UFC 271: The Fight Site Staff Picks
Image courtesy of the UFC
UFC 271 marks the beginning of Israel Adesanya’s attempts to “lap” the division — like the other Nigerian champion a weight-class below him, there’s no one new left for “Stylebender”, and it puts him in the precarious position of having to outdo himself against fighters he already dealt with quite conclusively. While UFC 243 saw many expecting a rematch down the line between Adesanya and the champion he dethroned, the slick comfort of Adesanya’s devastating knockout was a convincing case that it wasn’t necessarily worth doing — and yet Robert Whittaker has defied all expectations. In a division where losing the belt has historically been a death knell for a fighter’s prime, “The Reaper” has won three dangerous fights in succession with more and more aplomb — setting the stage for a second chapter in MMA’s biggest Australia/New Zealand rivalry. The underdog Whittaker has the opportunity to win back the middleweight crown, redeeming his biggest loss and earning an opportunity to have a title reign less ill-fated than the first — whereas Adesanya can defend his belt for a fourth time and prove that he’s still a cut above the very best middleweight can offer him.
Underneath the huge main event, Houston’s February card has a bit more intrigue. Arguably the most interesting nontitle fight is an eliminator in the same division as the main event — a resurgent Derek Brunson looks to fight his way to another shot at Adesanya or Whittaker, having gone on the best streak of his career, with only power-punching contender Jared Cannonier in his way. In the co-main event, Australian heavyweight Tai Tuivasa gets another shot at the top after four straight KO wins — an impressive number, but one that pales in comparison to the career of his opponent, the UFC’s knockout king Derrick Lewis. The Fight Site MMA team have their predictions for how those three fights (and a few more) go — and ultimately, who leaves Texas with the middleweight championship in tow.
Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker 2
Iggy Schekelburger: Let’s wind back to the first fight, and outline the important points of improvement Whittaker would have to have been zeroed in on to have a better performance this time around:
It is now common knowledge that Rob was not exactly in the best frame of mind coming into the fight. It can be dismissed as an easy excuse, but your mental state matters when you fight — your decision-making skills can be easily impaired if your head’s not in it.
Rob overextended himself wildly to the point of breaking his stance entirely and putting his centreline right in front of Adesanya’s counters. This stands in sharp contrast to his initial entries, many of which have allowed Rob to beat Izzy to the punch and connect. Now, this could either be chalked up to impaired decision-making mentioned above, but a more compelling reason to me is that it’s just a side-effect of Rob’s blitzing karate-boxer style.
Rob did not pursue the targets that had been available to him, opting instead to chase after Izzy’s head, putting his own face in the way of Stylebender’s hooks. The targets that have been available to him were Izzy’s legs and his body, and he could have also found certain success with transitional offense in clinch exchanges.
One has to point out however, that Adesanya’s KO victory over Rob was not entirely a result of Whittaker being “not there” mentally, or a result of Rob fighting sub-optimally. Izzy is as good a cage general as they come above 155, and he consistently does a good job of winning advantageous positions against opponents who wish to chase him down. Izzy accomplishes this by having more nuanced footwork that allows him to counter within stance and circle off at the drop of a hat. Both Kelvin Gastelum and Paulo Costa have learned this the hard way, and they did not exactly barge into range face-first quite the same way Bobby did. Well, Kelvin did, but he also has a head made out of lead, and is deceptively quick, which allowed him to last for five rounds until Izzy took his lunch money.
Not entering range on Adesanya aggressively could also spell disaster as Adesanya can be quite content to enjoy his range advantage and kick Whittaker’s body, legs, and arms to pieces, thus either compelling Rob to chase and overextend again, or coerce him into passivity, leading to another devastating knockout, or a comfortable runaway unanimous decision respectively. Even the latter scenario could lead to Rob being knocked out as Adesanya’s straight punching and kicking game complement one another in a way where if Adesanya doesn’t simply cruise on a wide lead, he could bait Rob into making a committed slip and walk him onto a high kick — ironically one of Rob’s preferred damage setups.
Now Whittaker has expressed his appreciation for Jan Blachowicz’s performance against Adesanya in multiple interviews, and his recent outings against Darren Till, Jared Cannonier, and Kelvin Gastelum have convinced many that Robert “the Answer” Whittaker has a good chance at simply wrestlefucking Adesanya into oblivion, which is also a bit of a stretch, for the following reasons:
Robert Whittaker is not an enormous Polish man, so “simply sitting on him” is out of the question here. Moreover, he does not have the same range parity with Adesanya unlike Jan — this range parity allowed Blachowicz to jab with Israel comfortably, making Adesanya feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Robert Whittaker’s offensive wrestling prowess primarily shows itself in upper body tie-ups: the bodylock, over-under/double-under clinch exchanges, and the follow-up trips/throws from there. He did demonstrate several distinctly Frankie Edgar-esque looks against Darren Till by threatening a knee tap/high-C entry only to clatter Till with knees and punches, but that’s not exactly the same as grabbing someone and flipping them ass over tits.
Circling back to point #1, Robert is yet to demonstrate the kind of top game that would convince me that he can hold Adesanya down and beat him up. Many would point to the way Whittaker has embarrassed Kelvin Gastelum on the ground, but Gastelum is largely a non-entity off his back, preferring instead to wait until his opponent decides to advance/switch position, and then do a fat man roll or granby.
People have pointed to Whittaker’s improved boxing prowess, but as Sriram Muralidaran pointed out, that’s an incremental change, not a stylistic one. Robert still lives and dies by the Karate blitz, and his boxing shines much more clearly when his opponents come to him and allow Whittaker to play the out-in-the-open, neutral space jab-jab-counter game.
Now, if he were to again beat Adesanya to the punch on his entries and then extend the exchanges into something more favourable to him — largely by not leading with his face on follow-up shifting blitzes — we may just about have the markings of a much more competitive performance. What are the avenues available to Rob in this situation?
Punch the fucking body. Adesanya’s preferred defense against incoming striking offense is to lean back. Leaning back may bring your head out of an oncoming strike’s effective range, but you can’t exactly suck your spine backwards like a cartoon character. The legs also become a viable target for the same reasons. If Adesanya opts to circle off as Robert pressures (pressures, not chases), kicking the trailing leg also becomes a really good idea.
Tie up. Punch & Clutch is a highly underrated strategy for launching transitional offense, stifling a more potent pocket operator, and it’s just plain annoying to deal with. If Robert is so keen on utilizing a more cerebral gameplan and actually trying to MMA Adesanya and not just kickbox him, that’s the way to go.
Counter the counters. By far the most dangerous route but also one that would pay the highest dividends. If Robert is able to consistently enter range on Izzy, staying within stance and baiting hooks/uppercuts could be his ticket to cross-countering/left-hooking Adesanya’s face off. Adesanya’s not a bad pocket operator in first-layer and second-layer exchanges where he slips/leans back from a punch and goes nuts with 2-3s with a ton of stink on them, or baits a counter first and counters the counter. However, it’s been a long while since he faced someone who could hang in there with him, and on paper, Rob should be able to do that, because we saw him do that against many opponents prior to Izzy.
Will he be able to pull at least some of it off? Fuck knows, generally speaking huge sweeping gameplan adjustments of that sort rarely happen in MMA, and Whittaker is more of a “in-the-moment”, tactical type adjuster as opposed to a Volkanovski-type or a Prime Fedor-type strategist. Even if you take everything that I’ve written here into account, all in all not much has changed since the first clash between Izzy and Bobby. You could pretty much transplant me back into 2019, and I’d probably write the same thing anyway. And according to Rob himself, even he is not sure if he won’t just do the same goddamn thing all over again.
I’d like to note however that Adesanya’s weaknesses and the areas in which he could do well to improve are now much clearer. Takedown defense is the obvious one, but we have now seen several performances that could have been much improved if Izzy were to simply go “fuck it”, and just punch. His overreliance on the reads that he gains from constant feints made his performance against Yoel unbearable to watch, he lost the Jan fight for much the same reason, and his outing in the rematch against Vettori was just plain tepid. As Connor Reubusch has put it on many occasions: “If they don’t care about your feints, then just hit them, and then they’ll have something they can react to”.
Robert’s style seems to put a hard cap on how much he can exploit that particular habit, and I don’t expect him to suddenly come out looking like Juan Manuel Marquez and just box Izzy’s face off in the pocket, but I also don’t think there’s ever going to be a Middleweight in Izzy’s title reign more equipped to pull it off.
All in all, I’m fairly cynical as to Bobby’s prospects in the rematch for stylistic reasons, but nonetheless I’m choosing to be optimistic as I often do with fighters I enjoy, and give him a chance. I wouldn’t put money on it, but I’m picking Robert Whittaker by Decision.
Sriram Muralidaran: All of the above, basically. Except probably the pick, although I think it's a fair one. Initially, my impression of Whittaker/Adesanya 1 was pretty similar to that of a lot of people - Whittaker was jumpy off a long layoff, he fought a guy whose style was built to bring out the jumpiness in people, and Adesanya capitalized - but the Till fight showed some interesting things to me.
The first is that Whittaker is simultaneously very uncomfortable and very committed at chasing guys down when they try to deny his entries in space - and if Till being big and backing straight up annoyed Whittaker into breaking stance so much, Adesanya's precise distancing and the way he broke the line was bound to do the same. The first fight showed that Whittaker could close distance by jabbing in, but even that wasn't always safe, as Whittaker's springy mechanics left his weight committed in one direction and Adesanya would be angling off while intercepting him. The second thing, though, is that Whittaker isn't necessarily married to this approach; when Till got him early, Whittaker didn't exactly cut out the crazy feet, but he leaned more on sharp transitional work and kicking the trailing leg. While Cannonier is comfortably the best opponent of Whittaker's current winstreak, Till is easily the most instructive when it comes to how Whittaker might need to approach a fight where bursting in ahead of his feet isn't viable, and he didn't love it but he also didn't lose.
The obvious problem, of course, is that the comparison has massive limits. The biggest one is the primary consideration going into Adesanya/Whittaker 1 - Israel's kicking game likely leaves Whittaker in a bit of a catch-22. When Whittaker's positioning isn't destroyed on entry, his defense in the pocket is immaculate and he's a very clever boxer - but patiently pressuring Adesanya isn't historically in his wheelhouse, and playing a rangier kicking game to get Adesanya to cover distance (where Whittaker had success on the counter in fight 1) raises the problem of Adesanya probably not having to. Whittaker's kick defense looked better than I remembered in Adesanya 1, he was diligent in dissuading and defusing the outside leg kicks, but Adesanya also only didn't get the opportunity to play and punch off them because Whittaker was so busy making big explosive entries (which is what lost him the fight). If Whittaker had the kick defense of a far worse fighter in Jan Blachowicz, I think he could play the counterpunching game better than Blachowicz did - but his side-on stance and inconsistency dealing with the low kick makes it hard to bet on.
The previous entry captured most of my thoughts otherwise. Whittaker punching into body or leg kicks would definitely be a good idea with Adesanya's big leans (and he's done it before, in Gastelum and Till), as would being content with shorter exchanges and counters that keep him in his stance (instead of finding a counter-jab clean only to punch with Izzy from a bad angle to get killed, as he did in the first fight). I feel like Whittaker is too doggedly aggressive (in a good way, in most cases) to reliably pursue the latter - but he's shown an ability to make mid-fight adjustments in fights like Romero 1 / 2 and Till that I'm not sure Adesanya has shown when he was annoyed against Romero and Vettori. I honestly think the wrestling might look like a nonstarter - Adesanya is freakishly strong and long for a 185er, and Whittaker's takedown setups usually hinge on building off his punch entries, so his best looks probably only show up if he's winning anyway. It comes down to whether Whittaker makes the right adjustments on the feet, I think, and (as much as I'd like to fully trust him) I'd need to see it first. I trust Whittaker to show up sharp and to have thought about the fight, enough to have a better performance than 243 - and I think he's broadly a better fighter than Adesanya, in fact - but the style matchup seems very hard for even the best kickable blitzer to overcome. Adesanya by UD.
Christian Reynolds: I think Bobby will put up a good effort with a handful of decent newer ideas of how to catch Israel fading out of range, but eventually succumb to the same things that lost him the first fight. I don't expect Adesanya to come in as patient as he has been fighting recently, and am picking Adesanya by 1st round KO.
Dan Albert: I did not read my colleagues’ dissertations above, so forgive me if there are repeats.
I think starting with a review of why Adesanya is a difficult matchup for Whittaker is best here. For one thing, a good deal of Whittaker’s game is built into setups at distance that are executed through blitzes. If he isn’t doing that, Whittaker is attempting to draw opponents into his counterpunching. Both games are facilitated through his jab and double threats with the kicks. In an open-stance matchup, Whittaker is particularly merciless at ripping his opponent’s ribs up with his body attack and closing the door on them with check hooks. And yet, the problem with Adesanya remains that these two phases lend themselves to Adesanya’s game more. If Adesanya has a modus operandi, it’s that he’s a sniper. What are a sniper’s greatest strengths? At distance, they manipulate your expectations and attack you there; Adesanya accomplishes this through a plethora of feints and a dangerous kicking game. Suppose then, you attempt to close the distance on Adesanya? Too much aggression will be met with counters – and no one at middleweight can punish overaggression as well as the current middleweight champion. For Whittaker, whose kick defense is questionable, he would need a way to have threats for Adesanya at distance that he doesn’t have because his kicking game is less versatile (i.e. suited to handle aggressive threats and not ranged ones). The other issue is that, if Whittaker isn’t disguising his blitzes or chaining them into other tools – e.g. that wrestling game people keep wanting him to have here – he’s going to run into the same problems as fight no. 1: Adesanya’s positioning in exchanges wasn’t the best either, but the difference everytime was that he knew when Whittaker’s blitzes were going to end and that Whittaker was going to throw and lose his stance in the process. Drop-step shovel counters followed subsequently.
Robert Whittaker is, genuinely, a great technician, though I’ve never been sold on him as a fighter who approaches his fights with a grander strategic focus. Instead, he seems like he has to figure out how to fight them as each one goes along. And, if he can’t find easy ways to get his way, he’ll push to the point that he gets reckless and meets counters in the process – that is, Whittaker can be defensively sound too, though he’s inconsistent and undisciplined with it and will find himself running into unfavorable exchanges and getting punished instead of repositioning. The attention to a non-striking specific game is a good sign for Whittaker, though with the concerns I personally have about his history of overtraining and injury – and the seemingly increasing frequency to which he is getting hurt midfight – I worry these changes are possibly a bit too late or, at the least, too big a stylistic change for what kind of fighter he seems to be at this point to overcome a hard matchup.
I think very highly of Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya as fighters and think neither is better than the other relative to other fighters, but the fact remains that Adesanya is a demonstrably difficult fight for Whittaker until the latter can improve his ringcraft and mixups. Adesanya isn’t infallible either, especially with his own tendencies to be overaggressive and need for constant input (e.g. through framing, feints, etc.) and this isn’t an impossible win for Whittaker to pull off. I’m not really the person to talk about ways Whittaker can win this one; however, to pick him, I’d need to see a lot of these improvements coming together. He’s walking a tightrope here and I don’t think it’s one he’s able to without punishing Adesanya’s own ringcraft flaws on the backfoot. Adesanya by third round TKO.
Silas Martin: Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker II is a rematch which I find it hard to see going drastically different to the first time, due to the incredibly difficult style matchup for Robert Whittaker. One broad tactical adjustment I believe Whittaker should invest in is simply being happy with taking smaller victories in exchanges. In the first fight, Whittaker would frequently beat Adesanya to the punch on his initial blitz, but would repeatedly double down on the exchange and give Adesanya opportunities to set up check-mate foot positions in the pocket and knock Whittaker out. There is also reason to believe Whittaker may invest more in his wrestling in this match, which could be good for giving Adesanya another look to worry about as well as making him work but it seems unlikely that Whittaker would be able to mount serious damage or a submission on the ground. Despite all that I am picking Bobby Knuckles by decision because he seems like a nice bloke.
Haxxorized: To avoid retreading on everyone else's points:
Firstly, both fighters have appeared fragile to me in specific ways. In Rob's case, he looked fragile in 'fighting' terms, with constant injuries, time off fights, the gradual accumulation of wars - these factors have all taken their toll and given me a reason to worry. It is not that Whittaker's chin has gone - rounded performances against Till/Gastelum/Cannonier demonstrated a renewed strength, durability and consistency that reflects his return to a sane training schedule. Whittaker instead always seems to end up injured or fragile in some way during a fight, and that will force him to operate on thin margins against one of the best strikers in the sport.
In contrast, I genuinely believe that Izzy's style is fragile. Give Izzy the reads and space to establish his feinting game and witness some of the most one-sided beatings in the sport. Equally so, fights against Jan/Romero have demonstrated how much Izzy relies on early feinting success and baiting activity to build the reads his defensive preferences need. Likewise, Vettori/Jan highlighted transitional threats do a lot to neuter Izzy's willingness to throw, reducing him to longer stretches of inactivity than he would like. Izzy did enough to win two of these fights, but they were uglier, and Romero/Jan anything but decisive.
Two clashing types of fragility make for a matchup where both fighters have clear areas to attack. Whittaker can use the threat of wrestling, hunt engagements past Izzy's first or second layer in the pocket, counter-kick, or even use stretches of inactivity to pick his moments. Izzy is fully capable of staying disciplined and intelligent for five rounds, keeping up activity to win while hunting fight-changing counters. However, the tripartite of Vettori/Jan/Romero fights had some combination of sheer power/wrestling threat/range/durability that Whittaker does not have, and here lies the first indicator of his likely problems.
To find success here, Whittaker must address Izzy’s advantages of durability and range. The danger for Rob lies in how he traditionally has done that - his bounding style, his offensive wrestling approach, his preference for activity and building over picking or creating single moments. I won't repeat a deeper analysis of how that all works - the other predictions cover the minutiae. In a broad sense, the things Rob does the best play into approaches Izzy is most comfortable countering out of the box. A shorter guy who blitzes well is much more of an Izzy "ideal" than a harder-hitting Pole with something approaching range parity and 15 pounds up in size, or an immovable Cuban golem. That makes it an uphill fight for Rob here - doubly so when his past fragility leaves him with even thinner margins to face down an excellent opponent.
Ben: Amazing stuff from my colleagues above. I won’t add too much. I’m going with Israel Adesanya by Unanimous Decision. I think Rob will be able to control his blitzing entries more effectively, and employ a more tactically aggressive approach. This will give Adesanya more space and time to build his reads over time. Whittaker is very capable as an adjuster, so it’s not a lock that Adesanya pulls away in the later rounds. I think this will be a much closer fight than the first, and we’ll get to see one of the better MW title fights ever.
Derrick Lewis vs. Tai Tuivasa
Iggy: Having Lewis vs. Tuivasa as your co-main is embarrassing, but whatever, we’re all used to it. Tuivasa is enough of a wildman to actually try and exchange with Lewis, so we may just about get a fun slopfest for our troubles. Tai Tuivasa has sort of won me over by starching that fucker Greg Hardy, so I’m hoping he doesn’t do the same thing a lot of Derrick Lewis opponents do and just stare at him. Picking Lewis by KO, however, Tai Tuivasa being crazy enough to exchange with the Black Beast being the reason.
Sriram: ...Interesting? Not the second-best fight on the card, so this is less an indictment on the card and more on the people making the bout orders, but it's a Houston event so it's easy to see why it panned out this way. Obvious read is that Tuivasa isn't durable enough (as seen by the JDS loss) to just march Lewis down like he does most other opponents, and I don't think he has another way to fight. That said, I have been wondering what happens if Lewis does his weird early-fight possuming against someone whose entire skillset is putting combinations on people who are pinned against the fence. On presumption, nevertheless, Lewis by KO.
Christian: I think Tai will tool Lewis up and pressure well but eventually get knocked out. Lewis by 3rd round flying knee KO.
Dan: Tai Tuivasa attacks aggressively and urgently against the fence, is a willing hitter, and has some mixups behind a handfight to set up kicks. On the other hand, he’s also very easy to counter. Derrick Lewis finishes tend to happen because he looks for that one moment to counter and Tuivasa is going to give him those chances. Lewis by the usual Lewis KO, but hopefully they share a shooey afterwards out of solidarity.
Silas: Derrick Lewis vs. Tai Tuivasa is an absolute mess but it should be a fun mess. Tuivasa has never fought tentatively as if he is scared of his opponent’s power and he will be aggressively pressuring from the first bell while Derrick Lewis lets him do that and looks to land single huge kill-shots. Tuivasa’s completely lack of any regard for his own safety is likely to get him knocked out by a puncher as insanely powerful as Lewis but If Tuivasa can get off some good attritional damage with low kicks and body work, he could grind out an attritional stoppage over 3 rounds.
Ben: This is going to be fun. Tai will be willing to engage with Lewis, and historically Lewis has actually been beaten more often than on the ground. I’m just not sure if Tai is durable enough to ate the shots in the exchanges. For that reason, I’ll go with Derrick Lewis KO round 1.
Jared Cannonier vs. Derek Brunson
Sriram: I like this fight, it's weird in a fun way. Middleweight still has a clear and small elite tier - 100% of it is in the main event - but the big historical issue with 185 was that the sub-elite was mostly incredibly uninspiring; in the last few years, Cannonier and Brunson have established themselves as solid hands in the upper-mid tier of middleweight while making steady improvements. I'm not sure either one is particularly compelling against the title fight participants, but they'll make a good go of it and that's all the middleweight division really needs.
Far more familiar with Cannonier's skillset than Brunson's, so it'll probably be easiest to just go into the matchup - and the summary is that I think the onus is probably on Brunson to make his fight happen. Cannonier's takedown defense is not great, but at middleweight, he's benefited greatly from being insanely strong and having good balance - and while Brunson's strength in wrestling situations could make that a tricky route, I expect Brunson's big lifts to suffer with another insanely strong guy too. There are good things and bad things to take away from Cannonier's fight against Glover Teixeira - Cannonier's TDD looked awful, but he was composed and competent from the bottom, and the weight change makes me think the former becomes less relevant than the latter.
The tricky part for Brunson in simply turning the fight into a grinding ordeal for Cannonier is that his striking is still fairly messy. Cannonier isn't a virtuoso or anything, but he's developed into quite a competent counterpuncher who's hard to back up without paying for it; Gastelum wasn't unable to shock Cannonier with speed, but his entries ran into Cannonier angling off and blasting him more and more as the fight continued. Brunson's preference for hanging outside punching range and running into engagements poses obvious problems here, and also in another area; Cannonier isn't a particularly nuanced kicker, but he's a very hard kicker who understands that he'll probably get the attempts for free more often than not. Unlike Darren Till, I don't expect Cannonier to get run to the fence with so much ease and consistency, and Brunson appears to have fewer safe spots in the fight as a result. One of those fights that could look incredibly one-sided no matter who wins, but I'll go with Cannonier by KO2.
Christian: I think Cannonier will negate all of Brunson’s skill advantages in wrestling with raw strength, and probably knock out Brunson with a counter early in the 2nd round. Though Brunson is definitely in the fight, it just seems like a tough hill to climb. Cannonier by KO 2nd round.
Dan: The quintessential mid-division having an interesting contender fight between perpetually-panicked striker and technically-the-only-wrestler-in-the-entirety-of-middleweight (what?) Derek Brunson and the division’s now-residential-opportunist-power-puncher whose source of power lies in conspiracy (also what?) Jared Cannonier?
Cannonier isn’t exactly the easiest to get a read on, though I suspect he’s all about rhythm and capitalizing upon mistakes as thoroughly as he can (hell, the man dropped Gastelum). The downside to Cannonier’s game is a bit damning though. He has a tendency to treat many exchanges as a “my turn, wait for my next turn” kind of game without the defensive depth to really match. Although he kept Robert Whittaker honest and Kelvin Gastelum at bay with his counters, he spent too much time attempting to lure them into a rhythm that wasn’t there and, subsequently, allowed them to either control the fight, at worst, or fight their way back into it, at best. His opponent, Brunson, who will never be fully comfortable against better strikers, does have his route to work with here. If he can take advantage of Cannonier’s passivity and establish his own mixups to get Cannonier to the cage for wrestling exchanges, the less he’s likely to run into counters as he did half a decade ago. Cannonier’s takedown defense, in this writer’s opinion, hasn’t exactly impressed, but Brunson also hasn’t really been that dominant a top player either.
When it comes to margins here, I have to lean towards Cannonier by an early stoppage here. Brunson’s tendency to overreact to even the slightest of feints against lesser strikers is a big concern versus someone who will take and capitalize on an opening like Cannonier can. This is a winnable fight for Brunson, though he’s going to need to get this fight grounded and under control or he’s going to eat the shot that puts him down.
Silas: Jared Cannonier vs. Derek Brunson seems like a match-up in which Brunson could be doing very well until he very suddenly loses the fight. Jared Cannonier’s defensive wrestling liabilities have been less of an issue at middleweight, where he is an incredibly imposing physical force but Derek Brunson has often been the man to show up the overall level of wrestling at middleweight, and is himself a very physically strong and powerful athlete. However, Brunson is not the deepest positional control grappler and Cannonier has shown he is perfectly competent at working to his feet along the cage when he does give up takedowns. So if Brunson is not able to finish Cannonier on the ground or control him for three rounds, he is going to be spending long stretches on the feet with the much quicker and mechanically efficient power puncher who has a great eye for countering openings which will likely get Derek Brunson knocked out some time in the second or third round. Cannonier.
Haxx: A fun test of one of the Simon Amorim boi-squad at play here. Brunson has shown laudable growth into a cannier veteran with a real sense of pace as a mixed threat yet remains jank and very hittable. Cannonier hits hard, understands why kicking like a mule is a threat and is very strong for the division. A factor at play will be how well Brunson's composure and discipline hold up if his initial wrestling offerings do not establish a threat beyond the takedown - he stalls out on the ground or lets Cannonier back up cheaply. Hitting the body feels meaningful for either fighter, yet both will expose themselves to some real counter-fire if they do it. With Brunson's path to victory enforcing a battle of endurance and Cannonier having more than enough power to make him pay for it, this should be explosive. I lean to Cannonier having an edge and hope the winner doesn't get screwed out of a title fight soon.
Ben: Brunson’s definitely improved. He’ll likely hang at range for a bit trying to land kicks from the outside. If Cannonier hangs out at kicking range, than this phase will end when one of two things occurs.
1) Cannonier starts outkicking Brunson, landing more powerful kicks.
2) He gets annoyed and starts walking Brunson down.
Brunson will start blitzing forward, either to scare Cannonier off or push him back to the cage to work takedowns. This will probably work a few times, and I can see Brunson winning round one using these tactics. But I think Cannonier will get his reads and starting countering him in those moments of leaping across space. Jared Cannonier via KO round 2.
Kyler Phillips vs. Marcelo Rojo
Christian: Phillips has nice shot selection and Rojo is very hittable. I expect Rojo to get frustrated by Phillips feinting and leading him onto power shots off the back foot, eventually leading to Rojo giving chase and running into a counter. Phillips KO 2nd round.
Silas: Kyler Phillips vs. Marcello Rojo seems like something of an IQ test fight for Phillips, but is one where he will really have to mind his Ps and Qs. The out-boxing performance Phillips showed to beat Song Yadong seems like a great approach to diffuse a somewhat limited and slow-footed pressure fighter in Rojo, particularly including Phillips’ ability to shoot reactive takedowns to alleviate pressure. However, if Phillips gasses himself out going for a highlight reel KO like in his fight against Raulian Paiva, he is going to be in there with a very tough and offensively dynamic fighter who typically invests in a tone of body work. So, while it seems like Phillips’ fight to lose, it is one where he is going to have to stay very disciplined and consistent against such a dangerous opportunist.
Sriram: Decidedly the fight I have the least to say on, but it’s definitely not a bad one — just action-fightery and probably a mess, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Kyler Phillips is a very strong athlete with some underrated boxing upside in terms of counters, but his entire game is incredibly energy-intensive — nearly all his offense outside of a limited jab is a shift meant to carry him halfway across the ring, or a spin. Against a much more economical and efficient fighter in Paiva, Phillips’ mortal gas tank and a game not built around limiting pace (either with power or wrestling) cost him — but not before a round dominant enough to throw the whole fight into doubt. Marcelo Rojo is a bit harder to get a read on, as his debut was against featherweight firecracker Charles Jourdain — and he did do a solid job early pushing Jourdain back and punishing his exits with bodywork, but there’s not really a reason to trust him on too many dimensions. I’m rooting for Rojo in that Phillips’ style makes next to no sense to me, but I’d be lying if I were to deny that his athletic upside alone makes him hard to pick against in a fight with so many unknowns. Past the first frame, I think Rojo is cagey and brawly enough to get things done, but on presumption, Phillips via KO1.
Ben: Phillips via 2nd round submission.
Bobby Green vs. Nasrat Haqparast
Iggy: Haqparast seems to be the kind of prospect that’s tailor-made for Bobby Green to look cool against. Harparast is quick and dangerous, but while he may look like Kelvin Gastelum, and fight sort of like Kelvin Gastelum, he’s not impervious to bodily harm like Kelvin Gastelum — as seen in his loss to Drew Dober. Dropping a dominant decision to Dan Hooker who came in with “like three good ideas” (©Simon Amorim) is also pretty shocking.
Bobby Green is very defensively savvy, even though he does suffer from the “cool man defense” syndrome where he rolls with like five punches in a row and instead of countering any of those he goes “Goddamn, did you see that?”, but Haqparast is precisely the type of guy to play into it. Bobby Green by Decision.
Sriram: Pressurey Haqparast would've been really cool here - he had a real talent for cutting off exits and a high workrate, and Masvidal-ing himself out of wins against people with that sort of urgency isn't exactly foreign to Green. A crowding southpaw puncher has taken him out before, after all. But Haqparast seems to have defaulted to being more of a backfoot fighter since the Dober loss, and it feels like the wrong adjustment to make - especially against Hooker, it seemed like he had one sneaky combination and nothing else to cover distance, so he just got kicked and clinched a lot. Expect Green to put on his pecking kick volume, and not get outworked by a Haqparast who's conceding the ring and looking for counter openings against a guy with super sharp eyes and crazy durability. Green by UD.
Christian: Bobby Green is always gonna be hard to hit clean regardless of how nice someone's offensive looks seem to be, so though I think Nasrat has the potential to get a decision with a slight bit more activity than Bobby, I don't expect him to find any meaningful moments in the fight, so I’m picking Bobby to build up enough attrition on Haqparast to get a finish late. Green by KO 3rd round.
Silas: Bobby Green vs. Nasrat Haqparast seems like a perfect showcase for Bobby Green’s very deep and fun skill-set. Haqparast is a fantastic athlete but has never shown the ability to adjust the angle and tempo of his entries necessary to work around Bobby Green’s defense. I think we are going to see a lot of Haqprast bursting across distance with huge left hands and Green rolling and deflecting the majority of them, while jabbing Haqparast at will. All of this plus Bobby Green’s iron-clad defensive grappling and absurd physical toughness, makes this a very difficult night at the office for Nasrat Haqparast, in my opinion. However, if Haqparast stays aggressive and Bobby Green falls back on his old bad habit of focusing too much on defense while not consistently countering off of it, then it is not out of the question that Haqparast may win a robbery split decision, since it is still a Bobby Green fight.
Ben: Haqparast is going to fight off the back foot again, and Green will most likely win that long range kicking battle, an underrated part of his game. I think Haqparast will end up feeling a need to up the aggression, extending exchanges as time goes on. He’ll be in Green’s wheelhouse when that happens. The one good thing here for Haqparast is that Green can, and has been many times, been caught very clean on fast entries with power shots from prior opponents. His durability is insane, but definitely something to note. Official pick is Bobby Green via KO round 3, but that first shot early on will be key for Haqparast to win.