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thesportssoundoff · 6 years

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“Is Brazil prepared for a Dragon, a Phenom, Rocky, an Alligator and potentially some good old fashioned Lineker violence?” UFC 224 Preview

Joey

May 7th

These long UFC breaks are a real sore, aren't they? After what feels like a much longer than it actually is week and change; the UFC returns and it's coming straight to PPV with a very...strange card. The main card isn't perfect by any stretch but it's a) good enough to be respectable and b) filled with everything you'd want for a modern day PPV except for the main ingredient I suppose. You've got a quality competent high level title fight, you've got a legends fight that's years in the making (since at least 2013 when Machida made his decision to drop to 185 known), you've got a guaranteed action fight brawl between John Lineker and Brian Kelleher, a phenomenal prospect getting the vaunted third fight treatment and a #1 contender fight at 185 lbs assuming that Chris Weidman's broken hand/shoulder/neck/knee/everything is still on the mend. From there though I think the card really suffers primarily from a lack of one big defining fight that can tie it all together and make it a deep card. It's fine; it's a Brazilian level UFC event. I feel like it could've benefitted from a Iuri Alcantara sighting basically or some Brazilian of a high level who you could see as a prelim headliner.

Fights: 13

Debuts: 0

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 0

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 7 (Amanda Nunes, Ronaldo Souza, Kelvin Gastelum, Lyoto Machida, John Lineker, Thales Leites, Cezar Ferreira)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 1 (Thales Leites)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 5 (Alberto Mina, Raquel Pennington, Amanda Nunes, Elizeu Zaleski, Nick Hein)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2016 (in the UFC): 25-9-2

Amanda Nunes- 4-0 Raquel Pennington- 3-0 Ronaldo Souza- 3-1 Kelvin Gastelum- 3-1-1 (really 4-1) Amanda Bobby Cooper- 2-2 Mackenzie Dern- 1-0 John Lineker- 4-1 Brian Kelleher- 3-1 Lyoto Machida- 1-1 Vitor Belfort- 1-2-1 (1-3 reaaaaaally)

Too High Up- Davi Ramos vs Nick Hein

In truth everything on the main card is pretty much what it should be. The prelims are such a grab bag of "decent but not thrilling" that it's hard to pick one fight that maybe has the capacity of being out of place. That belongs to this fight where Nick Hein returns from an extended absence to face Davi Ramos on the middle of the FS1 card. I have no beef with Davi Ramos but Hein is a notoriously slow boring fighter who more often than not has fights that tend to sap the will of viewers like they're trapped in a RNC. It's also worth pointing out that Hein is 33 and he hasn't fought since 2016. Put this on Fight Pass, man.

Too Low- Alberto Mina vs Ramazan Emeev

This is a touch hypocritical given Emeev stunk up the joint and Mina hasn’t fought in a year and change either. I get it but listen. Alberto Mina is a pretty fun fighter to watch who has finished 2 of his 3 UFC fights, racking up wins over Yoshihiro Akiyana and Mike Pyle if you're looking for "names" to get excited over. Ramazan Emeev is coming off a win at 185 lbs vs Sam Alvey in a dumb fight but Emeev is figured to be a fighter worth keeping an eye on at 170 lbs. It's a far more intriguing fight on paper than Hein/Ramos.

Stat Monitor for 2018: Debuting Fighters (Current number: 9-14):

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 10-4):

Second Fight (Current number: 12-12): James Bochnovic, Markus Perez, Ramazan Emeev, Karl Roberson, Mackenzie Dern

Cage Corrosion (Current number: 5-10): Alberto Mina, Sultan Aliev, Nick Hein, Raquel Pennington

Undefeated Fighters (Current number: 15-10): Mackenzie Dern, Karl Roberson, Alberto Mina

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- Let's talk about the card real quick, eh? Amanda Nunes is under 30 but she'll be over the dreaded "RB decline age" shortly. How many other Brazilian fighters on this card are under 30?

John Lineker- 27 Junior Albini- 27 Warrley Alves- 27 Markus Perez- 27

Now Mackenzie Dern is 25 years old but she was born in the United States. If you want to give her to Brazil for the sake of continuity then you're more than welcome to but the point remains. What's more? Albini is coming off a loss, Alves is 1-2 in his last 3 fights, Markus Perez is coming off a loss and while we all love Lineker, I feel like the ceiling on him at 125 and 135 lbs has been somewhat established. People make a lot of talk about the lack of Brazilian champions but that's not a massive problem. I was there in 2012 when everybody was panicking about the lack of American champions during the Brazilian boom period of MMA. The problem is Brazil lacks a fresh young core of new talents under 30 who can make waves in the UFC. I mean stop me if you've heard this one BUT the hope when the UFC decided to invest countless dollars into Brazil was that at some point they'd find, cultivate and develop a bumper crop of young stars for when Anderson, Shogun, Maia, Machida, the Nog Brothers and Vitor were gone. It hasn't happened yet and each attempt has been in vain. That's why Thomas Almeida was received with open arms; it's not JUST that dude was a tremendous fight finisher and all violence fighter. It's that his youth and upside made him a product they HAD to try and develop. It's why Paulo Costa's development as a fighter is so vital; the 27 year old middleweight is a glorified unicorn at this point. Brazil doesn't need one last glory run from guys who are already established. What they REALLY need to do is to find new guys who can carry the banner.

Now the rule of thumb as always is that it only takes one to do it. A fighter like Michael Bisping is considered to have opened the door for other fighters and then the door was reopened by Conor McGregor for European fighters. It's hard to find a Hawaiian fighter who didn't get into MMA through BJ Penn fandom. Fedor is probably more responsible for the current influx of tremendous Russian born fighters than anybody else. The hope is 5-10 years from now, Ronda Rousey's lasting impact on MMA isn't the million buy PPVs or the out of the cage wackiness but the hundreds of women she'll have influenced to get into MMA. There's no way to tell who it is and what it's going to take for it to happen. We've been waiting on Canada to find the heir to the GSP throne for quite some time now. Eventually a new fighter to capture the hearts and minds of the people will come----but time's ticking. Brazil isn't hopeless but it has to be getting to the point where the UFC is simply running out of draws for the market. No Nog, No Anderson, soon no Vitor, eventually no Maia, Werdum or Machida. Cyborg isn't going to be around for the UFC much longer either. The time for somebody to step up has NEVER been more immediate. Maybe this is why there's going to be a most convenient case of amnesia on where Mackenzie Dern was born.

2- There's an MMA fan theory I've seen on a few forums about the # of WMMA fights on a card relating to buyrate. The general feeling is that like flyweights, the more WMMA fights you have on a main card the less likely you are to pop a significant buyrate. I decided to go back to 2016 and take a peek at the rumored buyrates for shows with TWO WMMA fights on a card.

UFC 196 (Nunes/Shevchenko, Holm/Nunes)- 1.3 mil UFC 205 (Joanna/Karolina, Tate/Pennington)- 1.3 mil UFC 219 (Holm/Cyborg, Esparza/Gadelha)- 300K UFC 222 (Cyborg/Kunitskaya, Vieira/Zingano)- 260K

So obviously we're not blessed with a tremendous sample size. We've got four events here and two of them with McGregor as the headliner did McGregor level numbers. The other two? I mean they're not bad! Mighty Mouse would sell his gaming rig to headline a PPV that did that kind of scratch. A WMMA headliner outside of Ronda tend to do alright-ish I suppose. I mean Holm vs GDR did in the 200K+ range and again, that sort of number would be something Mighty Mouse would hunger for. I guess the point I'm trying to illustrate is that I don't think this card is DOA. So what MIGHT it draw? Well....we can start by acknowledging that Brazil is where PPV buyrates go to die. Outside of Ronda making a pinch hit appearance to spruce the market (and secure a new deal for the UFC), these shows normally top off around the low to mid 300Ks. Now in today's PPV market that sounds pretty damn fine but that was with Anderson Silva in the height of his GOATness headlining. Jose Aldo PPVs from Brazil routinely did awful bottom of the barrel type numbers. The last time the UFC did a PPV in Brazil; the general thought was that it topped off around the 250K+ range. Not awful of course but probably not the best either for a unification bout between Aldo and Holloway. This card is a lot better than people are giving it credit for but Nunes vs Shevchenko left a sour taste in people's mouths plus Amanda Nunes is just genuinely unpopular. In today's PPV market, it takes more than just a card of really good fights. It has to be "an event" more than just "a fight." If this card drops below 200K, I think that's probably a bad deal.

3- I feel like this is going to answer more questions than Nunes/Shevchenko II re: Amanda Nunes and her long term success going forward. If you drew up a fighter who could prey on the things that have been of woe to Nunes' success, it's a fighter who has SOME of the Rocky Pennington attributes. The sort of person who doesn't get overwhelmed by pressure, who can dish it out and take it in return, who hits surprisingly hard and relies on durability and patience. Pennington is really crude but she makes it work for her and she's one of those fighters who fights better when tired. Amanda Nunes has struggled with people who don't fold vs her pressure and her cardio remains a question until I see her in a fight where it's truly tested. Her vs Shevchenko was a low output high leverage staring contest which didn't really force her to exert much of anything. To this point, Nunes deserves fantastic credit for making sure cardio isn't an issue by just running through people. This is still a very unique test for her.

4- I just wish Pennington hadn't been gone for over a year. This year I started tracking performances of fighters who take more than a year off and the 5-10 number is not pretty. What's more; Nunes is arguably the best first round fighter in MMA today and so if Pennington is rusty (which she will be), she might not even get a chance to test what Nunes has in rounds 3, 4 and 5.

5- Kelvin Gastelum vs Jacare is such a weird fight for me. It's a fight where logic dictates Gastleum should have no shot given the size difference but one where he remains a credible threat. I lack a defined way to describe Jacare other than to call him perhaps history's most undervalued commodity; one of the best grapplers with really good striking backed by one of the games most active fight IQs. Like Damien Maia, he just isn't athletic enough to really get over a certain caliber of fighters. Guys who he can't get down he often struggles with and against Whittaker and Romero, he was taken out of his gameplan early due to a speed and athleticism disadvantage. Like Whittaker, Gastelum will give up size in exchange for speed and the cardio advantage. The key difference is Whittaker is insanely hard to get down and keep down whereas I can't get Weidman taking Gastelum down out of my head. Gastelum CAN be taken down but on the ground he's really great at neutralizing offense and getting back to his feet. I'm just not sure Jacare is the right person to want to try to show that off against. Jacare also does some of his best work securing takedowns against the cage and Gastelum does his best work practically leaning on the fence. This is a really good fight with the winner leaving no doubt as to who the #1 contender is since Chris Weidman has evaporated into the ether seemingly.

6- Have the expectations become too much for Mackenzie Dern? It's beginning to feel like if she doesn't steamroll ABC in the first round then the scrutiny on her performance is going to be pretty crazy.

7- It's a little bit bittersweet that Lyoto Machida vs Vitor Belfort is potentially a double retirement fight. The fact we never got Anderson vs Vitor II or Lyoto vs Shogun III will always be bummers to me. On the other hand, we've hit "No mas" for Vitor Belfort like a full two years ago and Machida is either at that point or quickly approaching it. This is a rare acceptable legends fight with the right market to engage in it.

8- Since they're fighting we might as well ask this; whose legacy is more vital to the history of MMA? Vitor Belfort or Lyoto Machida?

9- There are going to be actual human beings walking among us breathing our air and drinking our water who will not watch Lineker vs Kelleher based solely on their height and weight. These creatures exist.

10- If you haven't seen Yoshihiro Akiyama vs Alberto Mina yet, I recommend you do so. One of the wilder and crazier fights in recent memory which is forgotten since it happened at like 8 AM Eastern.

11- The best prospect on this entire show is not a Brazilian but an American in Karl Roberson. He trains out of a tiny gym in New Jersey, was thrown into the fire of kickboxing vs Jerome LeBanner and Dustin Jacoby and before his sixth mma fights, he was already in the UFC. After ONE fight in the UFC, he was already trying to step up to fight Vitor Befort on LESS than 24 hours notice. He's the rare good example of guys tested before they're ready in that he's already faced a fire storm and come out stronger each time. He's got Cezar Mutante in the FX prelim headliner.

12- Elizeu Zaleski has been in five UFC fights. Three of them won a FOTN bonus and the Dalby-Zeleski fight should've won a fourth. He is all action all the time and while Sean Strickland is not the right opponent if you want to have an action fight, I get the feeling Zaleski will drag him into one kicking and screaming.

Must Wins

1- Amanda Nunes

Simply put this show is all about her. She's getting a bit of a stay busy opponent in Pennington with the right kind of strengths to test what have previously been flaws for Nunes. The show is all about her and it's being built around her returning to Brazil as the UFC's top Brazilian champion (at least over the long haul).

2- Jacare Souza

Kelvin Gastelum is really young for 185 lbs so the opportunity to be a contender/champion is always going to be there for him. This is about 38 year old Jacare trying to finally get a UFC title shot after scrapping and scrounging for over five years in the org plus an MMA career that feels like it spans well into the 19th century. The last time he was this close; her an into a fighter similar to Kelvin Gastelum who wouldn't get taken down and just pieced him up in striking range until Jacare just couldn't take it anymore. Lightning strikes twice?

3- Mackenzie Dern

Take everything said about Nunes and then put that in here minus the champion bit. Dern is Brazil's top prospect for the UFC now that Thomas Almeida has sort of settled into a bit of a mid level range.

Five Can't Miss Fights

1- Brian Keller vs John Lineker

2- Lyoto Machida vs Vitor Belfort

3- Kelvin Gastelum vs Ronaldo Souza

4- Elizeu Zaleski vs Sean Strickland

5- Junior Albini vs his diaper

#MMA #UFC #FX #Nunes #Pennington #Jacare #Machida #Belfort #Gastelum #Lineker #Roberson

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thestickchick · 6 years

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Oh boy, a SUNDAY EDITION! Here's how my week of training, writing, teaching, and miscellaneous Filipino Martial Arts-y goodness went.

What have you been up to this week? WHAT I DID THIS WEEK: Saturday I attended a bo seminar by Sensei Dean Chapman. We worked on some basic drills that are more like Arnis drills than old-school one-steps. I got some nice pointers on striking that I thought was really helpful. Monday night I attended Arnis class at Hidden Sword. We worked on Anyos (forms) and empty hand applications from those forms. Tuesday younger kid was sick, so we stayed home. Wednesday I needed to stay home to pack for our out-of-town trip. Thursday Older Daughter and I drove to one of the two universities she's considering attending in the fall. It was a great trip, and this school is not far from my family, so I was able to see my mom, my uncle and aunt, and my cousin and her husband. FANTASTIC trip. If you're ever driving I-44 in Missouri, stop by Uranus in St. Robert (Uranus isn't a town -it's a destination). BLOG POSTS THIS WEEK (New or re-shared to social media): Monday: Punching Up Tuesday: Dancing With the Martial Arts Wednesday: BOOK REVIEW Modern Arnis: History & Practice (Mag Aaral) Thursday: The Question of Authority HELP THE CHICKIE OUT: I have goal for 2018 to get the Stick Chick Blog Facebook pages to 1000 likes. So please, if you're on Facebook, like the page, will ya (link is RIGHT HERE)? Share it with your friends who like the martial arts too? Pretty please?

OTHER STUFF THAT I SAW/DID: I remember, very clearly, being a newbie and watching people play tapi-tapi and thinking I'd never be able to do that.

My teacher wrote on HIS blog about my kobudo black belt test. Read his perspective HERE. Andrea Harkins wrote a couple of pieces this week I thought were interesting. First is this one, The Plight of the Martial Arts Woman, and then due to some big news for her, 6 Ways to Conquer Unexpected Change. As 2018 is going to be chock full of change for the Stick Chick (although most of mine is planned) I could relate! +Brian Johns announced he's moving his classes and schedule this week on his school blog: Moving On. If you or someone you know is near the Harmony Martial Arts Center check his classes out! And there's a new video at Enter the Dojo:

FINAL THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK:

I got back into town last night, so I'm just CHILLAXING today. It was a looonnngg trip. This week is going to be stupid busy. Not only do I have normal martial arts classes and Older Daughter's driver's license test, but next weekend I have three events: Friday night: TUSK Tomahawk Seminar with +Datu Hartman: TUSK Seminar Saturday and Sunday: WMAA Texas Camp: WMMA 2nd Annual Texas Camp And we're co-hosting Dr. +Dr. Tye W. Botting Sunday night: Dr. Tye Botting: Knife Intersections- Kung Fu and Arnis. I understand there's some sort of NFL game on, but since it's offseason for us Chiefs fans... I'll train instead. So what did YOU do this week? What did you train? What did you teach? Did you see any really cool martial arts stuff online? Let me know!

#IFTTT #Blogger #Budoblr #Martial Arts

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