Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. This weekend brings to us the last UFC show of the year, alongside offerings from KSW and ONE – it’s really the last real fight weekend of 2021, and afterwards I’ll shift gears towards looking back at the year that was. So, as usual, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest this weekend.
Derrick Lewis vs. Chris Daukaus, UFC Fight Night
The heavyweight division is typically the one most devoid of talent in men’s MMA, but over the past two years, we’ve seen a few very promising heavies join the fray. Ciryl Gane, of course, has rapidly shot to a championship level in just 10 pro fights, while English prospect Tom Aspinall has reached the top 10 and appears to have it all.
But on Saturday, it’s another rising heavyweight, Chris Daukaus, who’s in the spotlight for the first time. A 32-year-old former Philly cop who emerged from obscurity to reel off four straight KO wins over the last year and a half, Daukaus has snuck up on everyone – despite receiving relatively little attention so far in his UFC career, he’s now the UFC’s No. 7 ranked heavyweight, and may be a win or two away from a world title shot.
Heading into this year, almost no one knew who Chris Daukaus was. Now, he’s closing out 2021 in the final main event of the year. How did this happen so quickly, less than three years after Daukaus was a relatively unfancied prospect fighting on the Northeast regional scene? First, get in the best shape of your life. Daukaus was fighting up in the 250s on the regional scene, weight that sat heavy on his 6-foot-3 frame. He’s slimmed down in a big way since, and he’s been leaner every time we’ve seen him in the Octagon. When he debuted against Parker Porter last August, he weighed in at 241. That was all the way down to 231 for his KO of Shamil Abdurakhimov in September, making him one of the lighter heavyweights you’ll find in the UFC.
Being leaner and meaner has allowed Daukaus’ blistering speed on the feet to truly emerge. This dude is a fucking menace with the hands, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I’ll admit – it’s helped that he’s faced relative plodders so far in his UFC career. In February, he beat the piss out of 44-year-old non-striker Alexey Oleinik in less than two minutes, and in September, he again carried a major speed advantage into his bout with Abdurakhimov, and ripped the Russian with a straight right so violent that Abdurakhimov hocked a loogie all over the cage.
Daukaus’ improvement as he’s continued to go down in weight has prompted some to suggest that he may be better off long-term cutting to light heavyweight, but I think he stands out better here. And he’ll be in another matchup with a fighter he’ll again have a sizable speed advantage against, former title challenger Derrick Lewis.
You know Derrick Lewis’ game by this point. He stands there and does nothing. Occasionally he’ll throw a big right hand or these jumping switch kicks that never land and usually just tire him out. In between, he stands there and does nothing some more. But at some point, he almost always lands the big bomb – and when he connects, his opponents simply do not get up.
Lewis’ entire fighting style revolves around landing one punch. The fact that he’s landed that one punch so many times at the highest level of MMA is both a credit to him and a view into how shitty the heavyweight division is. And on Saturday, Lewis has a chance to break the UFC record for most career knockout wins – he’s tied with Vitor Belfort and Matt Brown in the No. 1 spot with 12 KOs.
Against Gane in August, Lewis showed just how ineffective he is against someone mobile and defensively responsible enough to not get killed by the Big Bomb – before Gane finished him in the third round, Lewis landed a total of 16 strikes in 14 minutes. Is Daukaus good enough to not allow Lewis to do the one thing he does? It shouldn’t seem like a high bar, but it has been for quite a few heavyweights.
At the very least though, I expect to see the best version of Daukaus we’ve had so far. Daukaus ran off that entire run of four straight KOs while also working full-time as a police officer, a job he finally quit in the run-up to this fight, devoting himself completely to MMA. Lewis has forever occupied a lofty position in the heavyweight rankings, and Daukaus can pay off that investment by making himself a top name with a win here.
It’s come along quicker than you could imagine for a guy who just a year ago was almost completely anonymous. But Chris Daukaus has earned this, and I’m very excited to see if he can pull this off.
Diego Ferreira vs. Mateusz Gamrot, UFC Fight Night
The last UFC card of 2021 has some very interesting fights on it past the main event, none more so than the co-main of Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson and Belal Muhammad, which will be a key test of whether the 38-year-old Thompson still has the juice left to compete at the highest level in the UFC welterweight division.
But for me, the real attraction on the UFC undercard is this lightweight fight, which promises to be one of the best grappling exhibitions you’ll see all year. Both Diego Ferreira and Mateusz Gamrot have stood out among a lightweight division with some pretty slick grapplers, and are poised to provide an absolute feast of matwork on Saturday.
I’ve hyped Gamrot since he first arrived in the UFC last year, after he ran up a record of 17-0 while becoming lightweight champion of the talent-rich Polish promotion KSW. The 31-year-old dropped a close split decision to fellow promising European talent Guram Kutateladze in his debut in Oct. 2020, but has since rebounded with consecutive Performance of the Night bonuses in 2021, stemming from a knockout of Scott Holtzman and a lightning-quick kimura of Jeremy Stephens.
I love Gamrot as a talent. He’s an acclaimed grappler – he twice won ADCC European championships in submission grappling – but he’s shown that he’s developed his boxing game well. I saw some very tight performances with the hands during his time in KSW, particularly working behind a nice jab from both stances, and I love his grappling style on top of it. Gamrot is one of the sport’s top users of the Sakuraba-style low single, which he can use to take his opponent down, latch onto the back if they try to turn out of it, or drop straight into a leglock.
It was the low single that scored the early takedown against Stephens, and he moved through the veteran like a hot knife through butter once it hit the mat. I’m fascinated to see whether that style will be effective against Ferreira, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu demon looking to regain the momentum he lost in 2021.
Ferreira went undefeated in the UFC lightweight division from Jan. 2016 until February, although he only fought six times over that span, owing mainly to a USADA banned-substance suspension that cost him most of 2016 and all of 2017. Ferreira scored what appeared to be a breakthrough win over Anthony Pettis in Jan. 2020, but the COVID pandemic meant he couldn’t build off that momentum immediately.
Instead, he returned a year later and will end up fighting three truly elite grapplers over the course of 2021: current top-five contender Beneil Dariush, chain wrestling maven Gregor Gillespie, and Gamrot. So far, he’s gone 0-2. And in those fights, interestingly, he’s usually tried to avoid initiating the grappling.
Ferreira is a very active and dangerous guard player who’s very quick to get opponents into submission predicaments, but he enjoys a scrapper on the feet – he’s got decent pop and a neat front push kick to the face. He tried to turn the fight with Dariush into a stand-up war, but couldn’t quite deal with Dariush’s relentless pressure, and was taken down five times.
He tried a similar tack against Gillespie, and did a marvelous job initially at defending Gillespie’s takedowns and fighting the fight he wanted. But Ferreira let that one slip away – Gillespie was so gassed that he could barely get to the stool at the end of the first, but the American pushed through the fatigue, finally established control on the ground, got his back and finished him with ground-and-pound late in the second.
Ferreira’s best skill is his BJJ, but it’s quite clear that against other high-level grapplers, he doesn’t see it as enough of an advantage that he wants to actually pursue that game. As those last two fights showed, that might not be the best approach for him. I’m fascinated to see whether these two losses inspire Ferreira to reverse course and lean into his submission skills against Gamrot – either way, with Gamrot’s tendency to want to shoot the takedown and initiate the grappling, we should end up with some wonderful exchanges whether Ferreira wants to be on the ground or not.
I hope Ferreira does though, to be clear. This shit will be that much hotter if so.
Roberto Soldic vs. Mamed Khalidov, KSW 65
Meanwhile, Gamrot’s old promotion, KSW, is finishing out its 2021 with an absolutely loaded card featuring some of the best MMA talent in Europe. KSW is giving us quite possibly the two biggest fights it can put on: a featherweight title rematch between champion Daniel Torres and the man he shocked in January to win the championship, 24-year-old super-talent Salahdine Parnasse.
And in the main event, we’ve got a middleweight championship bout that can only be described as a “fucking banger.” 26-year-old Roberto Soldic may be the best welterweight prospect in the world outside of the UFC, and he’ll be moving up to 185 to challenge KSW’s longtime standard-bearer, Mamed Khalidov, who at 40 years old regained his title with one of 2020’s best knockouts.
For much of his career, Khalidov was considered a world top-10 caliber middleweight despite never testing himself in the UFC. There were flirtations in the past – Khalidov has reportedly been offered UFC contracts at multiple points over the last decade – but Khalidov has elected to stay loyal to KSW, which paid him more money as its top star than the UFC would on a standard deal.
And Khalidov definitely has lived up to every inch of that billing. Khalidov was the longtime KSW middleweight champion – and also held the light heavyweight belt at one point – and hasn’t lost a true middleweight fight since 2010. But Khalidov’s career is clearly winding down. He’s 41 years old, and has already retired once – after losing a pair of champion vs. champion attractions to 205-pound champ Tomasz Narkun in 2018, Khalidov surprised fans by announcing that he was done while still middleweight champ.
That retirement only lasted about a year, as Khalidov returned the next December to fight Scott Askham, a UFC veteran who had won the middleweight title in Khalidov’s absence, in a 187-pound non-title catchweight fight. Askham won, but Khalidov came back the next year to knock out Askham and regain the championship with that insane flying switch kick.
Clearly, Khalidov still has some juice left. Khalidov came from a kyokushin karate background and that type of bounce and dynamism has been present in his striking game for his entire career, but Khalidov evolved into a ruthless all-around finisher. Khalidov doesn’t always have the meat and potatoes physicality linking together the different parts of his game, but his finishing ability has always been so brilliant that he racked up highlight after highlight without really needing it. But against a fighter with the youth and skill of Soldic, Khalidov will need to be as good as ever to defend his belt.
Quite possibly the best Croatian MMA talent to emerge since the revered Mirko Cro Cop, Soldic has only lost twice in the last six years – a regional split decision against current undefeated Bellator champion Yaroslav Amosov in 2016, and a 2018 defeat against rising UFC star Dricus du Plessis that Soldic avenged six months later. Soldic has since evolved into quite possibly the best welterweight in Europe, and now he has middleweight dominance in his sights.
Soldic is a stalking, powerful southpaw kickboxer whose game revolves one of the most accurate and dangerous left hands you’ll see anywhere, and the offense he builds off it it. The way that Soldic carefully maneuvers forward, keeping his opponent on their back foot and constantly looking to get them where he wants them – it does, in fact, remind one a little bit of his countryman, Cro Cop. As does, of course, his nickname: “Robocop.” But while Cro Cop wanted to run you into his legendary kicks, Soldic’s killshot comes from his thumping hands.
My favorite Soldic performance in recent years came against former champion Michal Materla, where it just seemed like every punch Soldic landed rocked Materla to his bones.
I’m very interested to see whether this move up to 185 will be a sign of things to come from Soldic, who will be on the small end at middleweight: 5-foot-11 with a 72-inch reach. I don’t think it’ll be an issue against Khalidov, a finisher’s finisher who will likely engage Soldic in a battle of pure skill. But while Soldic is physically strong and can grapple some, we’ve seen him taken down and held down at times at 170, and I think that could be an issue moving forward if middleweight becomes a more permanent endeavor.
I think this fight is fascinating, and represents a possible passing-of-the-torch moment for KSW, from its longtime linchpin to its next big star. Soldic’s contract apparently expires next year, and much like Gamrot, you’d expect him to have plenty of options on the open market. But with a win here, he’ll be set up to carry KSW forward into a new era, and that can make for a very attractive prospect.
Honorable mentions: Stephen Thompson vs. Belal Muhammad, Amanda Lemos vs. Angela Hill, Raphael Assuncao vs. Ricky Simon, UFC Fight Night; Daniel Torres vs. Salahdine Parnasse 2, KSW 65
The Big Fight 