UFC Fight Night 159 Post-Fight Analysis

Without some horseshit decisions, the fight night would have been almost perfect as far as my picks are concerned. What started as a decent card kinda fell flat in the end with terrible decision in co-main before complete disappointment of NC in the Main Event.

Main Card

Obviously there is nothing to say about the main event, the fight was over before it really started. I don't think Stephens faked the injury even if it looked pretty harmless as far as eye pokes go, these things happen and it was unlucky for everyone involved. 

Co-Main is the kind of bullshittery that really should not happen though. So first round was close, I can see it going either way, but realistically, it was all Grasso doing damage in stand-up, and although she got taken down couple of times, she was not really under severe threat and could stand back up both times.

Second round, you can't fault judges for giving it to Esparza, even if all she did was lay on top of Grasso for the whole round. I don't hate wrestling, but I really hate it when non-damaging, just controlling wrestling is given more weight than actually nearly finishing the fight. That was exactly what happened in the third round, where Grasso completely messed Esparza up and could have finished her just by being more aggressive. She got another chance late on with the armbar that caused all sort of hyperextension... but in the end, it went to the judges.

Grasso will be left ruing her lack of aggression to knock Esparza out, but the decision was still atrocious. How was the round three not 10-8? It certainly was not equivalent to round two. This is the massive issue with the round system - judged as a fight, 9 out of 10 would give it clearly to Grasso. Grasso kept landing clean shots all night and badly had Esparza hurt and nearly submitted her. Esparza on the other hand just had few minutes of fairly ineffective and non-threatening top control. Even with round system, her winning that fight was horrible, but without it there is just no way to see her winning that fight. I would do away with judges completely, there is no other major sport where at full time board of subjective opinions decides the outcome. Design a tie-breaker that does not involve judging. 

But yea, I called that fight exactly correctly, just got the eventual pick wrong. Esparza got exactly round of wrestlefucking and little more, other than that it was Grasso getting the better of it. It's sad this negatively affects my rate of correct picks, but such is life. It should have at least been a draw.

Speaking of draws, we saw an odd draw between Askarov and Moreno. It wasn't exactly the fight I expected, but I did call the fact that Askarov is a little too happy to be on his back right. I thought again judged as a full fight, Moreno clearly won that, landing the most damaging shots on the feet and hurting Askarov quite a bit. Somehow judges found a draw in that.

I expected some judge fuckery from the card, but for Mexicans, not against them. At least Aldana did just what she was expected against Melo who had gotten really thicc compared to the previous fight I saw from her. 

Steven Peterson kicked the card off with a wild spinning back fist KO that had Bravo badly knocked out. He had to endure a lot of punishment after Bravo put on a massive pace in the first round, but he was never gonna be able to keep that up through the fight.

Prelims

Huachin was a disappointment, but I had overlooked the fact that he was so small. It looked like my assessment about his better boxing was right, he just never got even close enough to land anything of significance, with Quinonez either picking him apart from distance or taking him down and controlling him on the ground.

After 3rd successive KO loss, I think we can safely say Polo Reyes has no chin left any more. If he is gonna fight again, I hope they match him up against some pillow-fisted grappler, if he does not retire.

Ariane Carnelossi was as game and tough as they come, but seeing her in there with Angela Hill exposed the limitations of her skills and even more so just the fact she is very small for the weight class. Because of that, she is not gonna be another Andrade (who might be short but cuts a lot of weight and is incredibly strong) and her ceiling is gonna be very limited. Still, if she can learn something from this she might be able to beat the weaker UFC level competition. There is no shame in losing to Angela Hill who is close to the elite of the division. 

Tyson Nam looked a little bit better perhaps than I expected, but he just did not have the better of Pettis in anywhere. He is a good guy for regional circuit, no obvious weaknesses, but was outgunned at this level in every facet. 

Craig did what I expected him to do, Castro showing again extremely poor performance by pulling guard on him before being finished with a vicious knee. Castro is slow, has poor fight IQ and has no chin. Three first round KO losses in UFC and not even surviving one round with Paul Fucking Craig, it is time for him to go back to the regional scene. I cannot understand how he was the betting favorite.

Apparently I completely forgot to make a pick about the Correia vs. Eubanks match. Well I would have picked Sarj and I would have been right, except the judges all disagreed with me. It is not nearly as terrible decision as the Co-Main, but clearly Eubanks landed the harder shots in all rounds, even if she got outvolumed in the latter two rounds. Meh, like I said I did not even make a pick so I can let that be.

Mariano was the dumbest pick for the night for me. I said it in the preview, he has no ground game, yet I still picked him. This is like that Abdurakhimov pick where I saw no way for him to win but still picked him because of the wide odds. Well, I was expecting Puelles to be as timid as in his first fight, but he came out a lot improved and showed decisiveness right from the start, going immediately for the takedown in each round.

How does a guy not do any work on learning to escape from the bottom when it was clearly exposed in the first fight? I am sure he will be released from UFC after this, and it will be interesting if he can even beat the regionals after the blueprint to easily beat him has been so clearly laid out. 

My Picks

So with one no contest, one draw and one fight which I forgot to preview, my overall score for the night was 6.5 out of 10. Like I dissected, it should have been 8 out of 10 had some decisions not been questionable. Whatever. So Mariano was the worst pick of course and the best one had to be Craig, because he was somehow a big underdog. I am at 19.5 out of 33 picks now after three events of doing full predictions. This event was also winning event for me so two out of three events have been in the profit and I am also on the profit overall.

Main and Co-Main Events are now 3 out of 5, thanks to the no contest and BS decision in the co-main.

Next week the successive events will continue and obviously I will be back with previews as usual. This has started well so might as well keep a good thing going.