Tag: T.J Dillashaw

The 300’s Official UFC 227 Preview

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Happy Diaz vs. Poirier Day! BUT CONCENTRATE. This weekend we have a fantastic card on our hands ladies and gents. We have two title fights and a lot more beautiful violence to cover so if you don’t mind, I’m not gonna be about the bullshit today.

The Main Event

T.J Dillashaw (C) vs. Cody Garbrandt – Bantamweight (135lbs) Title Fight

When you really sit back and think about it the first and last time T.J Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt fought was a perfect encapsulation of who they were then as fighters.  Garbrandt was a slick as hell boxer with a cannon of a right hand and who had probably gotten just a little too cocky for his own good. That said, if you had grown up on the wrong side of the poverty line in Nowhere, OH and had risen to be the undefeated Bantamweight Champion of the UFC, you might have too.

Tyler Jeffrey Dillashaw was (and is) a world-class MMA kickboxer and had on his side the confidence that he never really lost his title, despite what the UFC and Massachusetts State Athletic Commission said.

Dillashaw won fight 1, as we all know. After getting knocked down by a Garbrandt sledgehammer, overhand right and potentially saved by the bell at the end of RD1, “Killashaw” came back to make “No Love” pay for his arrogance, ending his night with a head kick not long after.

All of the above makes this fight REALLY tough to pick, especially when you finally acknowledge, in the 4th paragraph of a blog, the animosity between these two guys. I’ve never believed an MMA feud more than this. They hate each other. So did that blind Garbrandt the first time? Will it Dillashaw this time? It’s a really hard aspect of this fight to quantify.

What makes this an even harder one to call is that, in my opinion, both guys are equally skilled at what they do. It is not like a great wrestler vs a great striker fight where you can try and guess which cancels out the other. “No Love” is a slippery-as-they-come boxer with great wrestling to boot while the reigning champ is pure poetry-in-motion with his stance changing-heavy style of Muay Thai. Oh and he is an excellent wrestler too.

So who wins? Who takes this one? For this underappreciated by his boss blogger, it is a battle of head vs. heart. My heart says Garbrandt via RD1 thud. He won’t get as cocky, he is a lot more focused, and he got all the treatment he could find for his ailing back so he’ll get the best of the champ this time. However, my head says the champ. T.J is – Godfuckingdammit I’m talking about him again – Conor McGregor-esque in his confidence. He simply doesn’t see himself losing. He doesn’t recognize it as a reality. He has probably been through every last scenario this fight might throw at him in his head.  So that’s it. I love to watch both these guys fight but I have to take the champ.

Official Pick: T.J Dillashaw retains his title by KO (RD4)
Co-Main Event

 

Demetrious Johnson (C) vs. Henry Cejudo – Flyweight (125lbs) Title Fight

This is why I get paid the big bucks. To talk about snoozers like this. I’d love to pick the upset. I’d love to say Cejudo is going to pull a Rocky and beat the longtime flyweight champ, but alas. Cejudo is ultra talented. He is an Olympic wrestler who has developed a great kickboxing game and  has still-improving but impressive hands. With that said, apart from Wilson Reis, a grappler first and second, Cejudo hasn’t finished anyone since 2013. Before knocking out Reis and decisioning Sergio Pettis, he had been beat on points by Joe B in one of the most lackluster fights the division has ever seen. I’m not trying to dump on Cejudo, but my point is I would have needed to see him DESTROY a few opponents in a row to give him a shot against D.J, who, like him or not, loves to win fights.

Official Pick: Demetrious Johnson retains his title by submission (RD5)

 

Additional Fun Fight

Pedro Munhoz vs. Brett Johns (Bantamweight fight)

In case anyone has forgot BRETT JOHNS WON A FIGHT BY CALF SLICER! CALF SLICER! LAST YEAR! That just does not fucking happen. Including that win, the scrappy, scrawny 135er from Wales won his first three UFC bouts and was undefeated before running into the Funkmaster in his last fight. That would be a wake up call to a lot of up and comers. But I think he needed that to keep progressing and should be using it as motivation going into this tussle with Munhoz.

“The Young Punisher” has gone 5-3 in his UFC tenure, but that belies the fact that his three losses were to Rafael “No one has noticed I’ve been in the top-3 for 10 years” Assuncao, Jimmie Rivera, and John Dodson – three big name, top flight guys at Bantamweight. He is a black belt in a BJJ and has a particular affinity for latching onto a nasty guillotine.

Basically, someone is getting tapped.

Official Pick: Pedro Munhoz wins by submission (RD2)

Notes

– Cub Swanson fights in the third-to-the-top bout of the night. He is one of the reasons yours truly got into MMA and always brings a boxing-heavy, fun, complete style of mixed martial arts to the cage. He fight Renato Carneiro who is a savage in his own right.

– There is a LOT of talk coming from both main event participants as well as D.J that the winner of the 135lb title fight will drop down and fight “Mighty Mouse” for his title in a superfight. We’ll see if that get’s done. Here’s betting Johnson’s gigantic sense of self-worth that it won’t.

Enjoy the scraps.

-Joey B.

The 300s UFC 214 Fight Week Primers – The Curious Case of Barao vs. Sterling

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Image result for barao sterling
You ok my man?

 

As I mentioned before this card is fuckin staaAAAAaaaAAcked so I’m going to write a little about it each day (nerdgasms everywhere) and then do the usual preview Friday. Today I’m going to cover why in the 7 kingdoms two guys from the same weight class are fighting at a catch-weight.

UFC 214 in now upon us and one fight on the FXX prelims is particularly intriguing not just for the fight or fighters, although those two things are quite firestarters themselves, but for the regulations surrounding the bout.

In the second to last fight of the prelims, Aljamain Sterling faces Renan Barao in a – I hate using this word but it fits here – pivotal fight at…..not 135 pounds. We’ll get to that in a second. First our fighters.

Sterling is coming off a win over Augusto Mendes (UD) after dropping two in a row to Bryan Caraway and Rafael Assuncao, both by decision, and split decision at that. Sterling thought he won both fights, which he has a case for, particularly in the Assuncao fight. To play devil’s advocate, Sterling maybe should see this as a sign he needs to go for the finish more and not play it so safe, but either way it got bad enough that at 27 and as one of the better prospects in the division, he said he was prepared to walk away from MMA had he not got the nod over Mendes. Now that he did, he looks to take a giant leap back to contendership by besting the former champion, and, sort of, returning Barao.

As I just alluded to, Barao, almost, returns to the bantamweight division after a two fight stint at featherweight. Having gone 1-2 in his last 3 bantamweight fights, losing twice to the then-champion T.J Dillashaw, Barao decided to stop wreaking havoc on his body cutting to “35” and try 145 on for size. He saw mixed results, getting outpointed by former 155er Jeremy Stephens before taking a unanimous decision from Phillipe Nover, albeit in lackluster fashion. Not seeing the returns he was hoping, Barao decided to take his talents back to the division he did not lose in for almost a decade. There was one small hiccup awaiting him, as you may have picked up on me ominously hinting at.

UFC 214 takes place at the Honda center in Anaheim, a city located in California. California has an athletic commission, like most if not all states do (you know my opinion on research. I just know not every last area they hold fights in has one). An athletic commission is a state’s governing body over, mainly, combat sports and it’s participating competitors. Basically, they make sure every fighter follows its rules and follows them the same way. In May, California’s decided to put its money where every other state’s athletic commission’s mouth was and pass very strict regulations pertaining to weight classes and more importantly weight cutting. As I detailed in my write up on Chris Weidman (I was pretty fuckin wrong about him huh?) severely dehydrating yourself to make weight can have a very negative effect on performance. What I left out (to not distract from the story, #writing) is that it is also dangerous as all holy hell. Just check out this article on former welterweight Brian Melancon who had to retire from MMA because weight cuts basically almost shut down his kidneys. So California said no mas. Beginning, June 15th fighters had to, among other things, weigh in 30 days out from their fight to make sure they were in reasonable cutting distance from their scheduled fight weight. They also added that if you gained more than 10% of your weigh-in weight back between weigh-ins and the fight, you’d be asked very politely to move up in weight. Basically, California is no longer fucking around.

Here is we arrive at our Barao-Sterling curveball. Renan Barao has to basically kill himself to make 135. It’s well documented. He even had to pull out of his first rematch attempt with Dillashaw because he passed out standing up or something. It’s sickening to think about. Guess where that failed weight cut occurred? That’s right, the Sunshine State. So with all this documented in front of them California straight up told him they would not license or allow him to fight at 135lbs and the fight was moved to a 140lb catch-weight, with Barao’s 135lb future, at least in California, to be reviewed at a later date depending on how 140 goes.  The whole situation puts Barao’s career in a weird place as if he is never allowed to fight at 135lbs in California again he may be forced to go back to 145 for financial and promotional reasons. It also sort of puts the UFC in a pickle in terms of being at minor odds with an athletic commission, which they do not like to be as AC’s tend to band together and could make the UFC’s life harder than it needs to be.

All in all, it has made a very interesting fight matter a slight bit less as it isn’t being fought in an actual division. However that is a shitty way to look at what might be my MMA Nerd Fight of the Night come Friday. The perennial “almost” there vs. the prodigal son. It’s gonna be a fun one, as long as Barao wins his fight against the scale to get there.