UFC 261 Post-Fight Analysis

UFC 261 delivered hard. Violent finishes, brutal injuries... Was it the best card of the year? It's up there for sure. Having the crowd back had even the first prelim feel like major title bout and I think it showed in the fighter's performances.

Main Card

Most people expected Kamaru to have this in a dominant fashion, and after again starting a little bit slow against Masvidal, he hit an absolutely sweet cross right on Jorge's jaw to put him out for the first time of Masvidal's pro career. Jorge is up there in age, but might be have gotten KOd by that shot even in his prime. Kamaru is tough to beat cause you can't dominate him in any range but he can surely dominate you with wrestling and stamina while matching you in striking and power. At this point I'd be interested in a totally different style match-up in Wonderboy, but will see. 

The co-main gave us one of the best moments of the evening, with Rose just killing Zhang in the first round. Zhang reacted to Rose's movement as if Rose was gonna hit a leg kick with her rear foot, so Zhang moved her lead foot back. This caused two things - first off, getting her a little off balance, making the impact of Rose's kick much harder on her, and secondly opening her guard a bit. Rose's foot got up fast and from completely blind angle. Zhang was dropped and then put completely unconscious momentarily by the follow up shots.

Zhang was angry about the stoppage but I am sure she didn't even remember what happened. Hard to believe you got hurt and KOd when you don't remember it happening.

In the third title fight, we all made ourselves believe that Andrade could have some way to challenge Valentina, that this would be her toughest challenge yet at flyweight. The line, while still wide, reflected that as it was much tighter than usual - and would have been huge value in the end. I wish I loaded up more on Valentina, but that's always easy to say in hindsight.

Valentina completely blew Andrade out of the water. We thought Andrade could maybe bully Valentina a bit in clinch and grappling, but Valentina proactively took the fight there and just ragdolled Andrade. Kinda hard to see what's next for Shevchenko. She is undersized to challenge Nunes even though she is probably the better fighter, and there isn't anyone remotely competitive in her own weight class.

I'm not a religious type of guy, but if some god exists, they surely have twisted sense of humor and penchant for irony. Everyone was expecting Weidman to wrestlefuck Hall to oblivion, while I didn't trust his durability. Still didn't expect him to shatter his foot with the first kick he landed. Obviously Weidman blasted everything he had into that kick and Hall saw it coming, with some of the most gruesome aftermath we have seen in a while. 

That has to be it for Weidman. Gotta feel sorry for the guy, but at the same time it was some silly shit for him to be imagining he would do another run... Either way that's fighters for you, just like with Anderson few years back, we see that at that age you just don't come back the same any more even after you recover. Also let's face it, Weidman was a shell of his old self to begin with. 

We keep underestimating Anthony Smith. He is not just a bad middleweight journeyman like we keep telling ourselves. Or perhaps we just overrated Jim Crute. Cirkunov beat him, but no one exposed him like Smith did. Either way ironically it looked like Crute could have actually beaten Smith with his wrestling, but guess he surmised similar conclusions as I did in my preview that his best bet was to beat Smith standing. Well I realized I was wrong very fast, too bad it took Crute until his foot was fucked to go for that game plan. 

Prelims

Alex Oliveira started the fight with Randy Brown very well. He had obviously noted the same thing from Luque fight that the leg kicks are Brown's cryptonite and it was working very well. It was quickly becoming very similar fight to that Luque match-up, but Brown showed he still has good power and dropped Cowboy Oliveira, forcing him on the floor and eventually to submit to one-handed choke. The choke might have been in but it seems like Oliveira doesn't have much fight in him at this point of his career, any adversity will make him quit.

Dwight Grant got the worst decision of the night after being nearly killed by Sekulic, but to be fair Sekulic has only himself to blame. The first two rounds were very low volume from both guys. I do think Sekulic won those rounds, but he was losing most of the minutes not doing much. Perhaps not as bad decision as it first felt, still you gotta feel Sekulic won that, or at least a draw, Grant was nearly finished in the end.

Karl Robertson got his knee busted up with a heel hook by Brendan Allen. Allen showed some decent striking before getting it to the ground where he predictably got the win, as Robertson continues to struggle with grapplers. Hopefully the injury won't be too bad, given how severely Weidman destroyed his foot that injury kinda got forgotten.

Tristan Connelly was one of the worse picks of the night for me as he really did not have anything for Sabatini. He did win the last round but at that point Sabatini was content to circle away and rest on the lead.

Danaa Batgerel was one of the easier predictions of the night as I was telling my girlfriend that Natividad is gonna get KOd by a left hook. Bruce was still only making announcements at the time of me announcing the spoiler to the fight. Hit the nail on its head, and again I will reiterate Batgerel is not some big KO guy, he just met an older guy and another guy with no chin back to back. Natividad's UFC career is over pretty much before it even started.

Kazula Vargas had a tight fight with Zhu Rong or however his name is supposed to be spelled. The chinaman just didn't throw a lot, basically giving away the first round, and the second round was extremely close, but judges obviously felt Vargas having half a round in a guillotine attempt was enough to win him the round. In the end Kazula gassed and clearly lost the final round, but somehow he got all rounds in one judge's scorecard. Either way nice to cash a big underdog. 

Jeffrey Molina had some early and late adversity in the fight against Qileng Aori. Molina got caught with some hard shots early, and then badly rocked very late on when Aori already seemed gassed, but he still won the last round despite being hurt, for he had just spent 4 minutes teeing off on Aori's stationary head. Aori kept walking forward and absorbing everything - tough guy, but not the smartest thing to do. 

In the first fight the crowd roared like it's biggest title fight in century - everyone was happy to have live events back obviously and Na Liang almost started with an upset by dropping Carnelossi with pretty much the first shot. The fight was full of pace and transitions, perhaps the crowd got the girls a little too amped up, Liang at least cause she was completely gassed at the end of the first round already. 

The fight should have been over when Liang couldn't even make it to the corner herself. Her coach obviously did smart thing to keep her in the fight to drag her into the corner but she had nothing left to win that fight.

My picks

One of the better events in recent memory for me, I got 9 out of 13 picks right to beat my usual correct pick rate comfortably. I also took home solid winnings of about 4.5 bets. Getting lucky with the Grant pick didn't even make a difference, would have still had a winning night.

Best pick was probably Vargas with a solid sized bet as a big underdog. Worst pick... Eh I felt kinda stupid about Connelly cause he got so thoroughly dominated, but it was just a small punt, so I guess in the end picking Crute turned out the worse decision.

Next card looks pretty interesting, so hopefully can keep this good momentum going then. Until next week...