UFC Fight Night 191 Post-Fight Analysis

It's funny how human psychology works. I took another losing event, but cause I was down to zero in my bankroll with all of my money in and managed to recover to only 4.5 bets of loss, it feels like a winning event in the end.

Main Card

It was a tale of two fights in the main event, with Till looking crisp and powerful on the feet but completely lost on the ground with Brunson laying absolutely devastating ground and pound on him. The fight ebbed and flowed and the finishing sequence was good example of that - Till had Brunson badly hurt on the feet, only to be taken down and submitted less than 30 seconds after that.

For Brunson this means moving up to a tougher match-up, one that he is likely to get badly chinned in given his advancing years and dodgy defence. The guys above him are better strikers and can actually defend a takedown, so it is likely that Brunson gravy train is over for now. As for Till, this is proof that he is completely lost on the ground given the two wrestlers he has faced sliced through him with relative ease.

Co-main was my only big win for the night, with Aspinall just chipping at Spivak with good composure and speed until he found the killshot and quickly finished Spivak. Beating Spivak and Arlovski back to back like that is a great achievement, the ceiling for this guy is really high, but I do hope they keep advancing him patiently. Someone like Tuivasa next might be someone durable enough to actually extend him so we could see how he holds up under fatigue.

Alex Morono steadily put on damage on David Zawada all through their fight, though Zawada did get some grappling success late on when did pursue that path, for whatever reason he preferred to strike for 90 % of the fight and thus lost clearly. Poor fight IQ.

Similar thing with Modestas Bukauskas, there is very simple blueprint to beating Khalil and that's to grapple him, but Bukauskas played the Muay Thai game with him and got completely blown away. In the end vicious knee stomp KO that will likely have Bukauskas injured for a while. People will be calling for outlawing of that technique, but when did we actually see anyone get finished with that? First time I've seen that in probably couple of thousand fights. 

It's a technique that can be defended and is somewhat risky to throw, I say don't give openings for it and you should be good. Leg locks fuck up way more knees and head strikes fuck up way more brains. At least knee can be surgeried back together, when you get viciously KO'd your chin never comes back. 

That tangent aside, the big hype job Paddy Pimblett got badly hurt early on against Luigi Vendramini but rallied to find late first round KO. Good job but I don't really see the guy going far with striking defence like that. Easy fade for future, but I do hope they keep building his fade value by feeding him some Contender cans so that it will be rude awakening when he faces someone actually good. 

Prelims

Molly McCann made the fight as ugly as she needed to make it, and mostly by forward pressure and walking through damage got a close decision. I thought Kim was doing well countering her but in the end it wasn't affecting McCann too bad, too close to really feel gutted for the decision, McCann basically willpowered her way to a win.

Jack Shore dominated Sholinian as expected, got too greedy going for the ITD, in the end it was obvious it was gonna be a decision. Just poor bet on my part, Shore isn't big finishing threat against someone who is durable.

Julian Erosa would have been great pick against Charles Jourdain. His chin held up tremendously despite Jourdain hitting him clean a ton, and in the end Jourdain got caught in a submission as he started to fade in the exhausting pace. Guess I under-estimated the grappling edge Erosa would have had. 

Should have filled my boots bigger on that Barriault moneyline, made it look pretty easy against Lungianbula.  Sure Lungianbula hit hard and never stopped hitting despite gassing, but he wasn't landing a lot clean and it's always bad optics to keep getting backed up. ITD wasn't terrible but I should have hit it with different ratios, it was criminal to get that fight right but overall end up losing.

My picks

Just got 3 picks right out of 10. I pointed out some betsizing problems, and there definitely is a problem there too, but the primary problem has been that I simply can't make a pick right lately. Perhaps too much getting cute with ITD's and stuff, perhaps bad reads, but I think the Till v Brunson fight shows how chaotic this stuff ultimately is, we were just one or two connections away from Till KO there. 

Either way my bankroll was all in already and if keep losing, this experiment is gonna come to a close pretty soon. I now have some room to manuever but I still desperately need a winning event and perhaps that's making me too greedy with my bets, wanting to win it all back at one go. I don't know, just gotta work harder for the next event.