This past weekend, Arman Tsarukyan dominated Dan Hooker to firmly establish himself as the top contender at lightweight, and Ian Machado Garry tried his best to do the same for 170, taking a decision over Belal Muhammad at UFC Qatar. So let’s talk about some of the fallout from Qatar, plus an MMA trade!
Best fights that can be made in MMA
Hey Jed. Just wondering… if you could be UFC match maker for the day, what 3 fights would you book?
This is a great question, because two of the three of them only recently became clear.
The first one, and my most-wanted fight in all of MMA right now, is Islam Makhachev vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov. I won’t go into whether that will happen or not here (read below), but if I were in charge of the UFC, it absolutely would.
Makhachev is the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, and possibly (probably?) the best fighter of his generation. He’s basically this generation’s Georges St-Pierre, only slightly less effective on the feet (still even better than most give him credit for) but even better defensively. Makhachev simply does not make mistakes, but if there’s a guy who can capitalize on the few he does, it’s Shavkat. Rakhmonov is possibly the greatest finisher in MMA today, and brings an ideal set of skills to counter Makhachev’s best game and offer serious threats in response. That fight is perfect.
Second is Ilia Topuria vs. Arman Tsarukyan.
Following Tsarukyan’s win over Dan Hooker, the momentum seems to be for that fight to take place next, but I’m not sure. The UFC still may book Topuria vs. Paddy Pimblett first, and then have Tsarukyan on deck, which would be fine, just so long as these two fight. Topuria has captured the imagination of the MMA world, and while his lightweight title win was spectacular, there’s also an asterisk to that belt. Topuria didn’t beat the No. 1 lightweight in the world to win it.
On top of the merit argument, the fight is also sensational. Tsarukyan looked the best he ever has on Saturday, and it’s been a long time since Topuria faced a top-level dangerous guy who wasn’t 10+ years into an MMA career. Plus, this fight would tell us a lot about a possible Topuria vs. Makhachev fight, because if Ilia can’t beat Arman, he can’t beat Islam, and we can stop obsessing about that one.
Lastly, I’m doing one for me. A part of me wants to pick Alexander Volkanovski vs. Movsar Evloev because Evloev deserves it, and it seems like this might be the only way to get him a title shot, but if I’m in charge, there’s one fight that must occur: Dricus du Plessis vs. Reinier de Ridder.
Is this as exciting a matchup as it would have been had it happened for the middleweight title? No. Do I care? Not really. DDP and RDR are the sport’s premier technical goofballs, and I desperately want to see them fight each other. Really, I want to see them do a round robin with Jiri Prochazka, but I figured picking that for my Top Three wouldn’t be received well, so give me this matchup of my favorite violence bozos.
Honorable mentions go to Volkanovski vs. Evloev, Alexandre Pantoja vs. Kyoji Horiguchi, RDR vs. Dominick Reyes (a fight I think the UFC should absolutely book), and Valentina Shevchenko vs. the winner of Amanda Nunes vs. Kayla Harrison.
The welterweight title picture
Who should be – and who will be – Islam’s first WW title defense?
I already answered who should be Islam Makhachev’s first title defense in a Roundtable this week, so I won’t give the full spiel here. The short version is this: Shakvkat Rakhmonov is, to me, undeniably the most deserving person. In the UFC rankings, Ian Machado Garry beat Belal Muhammad, so he’ll move up to No. 1, but Shavkat beat Garry less than 12 months ago. He should clearly be No. 1 and should clearly be in line for the title shot, given he already had one, and the champion is the guy who pulled out. But for Belal getting injured last December, Shavkat would already have the belt, and Makhachev would’ve had to fight for the interim title. Shavkat is the only correct choice.
But what should and what will happen are two very different things. Heading into UFC 322, it looked like the plan was for Kamaru Usman to get the first crack at Islam Makhachev, what with everyone associated with Makhachev calling for it, and the full press to, erroneously, crown Usman the GOAT welterweight. But then they didn’t do an in-cage faceoff at UFC 322, and there’s been a decent amount of fan pushback on the idea of that fight. Sure, Makhachev and Usman (and friends) are still trying to make fetch happen, but I’m not confident it will at this point.
The inverse seems to be happening with Shavkat, where I have started to notice some pushback on the complete memory-holing of the true No. 1 contender, but Makhachev is vocally opposed (as he should be, that’s a hard fight), and I’m uncertain if the UFC wants to pay him back for doing them a solid last December.
On the complete other side of things is Ian Machado Garry, who just scored the biggest win of his career, had a good post-fight speech, and I would be completely shocked if he got the title fight. Garry is broadly disliked by the fan base, has not put on exciting fights recently, just lost to a more deserving challenger, and, aside from Jon Anik, doesn’t seem to have a huge fan base pushing for him.
Which leaves Michael Morales (Carlos Prates isn’t real, stop lying to yourselves, he just lost to Garry). Morales feels like the guy with the most obvious case to sell — he’s undefeated and has huge finishes over ranked guys in his last three fights — but I’m not sure. Morales rose so quickly that it’s hard to see the UFC fully committing to him, when no one will be upset if they don’t, and he might be better off not getting rushed.
If I had to guess, I’d say Usman is still the slight favorite to get the title shot, with Shavkat close behind, and Garry and Morales after that. Let’s hope the UFC does the right thing.
Standing guillotine chokes
Should Oliveira’s finish of Poirier at UFC 269 be reclassified as a “flying” RNC?
I’m pretty sure this was asked entirely to get a rise out of me, and it worked!
The sheer volume of people calling Asu Almabayev’s comeback guillotine choke win over Alex Perez a “standing guillotine” nearly drove me to madness. It wasn’t a standing guillotine, because Almabayev wasn’t standing! Almabayev jumped guard, and Perez stayed standing. Move names aren’t based on the defender in combat sports. We don’t call it a kicked head knockout. That’s either just a guillotine, or a flying/jumping guillotine choke!
Why does this matter? It doesn’t! It’s purely semantics, and entirely stupid. But flying submissions are cooler than standing ones anyway, and this is maybe the most appropriate time in history to call something a flying submission. Flying armbars and flying triangles are just jumping attacks, and in 99.9 percent of cases, they finish on the ground. Almabayev jumped the gilly and finished it while still in the air! Call it the correct, and fun name!
(Also, you could, I suppose, call Oliveira’s submission over Dustin Poirier a flying rear-naked choke, and perhaps should. I’d certainly have no issue with it, and it would accurately describe what happened.)
If the UFC was to do a “trade” with the PFL what 5 fighters would you want to see in the UFC from the PFL and what 5 fighters would you send from the UFC to the PFL?
Uhhhhh. Five PFL fighters is a lot. Let’s just focus on one, because while some fighters would be welcome additions to the UFC, there’s only one that matters: Dakota Ditcheva.
Ditcheva needs to join the UFC ASAP. The PFL just announced Ditcheva’s next fight, where she takes on Denise Kielholtz in February, a fight that no one will or should care about. Kielholtz is 2-3 over her past five bouts and has only ever been a fringe Top-15 competitor at flyweight. This is a waste of Ditcheva’s best years.
And it’s a waste for the UFC as well. I love Valentina Shevchenko more than almost anyone, but her continued reign atop the women’s flyweight division is probably bad for business. We can all respect her tremendous achievements, but “Bullet” stopped being exciting a while ago, and it’s casting a pall over the entire division. Ditcheva is the exact right person to bring life back to women’s 125 in the UFC.
So given that, this is one of the few times I could see a trade happening. Like a rebuilding NFL franchise, the PFL needs to turn one star into a bunch of them, so the deal would have to be a little one-sided in terms of bodies, but the UFC has plenty of spare Top-15 fighters lying around to trade off. And with Contender Series potentially moving to two seasons a year, they are going to have too many fighters on the roster soon, anyway.
So how about a deal like this:
UFC gets: Dakota Ditcheva
PFL gets: Magomed Ankalaev, Derrick Lewis, and Leon Edwards.
The UFC gets a rising star in a weight class that desperately needs it, and the PFL gets two former world champions — one who has a brother in the organization already — and an extremely popular star, who also makes sense as an opponent for Francis Ngannou. Who says no to that?
I did it. I’m a genius. Someone call Donn Davis and Dana White. Let’s lock this trade in with the league.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who sent in questions. Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send them to me. Every Sunday (sometimes I forget and it happens on Monday), I’ll put out a call for questions on The Feed. Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane; just drop your questions there, and I’ll answer the best ones. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.
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