A number of guys made exactly the adjustments necessarily to beat guys that their resume suggests they might not otherwise.
I expected Jury to win based on the strength of his resume but Fili utilized crisper boxing, less jumping/flailing/craziness to systematically pick apart Jury.
I expected Rivera to win based on his only having lost to Moraes in the UFC, but Sterling utilized aggressive/deep shots with kicks at range to keep Rivera on the backfoot from almost the beginning of their match.
Velasquez, coming off of a super long layoff claims his knee gave out as the fight began in the first 20 something seconds and you can see as he plants, pivotes, and rolls his body, his knee appears do give out. It's unfortunate timing, but also historically predictably as he's lost his previous fights that fit this scenario/coming off of a long layoff and he's in the most unpredictably division in the UFC: Heavyweight.
I expected that at 20 UFC fights to his credit, Caceres would opt to use more straight line kicks/push kicks and lead leg kicks to the quad to thwart Kron walking him down, but instead, Caceres kicked big/wide/circular and basically offered his back/bodylock to Kron. Kron strikes me as Demian Maia Lite, as he doens't have the deep shot/half-guard to pack transition backed chain wrestling that Maia does, nor the time spent honing his Muay Thai, so it remains to be seen when his game is thwarted by someone diligent enough to fight the correct/winning gameplan. Along the way though, I expect to see some great submission finishes and some solid JiuJitsu for MMA fighting.
Overall, a solid debut for UFC on ESPN. We had a submission, crisp striking at points, a last second stoppage by Luque over Barbarena (get those guys some $$) for some thrills, and a quick stoppage/injury or otherwise in the main event. I suspect the UFC wanted/was hoping for a quick/violent KO for a good HL reel afterward to start hyping Ngannou as a KO machine et cetera to lure in casual/previously uninitiated MMA fans, but whatevs.
This coming weekend we have the effort to bounce back from a stoppage loss by Gallagher, the Irish submission hunter in an otherwise forgettable Bellator card, and Blachowicz vesus Santos in another CTE/brain damage inducing bout for a UFC on ESPN headliner. On the same UFC card we have Gian Villante facing someone, and Struve vs Rogerio de Lima as well for all the brain cell sacrificing fighting styles.
March 2nd we have the reaaaaal deal double title fight UFC 235: "Picogram" Jones vs "Lionheart" Smith & Woodley vs Usman. The main card also features the UFC debut of Ben Askren vs Robbie Lawler, Tecia Torres, and Cody Garbrandt fighting someone not named TJ Dillashaw. On the prelims we have a real possible contender match (this is what I hate about the UFC...there's no linear sense of what this fight means...Zabit could win with impressive fashion and literally maybe fight for the belt in 18 months or.....not).....with Stephens facing Zabit Magomedsharipov, and Cirkunov vs Johnny Walker. Cirkunov has thus far only lost in the UFC to the names of Oezdemir & Teixeira, so it remains to be seen if Walker is amongst that upper echelon of dangerous strikers or is a guy who busts open lesser fighters for HL reel finishes and falters as the skill level rises. There's a big jump between the 10-20 level ranked guys of LHW and the guys ranked 5-10...and then there's the gap between the top 1, 2, and 3 guys. All in all, we'll plod along the next 2 weeks into the start of March for 2019.
I expected Jury to win based on the strength of his resume but Fili utilized crisper boxing, less jumping/flailing/craziness to systematically pick apart Jury.
I expected Rivera to win based on his only having lost to Moraes in the UFC, but Sterling utilized aggressive/deep shots with kicks at range to keep Rivera on the backfoot from almost the beginning of their match.
Velasquez, coming off of a super long layoff claims his knee gave out as the fight began in the first 20 something seconds and you can see as he plants, pivotes, and rolls his body, his knee appears do give out. It's unfortunate timing, but also historically predictably as he's lost his previous fights that fit this scenario/coming off of a long layoff and he's in the most unpredictably division in the UFC: Heavyweight.
I expected that at 20 UFC fights to his credit, Caceres would opt to use more straight line kicks/push kicks and lead leg kicks to the quad to thwart Kron walking him down, but instead, Caceres kicked big/wide/circular and basically offered his back/bodylock to Kron. Kron strikes me as Demian Maia Lite, as he doens't have the deep shot/half-guard to pack transition backed chain wrestling that Maia does, nor the time spent honing his Muay Thai, so it remains to be seen when his game is thwarted by someone diligent enough to fight the correct/winning gameplan. Along the way though, I expect to see some great submission finishes and some solid JiuJitsu for MMA fighting.
Overall, a solid debut for UFC on ESPN. We had a submission, crisp striking at points, a last second stoppage by Luque over Barbarena (get those guys some $$) for some thrills, and a quick stoppage/injury or otherwise in the main event. I suspect the UFC wanted/was hoping for a quick/violent KO for a good HL reel afterward to start hyping Ngannou as a KO machine et cetera to lure in casual/previously uninitiated MMA fans, but whatevs.
This coming weekend we have the effort to bounce back from a stoppage loss by Gallagher, the Irish submission hunter in an otherwise forgettable Bellator card, and Blachowicz vesus Santos in another CTE/brain damage inducing bout for a UFC on ESPN headliner. On the same UFC card we have Gian Villante facing someone, and Struve vs Rogerio de Lima as well for all the brain cell sacrificing fighting styles.
March 2nd we have the reaaaaal deal double title fight UFC 235: "Picogram" Jones vs "Lionheart" Smith & Woodley vs Usman. The main card also features the UFC debut of Ben Askren vs Robbie Lawler, Tecia Torres, and Cody Garbrandt fighting someone not named TJ Dillashaw. On the prelims we have a real possible contender match (this is what I hate about the UFC...there's no linear sense of what this fight means...Zabit could win with impressive fashion and literally maybe fight for the belt in 18 months or.....not).....with Stephens facing Zabit Magomedsharipov, and Cirkunov vs Johnny Walker. Cirkunov has thus far only lost in the UFC to the names of Oezdemir & Teixeira, so it remains to be seen if Walker is amongst that upper echelon of dangerous strikers or is a guy who busts open lesser fighters for HL reel finishes and falters as the skill level rises. There's a big jump between the 10-20 level ranked guys of LHW and the guys ranked 5-10...and then there's the gap between the top 1, 2, and 3 guys. All in all, we'll plod along the next 2 weeks into the start of March for 2019.
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