Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. After a frenetic last month in MMA, this weekend is a little more chill – a mostly star-less RIZIN show on Saturday morning, and a UFC Fight Night show on Saturday evening. There are some nice scraps on the UFC show that I’m looking forward to catching, so without further ado, here’s a look at the three bouts I’ll be watching closest this weekend:
The main event of Saturday’s show features former bantamweight champion Miesha Tate, who looked shockingly good a few months ago in her first fight in four and a half years, facing fallen former top prospect Ketlen Vieira. It’ll be an interesting test on Tate’s journey back to the top, as she has designs on making it back to a championship level over five years after losing the belt to the GOAT, Amanda Nunes.
But for me, the real main event is happening right beforehand. Philadelphia’s own Sean Brady has emerged as one of the top young talents in the UFC over the last two years – if it weren’t for Khamzat Chimaev, you’d call him the No. 1 welterweight prospect in the world. And after four straight impressive showings in the Octagon, he’s receiving his first big name test: Michael Chiesa, one of the world’s best 170-pounders.
First, let’s establish Brady’s credentials. After garnering hype as one of the Northeast’s best prospects via an undefeated run in the respected Philly-area promotion CFFC, Brady inked with the UFC at the end of 2019, immediately scoring an impressive win over longtime veteran Court McGee. He’s finished his last two by submission – a guillotine choke of Ismail Naurdiev and an arm-triangle of Jake Matthews – and has established his bona fides as an extremely powerful and dangerous grappler.
Brady is renowned for an incredibly strong choke squeeze – listen to Paul Felder, another Philly guy who’s trained with Brady for years, call a Brady fight and he’ll bring it up at least a few times – and while his stand-up is still developing, he’s shown himself to be an absolute demon when he’s able to land his takedown and get on top. So it’ll be fascinating, then, to see him fight a veteran who specializes in many of the same things Brady does.
Chiesa has been one of the best competitors to come out of The Ultimate Fighter in the last decade, and has been that much stronger since he decided to stop killing himself to make 155 in 2018. Still very big for the welterweight division at 6-foot-1, Chiesa is himself a dominant top-control grappler, at the head of the pack in a number of crucial grappling stats: first among active welterweights in takedown accuracy (76.9%), first in control time percentage (66%), first in top position percentage (55.6%), and as a result of all that control, first in strikes absorbed per minute (just 0.7).
That’s in a division with a guy like Kamaru Usman. Chiesa isn’t just an excellent wrestler, he’s also terrific of transitioning against fighters with active guards to stay on top – he put on an absolute masterclass against Neil Magny in January. Not surprisingly, he’s a major submission threat.
Chiesa might have had a shout for a title shot had he gotten past Vicente Luque in August, in what turned out to be his first career loss at 170: Chiesa had a chance to finish Luque with a rear-naked choke in the first round, only for one of welterweight’s most exciting stars to stun him with a sudden reversal into a d’arce choke.
So now, he’s facing Brady, and he’s in the position of gatekeeper for the first time on this current run. Chiesa is 33 – still plenty of good years left – and he has more than enough juice to provide by far the most compelling test of Brady’s career. It’ll be strength on strength, and those are often the most fun fights to watch. And if Brady wins? You’re talking about an instant, major contender.
Tate-Vieira and Chiesa-Brady are easily the two biggest fights of the night in terms of title hunt implications and pure name value, but perhaps the scrap of the night will happen a few spots down the card. Two athletes fighting to emerge from the bantamweight shark tank, both 27-year-old rising star Adrian Yanez and British banger Davey Grant have been joys to watch over the last year or so. They’ll collide in a sleeper bout that has huge potential entertainment value.
And as Yanez continues to emerge as one of the world’s best bantamweight prospects, a fight with Grant is another entertaining matchup that he’ll hope to add to his highlight reel. Yanez is 3-0 with three finishes since debuting in the Octagon last Halloween, and has quickly shown himself to be a very dangerous counter-striker.
But it was against freewheeling wild man Randy Costa in July that Yanez showed that he really has the stuff to contend. Normally a patient and composed striker, Yanez was nearly overwhelmed by Costa’s pressure in the most challenging first round of his UFC career. Battered and bloodied after the opening five minutes, a much more aggressive Yanez roared back in the second, battering Costa with body blows before sparking him with an uppercut in one of the best finishing combos you’ll see anywhere.
Yanez is a star in the making, and not just because he looks just like Jorge Masvidal. But he’ll be facing another one of my personal favorites on Saturday: Grant, the man with one of the spiciest and crispiest left hooks in the sport. Davey Grant fucking LOVES throwing a wide right hook to the body and following it immediately with the left hook upstairs, and when he hits it, guys don’t get up.
Grant’s had a pretty interesting career path. Before last summer, Grant had only fought five times in the previous seven-plus years due to a series of debilitating injuries, including issues with his knees, back, ankle, a broken arm suffered against Damian Stasiak, and a bad staph infection. One might not have blamed the UFC for giving up on him. But Grant came back with a pair of highlight-reel KOs in 2020, re-establishing himself as a fun hand-thrower and a great depth piece in the bantamweight division.
At 35 years old, however, he’s running out of time to prove he can be something more than that. Grant lost his last fight five months ago against Marlon Vera, now on his way to bantamweight contendership, in a very fun scrap – Grant started hot but faded over the last two rounds against Vera, who especially wrecked him with some genius use of elbows.
Vera wound up being more skilled than Grant in the end, and I fear he may have the same problem against Yanez, who’s impressed me at every turn with his technical ability on the feet. Yanez also showed against Costa that he can handle a fast starter and make adjustments, a quaity he’ll likely have to employ again against Grant.
But while Yanez will be favored to turn Grant into another benchmark on his rise to top 15, Grant is an extremely game scrapper who will put it on him and make it work. With Grant’s punching power, he’s never going to be out of it. Look for this one to deliver on the action.
Terrance McKinney vs. Fares Ziam
27-year-old lightweight Terrance McKinney, it would seem, is a man of extremes. In his UFC debut, back in June, McKinney experienced both the greatest glory and the harshest embarrassment you could imagine. In the biggest moment of his career to date, McKinney turned heads with a seven-second knockout of Matt Frevola, setting a record for the fastest KO in UFC lightweight history. Then he instantly made himself look like the biggest idiot in the world by injuring his knee while celebrating.
That’s a hell of a way to introduce yourself on the world stage. Now the real work begins: proving that you have the stuff to move up the pecking order in the UFC’s premier division. McKinney, who has had a dream 2021 even with the unfortunate knee injury, enters Saturday’s show as one of the most singularly interesting young fighters on the card.
McKinney – who was actually coached by Michael Chiesa as a high school wrestler in Washington – was on the cusp of the UFC back in 2019, after rolling his way to a 7-1 record on the regional circuit. Those dreams were dashed after two straight losses: a Contender Series KO defeat against Sean Woodson in July, and a quick submission to veteran grappler Darrick Minner a few months later. There’s no shame in losing to either man, both of whom have established themselves quite well at the UFC level. But it was clear McKinney still had a long way to go.
So McKinney took the entire year of 2020 off from fighting, partially because of the pandemic, but partially to relentlessly drill his stand-up. It paid off big. McKinney has emerged with four straight first-round KOs in 2021 – four wins that have taken him a combined one minute, 52 seconds.
Six of McKinney’s first seven wins were by submission, but now he’s emerging as one of the more explosive knockout threats you’ll see. And he’ll have an interesting opponent on Saturday: 24-year-old Frenchman Fares Ziam, a lanky prospect who’s entering on consecutive wins over Jamie Mullarkey (I think that one’s gonna age super well) and Luigi Vendramini.
Ziam is a talented technical striker who has a tendency to fall into a groove and not really push it – his fight against Vendramini was a perfect example of a fighter keeping it in first gear and then nearly being overwhelmed by a renewed aggression from his opponent towards the end of the fight. McKinney should again put the pressure on Ziam, who I’d really like to see fight with more urgency.
Ziam has shown real promise, but McKinney has come along very quickly to become an in-demand prospect at 170. If he sparks Ziam like he’s sparked everyone this year, he’s going to blow up, mark my words.
The Big Fight 