Jakro's MMA Musings

Great event of fights, and happy about the results overall, skill prevails over power, good guy Jan is the champ... but as far as my own predictions go, it went terrible. Let's try to figure out what went wrong by going through the fights. Main Card Right from the start it was obvious that the skill discrepancy between Adesanya and Costa was far, far bigger than I had thought. You started to wait for Costa to put pedal to the metal and try to really swarm Adesanya, but it never happened. Costa somehow just didn't even show up as his usual self. He did not get KOd rushing recklessly in, he got KOd from damage accumulating at him standing in distance with Israel. Israel took away his base with leg kicks and then started to put together his punching combinations. Costa could hardly touch him and in the end got finished in under two rounds. A guy that had seemed so durable was completely blown apart so fast. I do think the mental disheartening of having not been able to land pretty...

Main Event: Israel Adesanya vs. Paulo Costa I gotta say I don't have clear idea on who wins here but let's try to figure it out by starting with a pop quiz - when force and finesse meet in MMA, who usually wins? And I say usually, cause nothing is 100 % in MMA... well all things being equal, most of the time finesse wins. This is the ultimate Force vs. Finesse match-up. Thing is, if you keep adding more and more force, eventually you hit a point where all the finesse in the world won't help you.  Paulo Costa is the ultimate power guy. His skills are... I would say good, but not on the same level as lot of the other top fighters, certainly not on Adesanya's level. However he hits hard, can take a shot and for such a big guy has pretty incredible cardio. To put it short, he can deal an incredible amount of damage in the time it takes for him to empty his gas tank. The fact that Yoel Romero was still standing at the end of 3 rounds is testament to his chin. If Costa can im...

Yea, I know these are late, but I have been busy since the event. Might as well dissect the event a little bit now. Main Card So Tyron did it. Backed up to the fence, feinted, loaded up the right, never actually committed to any powershots and lost 15 rounds straight. It's quite remarkable, the decline of Woodley. Someone said he looked slow, but I don't think so. He still looks swole, he still seems like he could crack, he still seems sharp and he definitely can still take a shot. He just... doesn't throw with any conviction.  Of course with all that said the main event was as predictable in the end as fights ever come. I don't know what's the matter with Tyron, but backing him against pretty much any high level fighter is silly at this point. The co-main was much more interesting fight, with Niko Price forcing the fight on Cowboy for whole three rounds. In the end draw was probably fair reflection of it, with Cowboy showing he still has much more chin left than he...

Main Event: Colby Covington vs. Tyron Woodley I ain't gonna sit through Woodley's last fight, I don't need to see him back to the fence and load up right hand that never comes for 5 rounds again. I did watch Covington's last fight again, after all that fight was a joy to behold. This one is fairly straightforward. Prime Tyron would be interesting match-up for Colby, but that Tyron is forever gone. Covington has a great chin and I don't expect that Usman fight having taken that much out of his durability, considering he has taken his time to come back for another fight, and even in that fight it rarely was the first shot that landed on him, it was mostly Usman getting combinations going and landing with the 2nd or 3rd strike.  Woodley, at least the current iteration, just does not have that kind of volume, so chances of him bombing Colby out of there are slim. Colby on the other hand will put the volume and pressure on Tyron the whole fight. So at best Tyron might la...

 People berated this event as a low-level card with a poor main event, but the main event was a great fight and the event altogether entertaining. MMA even at its worst is usually an exciting sport. Main Card Tough luck for Angela Hill again on a close decision. I felt she edged that out, just like I felt she edged it out against Gadelha. Neither time can't be called robbery or really even a bad decision, so close were the fights, but still she could easily still be on a winning streak, instead finds herself with back to back losses. At least she and the eventual winner Michelle Waterson put together a good fight to take advantage of the spotlight of the main event. Reasonably both of their stock should go up from this performance, both very close to contention. Hill definitely had the striking advantage and kept pressing on Waterson, landing lot of shots on her, but taking her fair share going in as well - it was not like it was one-sided either way. Losing the striking exchange, ...

Main Event: Michelle Waterson vs. Angela Hill  I ain't about to sit through that boring ass Carla Esparza fight again. Needless to say, Waterson probably should have gotten a decision in that one, but she can only blame herself in the end for the fight was very tippy-tappy low-volume affair which judges are more likely to fuck up. Similarly Angela Hill was on end of a bad decision, however that was closer fight and more high-volume on both ends. All in all I would rate Waterson as the better fighter here, but this is a really interesting matchup for her. Is she the better striker? Probably, but not by a large margin, and I would think as the fight goes deep Angela can pressure Waterson into slowing down. Only clear advantage Waterson has is her grappling but again, Hill is not easy to takedown, having only been taken down once by much better and bigger offensive wrestler that is Gadelha. So unless Hill is stupid and jumps into Waterson's guard, her grappling advantage won't...

Only 7 fight evening with corona chipping away from already short fight card, so this will be a quick write-up. Main Card Experience reigned supreme tonight against rising prospects in both Main and Co-Main Event. Overeem and Sakai had a very good, technical scrap on the feet, one which Sakai was largely getting the better off. By 3rd round he started to slightly slow down though, which allowed Overeem to start working on his ground game. That really exposed a hole in Sakai's game and he wilted in the deep waters, getting promptly finished in the 5th round. Overeem shows the doubts for his chin are unnecessary and that he still has one title run in him. Still needs another high profile win though to be in the title picture again. In the Co-Main Alonzo Menifield just did not really show up. Having lost last fight due to gassing, he skipped on starting strong and instead just kinda waited the whole fight. When he finally opened up a little at the end of 2nd round, OSP cracked him wit...

Only 9 fight event this time as some fights got cancelled. Don't mind that at all, still some interesting fights this event and people's opinions have been all over the place.  Main Event: Alistair Overeem vs. Augusto Sakai I had underrated Sakai before the Ivanov fight. Arguably Ivanov did enough to perhaps even deserve the nod in that fight, but no matter what you think about the decision, Sakai was competitive from start to finish with Ivanov who is very close to the top of the division. So basically that is a long-winded way of me saying Sakai is not a bad fighter. He is solid everywhere, but he also is not spectacularly good. Just being big and having solid skills gets you far in heavyweight division though, and here is main eventing against the legend Overeem himself. Skill-for-skill Overeem is much the better fighter, but he is 40 years old and gets KOd in basically every fight nowadays. I mean he kinda did in his last fight too where Walt Harris really put him on his ba...