelim bout on Saturday, undefeated featherweight Lerone Murphy was put through the ringer. His opponent, Finnish grappler Makwan Amirkhani, took Murphy down early and kept him there, threatening him from a variety of different dominant positions. Amirkhani probably didn’t do enough damage to make it a 10-8, but it was at the very least a very, very clear 10-9. Murphy had some work to do.
I remember thinking, heading into round 2, that things were likely about to get a fair bit easier for him. Murphy had ridden out the storm, so to speak, and Amirkhani’s historic cardio issues meant that rounds 2 and 3 could provide much more of an opening. But I wasn’t prepared for how quickly Murphy turned the tide, as he responded with the most resounding KO of the day just moments into the second round.
Amirkhani’s no dummy – he knew that his path to victory against Murphy was to do the exact same thing he had done in round 1, and he didn’t want to waste time. Problem was, Murphy knew it too. And when Amirkhani flashed forward for his first takedown attempt of the round, Murphy met him with a perfectly timed knee.
The impact was devastating – Amirkhani was knocked unconscious on impact and stayed down for a few minutes afterward. And it was the kind of highlight that can propel Murphy forward in a big way, even in one of the deepest divisions in the sport. The win was Murphy’s third in a row, after he debuted in the UFC with a split draw against Zubaira Tukhugov, another fighter who looked good in a win Saturday.
Murphy seems to have the tools: he’s big, athletic, and as we’ve seen he possesses timing and power. It’ll still be tough sledding at 145, but keep an eye out for Lerone Murphy moving forward.
The Big Fight 