Jakro's MMA Musings

Rough card, Bellator is unironically better this weekend. Almost though of taking week off, but I have previewed every event since september 2019, so let's keep the streak going. Main Event: Sean Strickland vs. Uriah Hall Uriah can blast Sean out of there within first couple of rounds, but I do think Sean is good enough at deflecting shots and durable enough to take whatever Uriah dishes out, unless he hits him with a spinning back kick or something. Down the stretch the pressure will make Hall fade here.  Prediction: Sean Strickland Confidence in winner: 3 Co-Main Event: Kyung Ho Kang vs. Rani Yahya Probably we will know very early on who will win. Kang has been off for a while, and Yahya is still dangerous submission threat and even if that doesn't workout, he can certainly ride out rounds via top control. However if the grappling attack does not succeed, I do think Kang can take over especially as the fight extends. Hard to pick him here though after such long lay-off. Predi...

I got pretty good results on last night's card, but the usual pattern of winning big in the prelims and then losing it on the main card continued. This time though I would say bad jugding played a part in the losing end to the event. Main Card I honestly thought Sandhagen had that 3-2, and most of the people seem to agree with me, but it was not gonna be my night for the main event pick once again. Still both Sandhagen and TJ looked very impressive. Sandhagen repeatedly showed that he could stop TJ Dillashaw overwhelming him with wrestling and when taken into the deep waters, he could swim just fine, dealing damage to TJ consistently all through the fight. At the same time Dillashaw did have some success both in wrestling and striking, and showed tremendous toughness and skill to overcome a knee injury and bad cut in his eye early on. It was a close fight but I don't think just being able to lean on a guy on the fence should count for as much as a lot of clean strikes landing a...

Main Event: Cory Sandhagen vs. TJ Dillashaw TJ is the former champ for a reason, and hence he can never be counted out, but I do think this is a pretty bad match-up for him, especially coming off of a multi-year layoff and probably having some ring-rust after so long away. Sandhagen outstrikes pretty much anyone in current bantamweight division, he is basically modernized, more fluid version of Dom Cruz with less grappling but more power. Dom Cruz who of course famously gave TJ one of his few losses. However, while there is some questionmarks about TJ after long layoff, there is some of them about Sandhagen too, primarily we have not seen him in a five round fight yet, we haven't seen him in really deep waters yet. Aside that though, his striking cannot be complained about, and his only UFC loss to date is against an excellent wrestler/grappler in Aljo.  Indeed I think TJ will have to adopt a wrestling-based approach here to win this fight, and he definitely has the skillset to do ...

Very up and down card for my betting, did some excellent bets but then ruined the profits with some pretty awful ones. Let's go through the fights as usual. Main Card Not much to tell about main event, it went pretty much as expected with there being a wide disparity between Islam and Moises. In the end Islam got the sub in the 4th and won the fight. Miesha Tate via lay and pray was my gut feeling and my gut feeling turned out to be right. I talked myself out of that pre-fight, but I did have some of that live after seeing Tate was even beating Reneau standing, in the only area where Reneau was supposed to be able to hang. Good display, but 44-year-old retiring Reneau is not much of a yardstick to how good new Tate is. She did look fit and sharp though, so all in all good reasons to be pretty optimistic. We didn't really get to see much where Jeremy Stephens is at, cause Gamrot dove for that very low single he always does pretty much right away, got the takedown and pretty quic...

Main Event: Islam Machachev vs. Thiago Moises Islam should fight top contender. People are finally waking up to the fact that he is Khabib's heir as one of the best fighters in the division, hence he should be fighting someone who gets him into actual title talks where he probably already belongs. Moises... well who even knows him realistically? The guy is good and tricky match-up, but Islam should have him covered everywhere, expect Islam to be safely but unspectacularly edging rounds as he usually does.  ML odds are pretty wide so no play there. Prediction: Islam Machachev by submission or points Confidence in winner: 4 Co-Main Event: Marion Reneau vs. Miesha Tate Well, I was gonna pick Tate here, simply cause Reneau is also old and she was never elite, but I think others have spoken some sense to me. Tate wasn't some technical savant when she was fighting, she grinded her way to ugly wins and has been gone for years. The odds would suggest she is some nailed-on winner here, ...

Lot to unpack with this one... Main Event I was wrong about McGregor fight... again. I thought peak Conor was forever lost, but that he would at least still be high-level fighter that is dangerous for few minutes in start of the fights. Truth is that he represents very little danger to any elite lightweight at this point of time. Dustin was huge value first time in hindsight, and still value this time.  Conor got thoroughly beaten today. His adjustment of more leg kicks seemed to work at first, but ultimately bit him in the ass. You can't start throwing 100 % hard kicks to the legs after lifetime of not conditioning your shins to it. Granted, it was not shin to knee that broke the bone but rather tip of the foot hitting the knee and cracking the joint, but the point still stands.  Even if the leg didn't break, it was Dustin who was the one who was landing all the hard shots early and indeed hurt Conor, forcing the first real error out of Conor - initiating the grappling. You c...

Main Event: Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor  Last time around when these two fought there were lot more questions hovering than this time. Primarily one wondered if we were going to get prime Conor back. I think it is safe to say now that no matter how much the casual fans admire Conor's physique online, it is safe to say we will never see the absolute peak Conor again. That's not to say he won't win this fight or even could not capture the belt again. However it does mean that at this point, Conor is pretty much 1st round KO or bust. He doesn't have the gas tank to hang with the kind of pressure fighters Poirier, Chucky Olives and Khabib are. However, with Khabib out of the picture Conor just has to get past two hittable guys and he will be the champ again. I would absolutely hate to see that though. Either way, last time around Poirier was the value pick, now the market has corrected to be about right. I didn't see the value pick last time around, and I still th...