Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. MMA is finally back this weekend, with the UFC and ONE putting on their first shows of the year, and other major promotions like Invicta and KSW also coming back with their first offerings of 2022. Almost a month of waiting has come to an end! So, as usual, and for the first time in the new year, here’s a look at the three fights I’ll be watching closest this weekend:
Giga Chikadze vs. Calvin Kattar, UFC Fight Night
COVID has absolutely sliced and diced the first UFC card of the year – Tapology lists 11 different canceled bouts – so it’s a nice return to the bad old days of 2020 when you could never actually count on a fight happening until the moment the fighters were in the cage. But, at the very least, our main event has been preserved. Thank God. It should be a good one.
Since the pandemic started, it’s featherweight kickboxing stud Giga Chikadze who’s been one of the UFC’s brightest breakout stars. The Georgian has reeled off seven straight wins since inking with the UFC in 2019, and his performances have only grown stronger since moving behind closed doors. He followed four straight wins in 2020 with two Performance of the Night bonuses in 2021, scoring TKO wins over dangerous veterans Cub Swanson and Edson Barboza and setting himself up for potential title contention in 2022.
Now, he’s in his second straight main event. No one can say it isn’t richly deserved. And in Calvin Kattar, Chikadze will have a very appropriate test: an established top-10 competitor who will be willing to stand and trade with him, but isn’t in the immediate title picture.
It’s just good match-making. What do you think about when you think of Giga Chikadze? You think of the Giga Kick, obviously, his heralded signature move: the deadly left kick to the body that he’s made famous. (It’s already started to annoy the shit out of me how the UFC insists on billing every kick he throws as a Giga Kick – it’s literally just that specific kick!) Chikadze crumbled Swanson with the best Giga Kick of his career at the beginning of last year, but proved that he’s much more than one sick move in one of my favorite fights of the year, his amazingly high-level battle with Barboza.
Barboza has been one of the best Muay Thai stylists in the game for a decade-plus, and his amazing reaction time and defensive strategy nullified many of Chikadze’s go-to weapons. So Chikadze dug deeper into his bag, coming at Barboza with a ton of different angles and entries, pushing a very fast pace – almost too fast. Barboza chopped away at Chikadze and wore him out through the second round, but right as it felt like the Brazilian had well and truly seized the momentum, Chikadze threw everything at the wall in the third, expending all the gas left in the tank in an effort to get the win while he still could. It paid off when he finished Barboza with a knee to the body and a series of rights.
Barboza had very rarely in his career faced a stand-up fighter on his level, and Chikadze proved he was that and more in a tremendous showing of heart and skill. It was a championship performance, one where Giga had to prove he could fight through adversity and make high-level adjustments in a stressful moment. It was a fight that made me believe in him even more.
I believe in Kattar too, a crisp boxer who, at his best, puts together clean combinations that are a serious problem for his opponents. But Kattar is coming back from receiving the beating of his life against Max Holloway, one that completely slammed the door on the Bostonian entering the featherweight elite any time soon.
If nothing else, Kattar proved he’s fucking tough. Kattar ate 445 significant strikes, while bleeding all over the cage, for 25 minutes without going down. There are a couple of rounds that I seriously don’t know how he survived – Holloway put him in a fucking medieval torture chamber. Kattar lived to hear the scorecards read, but it was the kind of beating that changes a fighter.
It’s been a year since Kattar took that punishment from Holloway – it’s actually the second straight time that Kattar has headlined the first UFC show of the year. Is that enough time to recover from the ass-kicking of a lifetime? It’ll have to be for Kattar to change his narrative from being the guy that Holloway was boxing up without even looking. And it’ll have to be to prevent Giga Chikadze from reaching the top – this is Giga’s last exit from stardom. Great way to kick off the new year.
Brandon Royval vs. Rogerio Bontorin, UFC Fight Night
I was really looking forward to this UFC’s original co-main of Michel Pereira and Muslim Salikhov, but we unfortunately lost that one – Salikhov was originally replaced by UFC debutant Andre Fialho, and then the whole thing was just pushed back a week to UFC 270. But on a card with few other really interesting fights, we at least still have this potentially pretty fun little flyweight banger on the main show.
Both Brandon Royval and Rogerio Bontorin are very fun talents occupying spots in the lower half of the flyweight top 10, and both of them need a win to rebuild their stock in a 125-pound division with a strong crop of young contenders. Royval has lost his last two – Bontorin, two of three. At the end of their 20s, they both should be in or near their primes. There’s a lot on the line here for both men, and I expect action accordingly.
Royval has been one of my favorites since he stepped into the Octagon in 2020, an all-action fighter who never lets up on the gas pedal, even when he’s hurt. This is a man who’s always hunting, always fighting aggressively. And by the end of 2020, Royval made himself a serious title contender after just two UFC fights, when he submitted Kai Kara-France – thee’s a win that’s aging well – in one of the year’s most insane back-and-forth fights.
Royval got tossed right in the big-time – his next fight was with Brandon Moreno, in Moreno’s last bout before he started tangling with Deiveson Figueiredo in the rivalry that made him world champion. Royval got shut down by a superior top-control grappler and finished at the end of the first, and then against Alexandre Pantoja, another elite contender, he was taken down and submitted by another tough veteran who knew how to deal with Royval throwing everything at the wall.
Now, Royval finds himself in danger of falling out of title relevance. It wasn’t that long ago that Bontorin was in a similar place. Bontorin debuted with two straight wins and was quickly given a fight with Ray Borg, a former title contender who at the time was one of the UFC’s highest-ranked flyweights, in early 2020. He lost, then got knocked out by Kara-France in his first fight of 2021. Bontorin stopped the bleeding with a win over Matt Schnell in May, in unusual circumstances – the fight was put together on short notice at bantamweight, 10 pounds up from both fighters’ usual weight class. Bontorin, who had never had an issue making weight at 125, wound up missing weight for 135, but won by unanimous decision.
Nonsense aside, the win over Schnell was a nice reminder of what Bontorin can do, against a long, tricky flyweight who always puts together a good volume – traits Royval shares, while simultaneously being much more dynamic than Schnell. Bontorin has a BJJ black belt – 11 of his 17 wins are by submission – but also has a nice pair of hands. Powerfully built, Bontorin throws hard and lands with power, but is selective in his boxing output. Schnell was uncharacteristically reserved against Bontorin, respecting the Brazilian’s power – I’d love to see how Bontorin responds against Royval, who’s much less likely to be cowed.
Between Bontorin’s power and Royval’s dynamic style – and both men’s finishing ability on both the feet and the ground – we could be in for fireworks in this one. Keep a keen eye out.
Xiong Jingnan vs. Ayaka Miura, ONE Heavy Hitters
This fight will have already happened by the time you read this, as ONE’s first show of the year takes place on Friday morning U.S. time. But if you want a chance to kick off 2022 by seeing one of the best female fighters in the world outside of the UFC, take a peek over on YouTube at this one, as Xiong Jingnan defends her ONE strawweight title against a pure judo stylist in Ayaka Miura.
The ONE strawweight title – which, because of the weird way ONE’s weight classes work, actually tops out at 125 pounds instead of 115 – was instituted in 2018. Only one woman has held it in its history: Xiong. The native of Shandong, China became the first Chinese MMA world champion when she beat Tiffany Teo for the belt four years ago, and has held onto her title against all comers – she’s dangerously close to clearing out that division.
Xiong has only lost once in the last six years, and not at her typical weight class – she lost to one of ONE’s flagship stars, Angela Lee, 10 pounds down at atomweight in 2019, after beating Lee at strawweight earlier that year. Miura will be Xiong’s sixth title defense, during which time she’s put together a reputation for excellence.
Xiong is primarily a quick, busy, skilled stand-up fighter who has elevated herself to an elite level in part by developing fantastic takedown defense – it was the key to her win over Michelle Nicolini, one of the best female Brazilian jiu-jitsu grapplers of all time, in September. It’ll also be key against Miura, a relatively one-dimensional judo fighter with a very straight-line path to victory. First, Miura gets the clinch. Then, she hits a headlock takedown. Then, she locks in a scarf hold Americana. Then, her opponent taps out.
It sounds simple, but Miura’s opponents generally haven’t been able to stop it: she’s won four of five since debuting with ONE in 2019, with all four of her victories following that same formula. It’ll be another fascinating style matchup for Xiong, and another major test of the takedown defense that was so impressive against Nicolini.
Miura isn’t on the same level as Xiong as an all-around fighter, but she has a thing she’s incredibly good at, and it could end up being really damn interesting. Can’t ask for much more out of a big underdog.
The Big Fight 