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After a huge show last weekend in the form of UFC 235, the promotion’s debut in the state of Kansas last night was largely flying under the radar. In the end, the show turned out to be pretty decent – an ultra-quick pace (at least on the UK broadcast) helped a lot as did some fun finishes later in the night.
While the prelim card wasn’t up to much this time, it was never really supposed to be – this was a bit of a throwaway Fight Night show after all. Thankfully, the top few fights delivered, making the show well worth watching.
Here are the best and worst moments from UFC Fight Night 146: Lewis vs. Dos Santos.
#1 Best: Heavyweight is great at times
Nobody was really sure what to expect from the main event between Junior Dos Santos and Derrick Lewis, but the Heavyweight contenders delivered big time. The stylistic match always favoured Dos Santos – as I suggested in my predictions article earlier in the week – and in the end ‘Cigano’ came out on top following a barrage of punches in the second round. It wasn’t plain sailing, though.
Lewis looked to be in slightly better shape than he was for his most recent fights, and came out more aggressively too, throwing a bunch of jumping kicks and winging shots at the Brazilian. But it was telling that both times that Lewis landed and hurt JDS were set up by Lewis actually being hurt himself.
A spinning back kick to the body late in the first round had ‘The Black Beast’ doubled over, but when JDS ran in to seal the deal, it appeared that Lewis was playing possum as he immediately stunned the Brazilian with a big right hand. However, it turned out that there was no gamesmanship from Lewis – in a bizarre visual he remained doubled over for the remainder of the round, in survival mode as JDS looked for a way to finish him off.
In the second round he found it – Lewis seemed preoccupied with protecting his body, took a huge right hand to the temple, and moments later it was over. The win should put Dos Santos in line for at least a title eliminator in his next fight, and I don’t think Lewis loses a lot as he remains one of the best fighters to watch in the division. This main event delivered in spades.
#1 Worst: Heavyweight is terrible at times
If the main event between Dos Santos and Lewis delivered greatly, the other two Heavyweight fights on offer most certainly did not. Both Ben Rothwell vs. Blagoy Ivanov and Maurice Greene vs. Jeff Hughes represented the very worst of Heavyweight MMA – plodding affairs with little to no high points throughout, and both went the distance too.
Rothwell vs. Ivanov was actually a fight I was looking forward to – I was intrigued to see how Rothwell would cope returning from a 3 year layoff, and how Ivanov would look in his second UFC outing. But in the end it was simply a bad fight.
Rothwell pushed the pace throughout and seemed to get the better of the striking exchanges, but Ivanov did bust him up pretty badly and the judges saw that as enough for him to take the win. But the slow pace and lack of action meant that nobody will want to see either man’s next fight any time soon.
Greene vs. Hughes was even worse; the big men were perhaps slightly more active than Rothwell and Ivanov, but the crude action and slow pace made for a real yawner, and in all honesty, I’m not convinced either man is a UFC-level fighter. I don’t like to dog on professional fighters, but you just don’t get these kinds of dull fights in the lower weight classes.
If Lewis/Dos Santos was the best of Heavyweight MMA, these two fights were an example of the worst.
#2 Best: Niko Price remains Welterweight’s best Action Man
Welterweight Niko Price might be nicknamed ‘The Hybrid’, but you could easily change his nickname to ‘Action Man’ and you wouldn’t be wrong. Last night saw his latest wild fight, a brawl with Tim Means that saw him hurt Means early on, get hurt himself as Means came back with some wicked clinch strikes, and finally turn the lights out on ‘The Dirty Bird’ with a savage right hand, all inside one round.
Price had previously looked like a bit of a glass cannon, as he was violently stopped by Vicente Luque and Abdul Razak Alhassan in his two Octagon losses, but his chin seemed just fine last night – the man himself put that down to a new diet that saw him needing to cut far less weight, meaning he was more hydrated coming into the cage. That makes a lot of sense actually – but thankfully the new diet didn’t mean a new fighting style.
Price is probably the greatest example in the UFC of a kill-or-be-killed fighter. Since his promotional debut in 2016, he’s made 8 Octagon appearances, has a record of 6-2 and has never been close to going the distance. And his 6 finishes were all wildly memorable, ranging from slick submissions to violent and unique knockouts.
Casual fans might not pay money to see this guy fight – let’s be honest, it’s more about personality than skills when it comes to drawing – but for hardcore fans, Niko Price’s name means you’re guaranteed excitement on a card, and for me at least that means a lot.
#2 Worst: That run of decisions in the middle of the card
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against fights going the distance. Obviously it’s never going to be possible for every fight to end in a submission or knockout, and some of my favourite fights of all time – Diego Sanchez vs. Nick Diaz, Stipe Miocic vs. Junior Dos Santos, Carlos Condit vs. Jake Ellenberger – ended in decisions. But when you get a run of fights going the distance like we did last night, it gets a bit frustrating.
That feeling particularly comes if those fights simply aren’t that engaging, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what we saw last night. Maurice Greene vs. Jeff Hughes, Grant Dawson vs. Julian Erosa, Yana Kunitskaya vs. Marion Reneau, Anthony Rocco Martin vs. Sergio Moraes and Tim Boetsch vs. Omari Akhmedov all went the distance, giving us a total of 75 minutes of fighting, and really only Dawson/Erosa was fun to watch.
The rest were simply dull, largely forgettable affairs with very few high points. None of them bar Greene/Hughes was terrible per se, and sandwiched between knockouts or tapouts they probably would’ve been fine, but 5 decisions in a row was a difficult watch, even on a fast-paced card like this one, and it made me feel bad for the Wichita fans.
#3 Best: Zaleski dos Santos switches it up to great effect
When the UFC announced the co-main event here between Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos and Curtis Millender, some eyebrows were raised as both men had been flying under the radar, and Zaleski dos Santos had never appeared on a UFC main card before. But both men also had the reputation of being spectacular strikers, and so fans in the know were expecting a war full of flashy exchanges.
In the end, though, we actually got a one-sided submission, as Zaleski dos Santos evidently figured he had a big advantage on the ground over Millender – who had never been knocked out in 20 fights – shot in and took him down, and then choked him out in short order. ‘Capoeira’ didn’t even need to apply the choke in the textbook way, simply using a gable grip and a tight squeeze to coax the tapout from his opponent.
Considering Zaleski dos Santos had just 2 submission wins out of his overall 20 going into last night – the last one coming way back in 2014 – this was a massively impressive win. It was also his 7th in a row in the UFC – meaning he’s almost definitely for real. The promotion need to book him against a top 10 contender next time out – Rafael Dos Anjos or Leon Edwards would do – and see if they have a title contender on their hands, because they may well do.
