So another UFC – Fight Night 107, the first event in London since February 2016’s Bisping vs. Silva card – is in the books, and as per usual with UFC events in 2017, it was somewhat of a mixed bag.
The crowd certainly loved the event, despite what was a bit of a maligned main event on paper.
For me, Fight Pass is the perfect place for these cards and while it’s frustrating for the local fans to not see what you’d call are the UFC’s biggest stars, Manuwa vs. Anderson wasn’t that bad in a year when WME-IMG are offering us stuff like Swanson vs. Lobov as a main event.
At any rate, here are the Best and Worst moments from the show, starting with the best, because everyone likes positivity, right?
#1 Best: Manuwa’s knockout creates a contender at 205lbs
The finish to last night’s main event was definitely one of the highest points of the card.
With the main event hardly being a highly-anticipated fight by the fans not in attendance, a slow-paced fight would’ve been a real downer for the UFC. Instead, local favourite Jimi Manuwa delivered in spades, knocking out Corey Anderson in the first round with an unbelievably brutal left hook.
Manuwa had barely thrown a strike to that point, choosing to stay in the centre of the cage while Anderson moved around the outside. The big question was how Jimi would react to the former Division I wrestler’s takedown game, but one attempt was all that Anderson was allowed to try.
Jimi stuffed the takedown and then stunned Anderson with a sneaky shot to the temple. Anderson kept his best poker face, but evidently, Manuwa realised that he had his opponent hurt, and an incredible left hook then left the former TUF champion unconscious.
Also read: 5 fighters that are notorious for pulling out of fights
It was a walk-off knockout Mark Hunt would’ve been proud of.
The victory puts Manuwa on a two-fight win streak, with both wins coming by highlight-reel knockouts. Post-fight, he called out the winner of the upcoming Cormier/Johnson title fight and while it’d be tricky to give him a shot if Rumble were to win, he’d definitely be a fresh opponent for Cormier.
If a title shot isn’t in his immediate future – Jon Jones may be waiting in the wings. Then, the winner of the upcoming Gustafsson/Teixeira fight could be next. The UFC could also book the Shogun-Rua fight that was cancelled back in 2014 when Manuwa was injured.
Regardless of how he’s booked next, Manuwa’s win makes him a new, viable contender in a division that’s crying out for them right now. This makes his win last night a massive bonus for the UFC.
#1 Worst: Weight-cutting issues raise their head again
A documentary was screened in the UK last week profiling Bellator’s Dean Garnett and his weight cut for a fight at Bellator 158 last year. As someone who’s never cut weight before, to me, the process looked scary and downright dangerous.
It’s quite telling that in the same week, we had Ian Entwistle have to drop out of his fight last night with Brett Johns due to implications from his weight cut. Entwistle missed weight by four pounds and was deemed incapable to fight just hours before the show.
It wasn’t the only fight cancelled on late notice – Tom Breese vs. Oluwale Bamgbose was also scrapped, but Breese’s issues apparently aren’t anything to do with weight cutting.
Entwistle has since announced his retirement on Facebook, outright stating that weight cutting has given him some serious health issues that he needs to fix.
The documentary detailed the issues that weight cutting can cause with the liver and the kidneys and mentioned that fighters have died due to bad cuts recently, albeit not in the UFC or Bellator.
How close Entwistle was to becoming the first we don’t know. Thankfully, the worst case scenario didn’t happen, but how long will it be before it does?
For me, someone needs to start properly regulating weight cutting as soon as possible to avoid the inevitable tragedy that could occur at any time.
#2 Best: Is Nelson living up to his potential?
After losing in a largely one-sided effort against Demian Maia, it felt like Gunnar Nelson was losing a lot of the lustre that he had as a top prospect.
His reputation had already taken a bit of a kicking when he lost to Rick Story – a fringe contender, no offence – but being dummied by Maia in the grappling realm, supposedly where Nelson was strongest, really didn’t look good, even if Maia’s grappling is basically unmatched in MMA.
A strong win over Albert Tumenov last year – when Tumenov was considered a top ten fighter – helped him to regain some of his lost mojo, but last night’s win over Alan Jouban was even better.
Nelson was expected to have an advantage over the model on the ground, and sure enough, he took the first round with aplomb, dominating Jouban from the top after he got a takedown. The second round, though, was more impressive.
Avoiding an aggressive rush from Jouban with some slick head movement, Nelson countered with a picture-perfect right hand that stunned ‘Brahma’ and practically knocked him down. Gunni’s shown striking power before, but the accuracy here was jaw-dropping. Most impressive was how Nelson followed up, though.
Often we see fighters jump onto a downed fighter with a submission attempt, but often it backfires too – see Tyron Woodley in the first Stephen Thompson fight for instance. Nelson, though, is a different animal on the ground, particularly when he has an opponent stunned.
In this instance, Jouban was tapping seconds later to a tight high-elbow guillotine.
With Welterweight losing Lorenz Larkin to Bellator, and a bit of a dearth of contenders at the top due to various issues, Nelson could easily find himself in title contention if he can keep performing like this.
#2 Worst: Why are the UFC letting Joe Duffy go?
So last night’s win over Reza Madadi wasn’t Joe Duffy’s most impressive, but he did show improved takedown defence and for the most part he was able to carve the Iranian-Swedish fighter up with his striking.
The win puts him at 4-1 in his UFC career but it’s likely the fight will be his last inside the Octagon. Why?
Apparently, WME-IMG don’t agree with Duffy on how much he’s worth exactly. So they’re willing to let him walk to a rival promoter like Bellator, just as they’ve let Lorenz Larkin, Rory MacDonald and Ryan Bader walk too.
It doesn’t make sense to me. I get that they’re looking to recoup the massive $4 billion that they paid for the company, but the UFC made its name by putting the best fighters against the best fighters, not letting half of them walk away to competitors.
Duffy is marketable, well-spoken, puts on exciting fights, oh, and he has a pre-UFC win over Conor McGregor. He seems exactly like the sort of fighter any half-decent promoter would give their eye teeth to have on their roster and yet UFC’s current owners don’t seem to care.
Unless Duffy is making crazy demands – like making millions per fight or demanding a cut of PPV profits for instance – I don’t see why the UFC can’t open the purse strings and just pay him what he wants. After all, if Scott Coker and Bellator can afford him, then surely the juggernaut that the UFC is can?
He’s too good to be allowed to simply walk away.
#3 Best: Knockout of the year?
British striker Marc Diakiese was receiving some attention coming into the event largely because of his own doing.
Not many fighters would be willing to pose for a gay magazine, and by doing so, Diakiese has helped to break down a lot of stereotypes about MMA. He’s obviously a confident, charismatic fighter and having two impressive wins in his early UFC career helps, too.
Well, now he has three.
Most analysts were picking Diakiese to defeat Finland’s Teemu Packalen, but I don’t think anyone could’ve expected that it’d look that good.
After a couple of glancing blows via flashy kicks, Diakiese caught Packalen with a clean right hand, stiffening him up before he even hit the ground and causing him to fall in a comical, slow-motion fashion. It might’ve been the best knockout of 2017 thus far.
Years ago, hitting a knockout like that on an untelevised prelim would’ve been a little frustrating as only the live crowd would’ve seen it, but in 2017, that sort of thing doesn’t really matter. Not when Instagram and Twitter clips of the shot are able to go viral within seconds thanks to the UFC’s official accounts.
Diakiese cut a charismatic promo post-fight signalling that he’s ready for the big time. Whether that’s really the case is another thing entirely, but he’s probably got the promotional muscle behind him now after last night and that means a lot.
On a prelim card filled with decisions, a star was born here.
#3 Worst: Pickett goes out on his shield
It’s almost hard to class this as “bad” given the fact that Brad Pickett’s fight with Marlon Vera was a very good one, and it ended in highlight reel fashion, but it was still disappointing in its own way.
Namely, because it ended with referee Grant Waterman needing to step in and rescue a downed Pickett following a knockdown from a head kick. Pickett tried to claim the stoppage was premature but I respectfully disagree; he was badly hurt by the kick and Vera landed two clean hammer fists on the ground too.
What made it more disappointing for the British veteran was that on my scorecard at least, he’d won the first two rounds with his boxing and wrestling and was on his way to winning the third.
Just three months ago Pickett was in Vera’s position, facing Urijah Faber in what was the California Kid’s last fight. Pickett came out on the wrong end of the result that night, too, but at least Faber got to walk into the sun with a win in his hometown.
I’ve watched Pickett since his Cage Rage run in 2003 and he’s definitely one of the best British fighters to ever compete in the sport, so it would’ve been nice to see him walk away with a victory last night. It wasn’t to be, though, and instead, he went out on his shield.
This, in a way, is why this doesn’t belong in the “bad” category – while it was heartbreaking for the fans, part of me wonders whether Pickett really would’ve minded, once the whole thing had sunk in.
After all, like the old cliché says, live by the sword, die by the sword. And Pickett always lived by the sword.
#4 Worst: Are UFC harming the product with their matchmaking?
There has been plenty of criticism about the way the UFC has been matchmaking recently, namely with how main events have been put together, gravitating around the so-called money fights.
On the flip side, most fans have praised recent undercard fights. Since Mick Maynard took over matchmaking duties from Joe Silva in early 2017, well-matched undercards that are tricky to pick apart have been hallmarks of the UFC’s events.
If you watch preview shows online, experts such as Zane Simon and Connor Ruebusch have struggled to pick winners in a lot of the recent undercard fights. This sounds good in a way, as the UFC has always been about the best fighting the best.
Unfortunately, though, it also seems to have lead to a heavy amount of fights going the distance and being close to call.
Last night’s card saw a run of seven decisions with only Marc Diakiese’s knockout separating them. And this card wasn’t the first like it, as all of the shows this year so far have been decision-heavy.
I’m not saying fights going the distance is a bad thing, but if we’re really honest everyone prefers a decisive finish, don’t they?
Maybe it’s time for Mick Maynard to book some more squash-type matches, especially on these smaller Fight Night shows aimed at local crowds. Leon Edwards vs. Vicente Luque and Arnold Allen vs. Makwan Amirkhani were both decent fights, for example, but highlight reel finishes might’ve helped the winners more than close calls.
And that’s it for the good and the bad of UFC Fight Night 107. Anything you think I missed? Let me know!
Until next time...
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