UFC 245 Post-Fight Analysis

I did not write anywhere, but I had an inkling that we would at least have one new champ this weekend although I picked the defending champ in all of the title fights. Very competitive fights through the main card, let's get straight into it.

Main Card

Colby and Marty had an absolute war. All in all, Usman was the better fighter in almost every regard, but not by a wide margin, which made for a captivating fight until the end. Usman was clearly winning the fight, but the scorecards were very even so the fight was up for grabs in the 5th. He did not leave it to the judges but eventually Colby's durability was the one that ran out. Man, Usman will be tough guy to beat cause he is absolute terminator as a wrestlefucker and can just eat shots all day long. 

In the Co-Main we got a new champ. I am not surprised fuckers, although I did pick Holloway. Volkanovski had the kind of Poirier-esque combination of strength, speed and cardio to damage Holloway enough before his pace started to really affect him. In the end Volkanovski started to fade a little just like all of Holloway's opponents, but Max could hardly put weight on his front foot by then and had taken some heavy shots to the head as well. 

The scorecards for that fight were bit all over the place, but strangely enough, I agree with all of them. The thing is, that there were two close rounds that you could score either way, but definitely Volkanovski got at least three rounds, and you can't blame judges for giving all of them to him - he did land the heavier shots all through the match. 

Considering Max's impressive reign, they will probably have him rematch Volkanovski immediately. There's no any other clear contenders of fights to make for Max cause he pretty much cleaned out the division. Then again, something might pop up in the coming months.

Amanda Nunes looked to me... both impressive and worrisome at the same time. Like she really was in trouble in many spots in that fight, but its impressive how she remained composed through the adversity and found her edge and ended up running away with clear decision. She did seem a little over-confident though, like she has bought into her own hype too much, and that is something that could ultimately lead to her being dethroned down the line. Still, her skillset is tough to handle, her being so powerful on the feet, and if that fails, great at grappling. If she fights Valentina for third time though, she will have a problem.

Anyway the issue with the round scoring became, once again, evident in the match between Aldo and Moraes. People are calling that a robbery or judges are blind which is understandable, but simply wrong statement - it is entirely reasonable to score 1st and 3rd round to Moraes. If its judge as a fight, clearly Aldo won. But round by round, 1st and 3rd were extremely close. In the first Moraes landed solid kicks and had Aldo a little shaken multiple times, and when he himself got hurt he immediately turned the tables by hitting a takedown. It's hard to score that for Aldo when he finished the round on his back.

The third was extremely close, with numbers being even. You can argue Aldo should have won the round based on aggression, but that would be forgetting that it was Moraes who finished the round aggressively. When margins are this thin, it is impressions like that that count. So yea, I am not complaining too much about the decision it is more issue of the judging in general.

I was hoping that Faber would just be step behind and lose on points after competitive fight, and it seemed like that... for a little while. Then the damage started to amount up, and the one step behind became multiple steps until it all ended sadly, if predictably. Let's be fair, for a 40-year-old bantamweight that was hell of a showing, but it was also an example why 40-year-olds should not take on top contenders. 

Prelims

Mike Perry got starched in a manner we have never seen him get starched. You have to feel that the Luque match took a lot out of him and that he needs some real recuperation period now. The thing is, his durability is such a big part of his game that it is a worry when he gets finished like that.

Don't take wrong, Geoff Neal is a powerful guy and hit him with a hard headkick. Not many take that and keep coming forward. Nonetheless, as much as I love watching Perry fight, I seriously hope he takes a few months off. I think the nose he had a surgery on ended up getting broken again as well. For Neal it was a great win which will propel him into a highly ranked match-up next.

I believe Aldana could have a good chance against formerly unbeaten Ketlen Vieira, but I did not expect her to do it by completely KOing him with a punch. Vieira was doing better than I expected until that, but it's back to the drawing board for her now. Aldana on the other hand is very close to a title shot now. 

Omari Akhmedov had a tight battle with Ian Heinisch, and although Akhmedov faded towards the end, he did enough to get a deserved decision. Matt Brown KOing Ben Saunders surprised no one. Please Ben, just retire, 9 KOs is enough, I get a headache already from the way he reacts every time something solid hits him.

Chase Hooper walked through some hard punches as always to outgrapple and GnP KO Daniel Teymur. I mean you can't fault the guy too much since he is unbeaten, but fighting this level competition with your chin out and no defence will end bad for this kid. I dunno, the kid is certainly overcoming the odds in many ways but there is a reason no one fights like that and that is the long-term repercussions of it. 

I have nothing to say of the rest of the matches, there was a blackout here during the start time of the card so I missed a few matches. 

My picks

I gotta say my record just keeps improving. I expected to get half right with so many tricky fights on this card, but ended up with solid 9 out of 13 for another clearly winning night. Fifth in a row winning. Sooner or later I gotta start taking some losses back, no? Overall record is 10 winning nights and 3 losing nights. I currently have 10.6 % ROI per bet which is massive for someone who doesn't pick their bets carefully but bets on every fight. 

95 wins out of 152 bets. Solid 62.5 % correct pick rate. My best bet of the night was picking up Aldana for decently big bet as a sizeable underdog, whereas biggest loss was betting on Max. Relatively the worst bet was trusting too much on Ian Heinisch, there was no reason to bet so big on such close match.