Every week, we’ll release a new MMA mix tape entitled “The Remix” that looks back at not only the biggest stories of the last seven days, but some of the ones that aren’t getting enough attention too, with some weekly awards and a prospect to watch going forward added in for good measure.
And Just Like That, Heavyweight is Stale Again
In the span of a couple months, the UFC heavyweight division went from featuring several potential new title challengers, working their way up the rankings, to having the only fighter in the Top 5 coming off a victory being a guy who was exposed in January and turned in arguably the worst performance of the year in July.
Sigh.
Saturday night in Beijing, Francis Ngannou made quick work of Curtis Blaydes, stopping the surging Chicagoland fighter in less than a minute to snap his two-fight skid. In the process, he eliminated the one interesting, fresh contender who remained in the championship mix following a series of events that saw the heavyweight elite paired off against one another in unnecessary skirmishes that cannibalized the pool of championship hopefuls.
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First, Derrick Lewis halted Alexander Volkov’s rise, only to land on the wrong end of a one-sided championship affair a month later. Then this past weekend, Ngannou, who came up way short in his bid to claim the title at UFC 220 and offered no offense whatsoever in his perplexing bout with Lewis at UFC 226, knocked off Blaydes, who entered on a six-fight unbeaten streak and looked like someone with the potential to push champion Daniel Cormier or former titleholder Stipe Miocic.
Coming off back-to-back stoppage losses to Ngannou and Blaydes, 38-year-old Alistair Overeem also got back into the win column in Beijing, collecting a first-round TKO victory over Sergey Pavlovich to add another fighter, who has already faced most of the top contenders in the division, into the conversation.
Having championship hopefuls face one another is fine when there is a stated reward like a title shot on the line, but that hasn’t been the case over these last few months.
No one expected Lewis to score a title shot with his Hail Mary win over Volkov and Blaydes wasn’t assured of anything had he beaten Ngannou, who still needs at least one more strong showing before being able to challenge for the title again given how poorly he performed in July.
This weekend’s main event in Adelaide, Australia is another quality heavyweight clash that leads to nowhere specific as well, as Junior dos Santos looks for his second straight win when he takes on emerging Aussie — and shoey connoisseur — Tai Tuivasa. It’s a great fight and the winner will certainly move closer to contention, but with Cormier waiting on Brock Lesnar, and Miocic hanging out on standby, the title chase has ground to a halt.
That means the most likely scenario is that this group of recent winners will end up fighting amongst themselves, once again whittling the crop of contenders down until there is only one viable name left standing.
This is why titles need to be defended in regular intervals against contenders with merits, rather than returning superstars and handpicked opponents. It’s also why the UFC needs to do a better job of looking at the long-term impact of many of its short-term matchmaking decisions.
Divisions like featherweight and lightweight can survive when these things happen because there are constantly new names working their way into contention and piling up victories, but in the shallow waters at heavyweight, or light heavyweight, killing off contenders without the payoff of a title fight only ends up leaving the organization with a limited number of options going forward — some of which aren’t particularly interesting.
And in a sport where things can change on the fly, and often do, having options is important.
Enough Already
The most discussed event of the weekend was, of course, the trilogy fight between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell that sounded like a bad idea the second it was announced, felt like a hastily thrown-together cash grab throughout the week — including when promoter Oscar De La Hoya couldn’t be bothered to turn up at the ceremonial weigh-ins. And it ended up being exactly the unnecessary, grotesque and ultimately sad encounter everyone expected once the two former superstars stepped into the cage.
Liddell looked wooden and unsure, like he only realized he had no business fighting again after the bout had started, while Ortiz looked like a slightly more washed version of the guy who beat Chael Sonnen in January 2017 — a guy that could still hold his own given the right matchup, but who would get trounced if he weren’t fighting on the senior tour.
It ended the only way it was ever going to end, with Liddell getting pasted with a right hand that sent him to the canvas and Ortiz deriving far too great a sense of accomplishment from finally getting a win over his long-time rival. If ever there was a time for Ortiz to show a little humility and understanding of the moment, this was it, but instead, he performed his “gravedigger” celebration and climbed onto the fence, all while Liddell struggled to get back to his feet and take up residency on his stool.
In the cage after the bout, Ortiz encouraged Liddell to keep fighting, then said he wouldn’t had let him fight if he were his manager, while “The Iceman” was non-committal about where he goes from here.
But where he should go is right back to where he was prior to this charade — retirement, far away from actual competition — and anyone that says otherwise needs to give their head a shake.
What’s more is that we — the MMA community — need to stop condoning this stuff and giving fights like this oxygen because while just about everyone was universally panning the fight once it was over, the amount of attention and coverage it received from incarnation to execution showed that De La Hoya’s belief that there were people who still wanted to see these two faded names fight once more was right.
And that is terrible because Liddell had no business being in the cage on Saturday and we all knew it.
Everyone that saw him get laid out in Vancouver eight years ago knew he was done then and said as much after Ortiz put him down again.
But when are people going to start speaking up before these fights to prevent them from happening?
Just because these guys can still saunter in the cage doesn’t mean they should and we’ve seen enough terrible fights that end badly in the last several years that now is probably a good time to stop putting them together.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen because too many people are willing to justify the decision for various reasons and curious fans will continue to tune in because, ‘If they’re going to fight, I’m going to watch.’
But we shouldn’t.
Not anymore.
Not when we all know going in that it is a terrible idea and going to end poorly.
Not when tuning in this time increases the likelihood that something like this will happen again, with two more shopworn fighters who believe they’ve still got one or two more fights left in them.
Not when we spend countless hours talking about fighter safety and wanting what’s best for these athletes long term.
Here’s What I Don’t Get
How is it that folks will complain about every Saturday night UFC event from start to finish, but then spend a rare weekend where the UFC offering was in the morning watching a trainwreck of an event headlined by Liddell and Ortiz with mostly has-beens and never-weres (and Deron Winn) making up the remainder of the card?
As far as looking like a bunch of people who complain for the sake of complaining goes, this is about as clear as it gets.
I get not wanting to get up in the early morning hours on Saturday to catch the Beijing event live. I even understand if you weren’t all that psyched about the rest of the lineup outside of the main event and a couple other bouts, but if you’re going to spend multiple tweets bagging on the UFC seemingly every weekend for the events it’s putting together, there is no way in hell you should have stayed home to watch the terribleness that was Liddell-Ortiz 3.
This was your chance to have a night off — to see family and friends; to have dinner out; to do something other than spend your Saturday evening watching people punch each other in the face — and if you still opted to stay home and take in this mess featuring a bunch of washed names from the past and guys you’d never heard of before, please remember that when you want to flex your Twitter fingers to whine about the UFC running shows on back-to-back nights this weekend.
Yes, the overall quality of UFC events is down from previous years, but it remains vastly superior to events like this. Yet somehow, some way, there will be far more discussion about Liddell-Ortiz 3 in the next couple days than some of the excellent performances that took place inside the Octagon on Saturday morning in Beijing.
Plus, y’all paid $40 for this, but want to say that any UFC that isn’t loaded to the gills isn’t worth it?
I will never understand MMA fans.
Fight of the Weekend: Song Yadong def. Vince Morales by unanimous decision at UFC Beijing
This wasn’t the most action-packed affair, nor did it earn the bantamweights a bonus check as Fight of the Night; that honor went to Alex Morono and Kenan Song instead.
But eight to 12 months from now, when Song is still making steady progress up the bantamweight ladder, continuing to showcase the skills and confidence that already make him one of the more intriguing prospects in the division, this is going to be the fight people look back on as an early-defining moment in his career.
In his first two UFC appearances, the 20-year-old Chinese fighter encountered little resistance —choking out Bharat Khandare in the first round of his debut and stopping Felipe Arantes in the second during his sophomore outing. But Saturday night, Morales made him work for every 10-9 score that fell his way, proving to be a much tougher out than most anticipated and showing that he’s deserving of a spot on the roster.
These are the types of fights that are crucial as a young fighter works their way up the divisional ladder and while it didn’t feature as many clean power shots landing as the welterweight tilt between Morono and Kenan Song, it was more instructive and should hold up better in the long run.
Submission of the Weekend: Weili Zhang def. Jessica Aguilar by armbar at UFC Beijing
Let’s start with the actual setup and finish of this submission, because Zhang did a great job to switch from attacking with a triangle choke and elbows to securing the quick tap with the armbar, the tail end of which can be seen below:
A hometown showing!
— UFC (@ufc) November 24, 2018
Weili Zhang adds to the submission tally at #UFCBeijing! pic.twitter.com/Cmtc4CJpKZ
It was an outstanding, confident showing from the surging strawweight, who has now won both of her starts in the UFC and 18 straight fights overall.
But this finish also earns the SOTW honors because it showed just how talented and dangerous Zhang is. Aguilar is no joke and even though she’s a little older, the American Top Team veteran isn’t someone who just anyone is going to run through. Yet, the 29-year-old Chinese upstart did exactly that.
She had “Jag” cut and bleeding within a minute and was mauling her on the canvas with elbows from side control before attacking the triangle choke from mount.
After going the distance in a one-sided affair with Danielle Taylor in her promotional debut, this was an eye-opening performance from Zhang who needs to be on everyone’s radar as a potential threat in the strawweight division going forward.
Knockout of the Weekend: Francis Ngannou def. Curtis Blaydes by TKO at UFC Beijing
While there were more creative, devastating and flashy finishes this weekend, the thing that really stands out about Ngannou’s stoppage win over Blaydes and why it earns KOTW honors is that he didn’t really land flush.
If you watch the replay, Ngannou kind of catches Blaydes with a partially-blocked, glancing blow behind the ear and it still was forceful enough to put Blaydes down and leave him searching for a desperation single.
This wasn’t one of those ‘no doubt about it’ shots like the one he landed on Overeem that nearly took his head off. It was a series of clubbing blows that connected to various degrees as Blaydes looked to cover up and avoid catching one flush, yet it was still enough to rightfully prompt Marc Goddard to step in and stop the fight.
It’s crazy how people seemed to forget that Ngannou had ridiculous power and was very much capable of this. I know he looked terrible against Lewis and fought poorly against Miocic, but his win over Overeem was 11 months ago and he’s still a massive human being with ridiculous power in his hands.
He is always going to be capable of this.
This was your last reminder.
Prospect to Watch after this Weekend: Deron Winn (5-0)
The former two-time NJCAA national champion picked up the most impressive win of his career on Saturday, earning a clean sweep of the scorecards against Tom Lawlor on the main card of the Liddell-Ortiz 3 pay-per-view in Los Angeles.
While he’s had greater highlight reel performances, rolling in and getting the better of a veteran like Lawlor — even one who had been on the sidelines for the last two years — is a far greater accomplishment than running through Deven Fisher or Ahmed White. It was also a performance that validates the advanced praise being heaped upon the undefeated prospect.
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Generously listed at 5-8 in height, Winn is reminiscent of one of his chief training partners and mentors — UFC double champ Daniel Cormier — in that he’s undersized. Winn is still green, but you can see why people think highly of him. As much as fighting at middleweight would probably be a better fit for him, he’s acquitted himself well thus far and has the athletic pedigree to be able to use the advantages he gleans from being the smaller man in the cage to his benefit, much in the same way Cormier has done throughout his time competing at heavyweight.
Now, that’s not to say that Winn is eventually going to develop into a two-weight world champion, but it’s not out of the question that he strings together a few more quality wins and can start making a little noise in the light heavyweight division, either in the UFC or Bellator.
He’s a free agent after dispatching Lawlor and “DC” took to social media prior to Saturday’s contest to praise his young charge and let the UFC brass know that he wants to talk to them about Winn, so learning about him now and tracking his movements from here on out might be a good idea.
Because chances are that he signs with Bellator or the UFC in the next six months and it’s always better to know about the new guy ahead of time than to try and play catch-up.