5 Lessons Learned from UFC Fight Night 138
Somehow, some way, it is perfectly fitting that Anthony Smith got his breakthrough career win in the headliner of UFC Fight Night 138 -- a card almost assuredly no one watched and a card that took place in Canada’s 29th-largest census-designated metropolitan area.
Not to belabor a well-established point, but everyone sort of grasps the idea that hardcore fight fans show up for bouts when they matter and swear off the rest. At the same time, if you love fights, you’re apt to pine for the days when you could watch an entire fight card, start to finish, and relish it. The latest UFC offering was exactly the kind of toxin that pollutes the modern fight-watching public. Seven hours of people I’ve never heard of? Sign me up!
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Anthony Smith is Pretty Good, But is He Any Good?
These are the sort of questions with which the modern UFC product confronts us. We have an ersatz main event, only cobbled together because the biggest MMA promotion in the world -- “As real as it gets,” if you forgot -- can’t figure out anything else to do when visiting Atlantic Canada’s lesser city. By the way, Moncton, you’re not even your own province’s capital, and Fredericton has much more luxurious outlet malls.
Just 10 months ago, Volkan
Oezdemir fought Daniel
Cormier for the UFC light heavyweight title; he got his ass
whipped. In no way was he prepared for Cormier’s world-class
wrestling, and he was completely outclassed in every shape and form
imaginable. How did we even get here in the first place? This has
long been MMA’s marquee division; how are we just making a mockery
of it?
It’s not intentional. The fact is, like any division, there’s only a couple good fighters who constitute the very upper echelon of a division, and the UFC was gladly willing to let Ryan Bader walk and win two Bellator MMA titles. What we end up with is a long-running, spaghetti western standoff between Cormier and Jon Jones while we pretend interim challengers are any good. Oezdemir got his title shot because he won a questionable split decision over Ovince St. Preux, then happened to lump Misha Cirkunov and Jimi Manuwa in barely a minute combined. Is he untalented? No, not at all. Was he vetted and tested the way we “expect” UFC title challengers to be? Not by a long shot.
Oezdemir showed exactly the same poor gas tank that let him last seven minutes against Cormier. Smith put the pressure on him, landed brilliant clinch strikes and made him cower up and take a beating. By all measures, Smith is a Top-5 light heavyweight, but does anyone in this sport actually perceive him that way?
Smith is thrilling to watch. He is an indefatigable, eight-point striker who tries to create offense from every position, even if he’s in a life-or-death battle; he is, in short, what we all secretly crave about MMA. However, does anyone look at Smith and think he could beat Jones, Cormier or even Alexander Gustafsson? No. He would absolutely get blown out of the water. There are a million places in this sport -- especially in 2018 -- for entertaining, thrilling fighters, but UFC Fight Night 138 created a moment where we have to reconcile the 205-pound division, long the marquee and star weight class of the sport, with the understanding that MMA is diluted. I’ll watch any Smith fight any night of the week -- he is a thrill a minute, and those clinch elbows are brilliant -- but the idea of him as a UFC title challenger when he’s going to face a Jones or a Cormier is laughable. It’s the difference between entertainment and competition; we all may love entertainment, but when it comes to prizefighting, you pay for competition.
Oh My God, How Long Did This Card Last?
The answer is just under seven hours, and, oh, by the way, consider that Moncton, New Brunswick, sits in the Atlantic Time Zone, a full hour ahead of the Eastern Time Zone.
Plain and simple, it’s a bad business practice to punish your fans. Imagine being someone who bought $200 CAD tickets to go to UFC Fight Night 138 and literally sat in an uncomfortable seat for more than a quarter of a day. MMA fans have come to view this as normative and explainable, but it’s not; no sporting event is supposed to last seven hours. It serves no one. Fans get tired, fighters get stressed out and, eventually, it’s a very likely outcome that main eventers have been on ice so long it legitimately impacts the outcome of the fight. All of this is horrible.
UFC Fight Night 138 was a 13-fight card that got through its first three fights within 80 minutes. Is the promotion just trying to demean its fanbase by imagining they’re all childless teenagers on the Internet? Imagine you lived in Europe and legitimately wanted to watch the main card? No one has the time or the patience for this; that’s not to say a dedicated fan won’t sit through an advertisement, but MMA is a passion, not a life choice. If you want people to keep throwing their dollars at you, buying tickets and enjoying the sport, treat them like human beings. People may love prizefights, but they’re still normal people with jobs, families, sex lives, housework, yardwork and other stuff to get done. Unless you’ve got Khabib Nurmagomedov-Conor McGregor 2, you’re not worth seven hours of any human being’s time.
Speaking of Conor McGregor …
We have to talk about Artem Lobov. Like, I get you, baby. We’re both smirking and grinning about “The Russian Hammer,” but seriously, how much longer does this go on? What does it say that MMA fans find it more entertaining to laugh at McGregor’s training partner than actually watching decent fights?
I get that business is business, and every so often, an MMA superstar vouches for a teammate and gets him a plumb deal. I mean, we had to go through another five years of Thales Leites in the Octagon all because Jose Aldo wanted to throw his weight around and get his boy another contract. At the end of the day, who doesn’t want to stick up for your friends?
This is officially over the limit. Lobov is 2-5 in the UFC and 13-15-1 with one no-contest as a pro. It’s gotten to the point where he has become one of the most laughable human memes in MMA. Zubaira Tukhugov probably would have smashed him even worse than Johnson, who came in on two weeks’ notice and couldn’t even make weight. I know there’s a UFC romanticism with keeping “Ultimate Fighter” finalists around, but you saw his series finale fight, right? He lost to Ryan Hall, a dude who can barely throw a proper punch and got schooled from the 50-50 on the floor like he had never grappled before. What happened to “as real as it gets?”
I like to laugh. I’m snarky and extremely online, too. How does it benefit the UFC to keep running out a dude like Lobov? The only people who know his name are roundly mocking him, making fun of him and denigrating the promotion for using him in the most pathetic way possible? If McGregor’s friends can fight, great. If they can’t, there’s nothing mean-spirited or vindictive about just letting them fight on Cage Warriors Fighting Championship cards, never mind putting them in a co-main event on cable.
Judging is Horrible, the World Over
I mean, what else do we even say? Our night began with a miserable decision in which Steven Ray -- who I advocated betting on -- got pieced up by Jessin Ayari, only to narrowly avoid losing his third straight fight. It only got worse from there.
It’s not necessarily that the wrong fighter won in multiple fights but rather that all night long the scorecards were positively bananas. There was the 30-27 for Ray from Hubert Earle, the most powerful prizefighting influencer in Atlantic Canada? Where was the 10-10 round in Court McGee-Alex Garcia? How did two judges give Gian Villante a split decision over Ed Herman, who soundly outkickboxed him for the final 10 minutes? How did two judges -- Douglas Crosby (don’t even get me started) and Declan Woods -- both give rounds to Lobov for flailing and missing?
As I’ve pointed out before, sometimes this column isn’t really about things we learn, so much as thing about which we are inconveniently reminded. UFC Fight Night 138 was one of those nights when we all tried to be brave fight fans and make it through a soul-stealing card that assaulted our senses on every level just to say we did it. Even if we know full well that MMA judging is, to say the least, not up to snuff, we still routinely have our minds blown and then act completely surprised.
Look, we have to deal with 40 to 50 UFC cards per year, and that’s not even accounting for bad decisions that happen in Bellator MMA or the insanity of Professional Fighters League’s tournament system. We all love fights, but we’re also smart enough to realize the regulatory garbage that encircles the sport we love. It never feels good, but on some nights, you just have to brace yourself and prepare to have your eyes pop out of your skull. Sure, it’s a painful existence, but after all, it’s the “hurt business,” right?
Nasrat Haqparast Has One Arm, But It’s a Fine Arm
I was high on prospect Nasrat Haqparast when he made his UFC debut a year ago. Watching his highlights, he was a lights-out, devastating puncher on the feet with some savage ground-and-pound follow-up. He moved his UFC mark to 2-1 on Saturday but did so in borderline comedic fashion.
I thought Haqparast stood a chance to upset Marcin Held last year because Held is a shifty grappler without much standup, and even if the Afghanistan native was coming in on short notice, I saw his athleticism and devastating power. However, I also saw that he racked up an 8-1 record by just throwing left-handed haymakers. It’s why he lost to Held in his UFC debut; it’s how he upset Marc Diakiese in July; and it’s exactly what he did to Thibault Gouti at UFC Fight Night 138.
Haqparast is only 23 years old and has just linked up with Tristar MMA, so maybe Firas Zahabi has some technical insight to refine his natural, unteachable skills into a fully fleshed-out fighter. However, it was hard to not laugh watching Haqparast literally chase Gouti around the Octagon for 15 minutes, throwing the hardest southpaw haymakers he possibly could. At one point, Gouti did the full Jamie Varner retreat routine and ran two full laps around the Octagon just to avoid getting smoked in the head again. I’m appreciative of the fact that, with the UFC having almost 600 fighters on its roster, we have fighters at all stages of their evolution. Frankly, I hope the best for Haqparast, because having another southpaw blaster on the roster makes things more exciting. Still, it somehow ended up being comedically emblematic of the evening, watching a guy windmill one of his arms as hard as possible and repeatedly crushing an opponent who was fleeing like he was in a track meet to save his life.
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