#which marcin has basically said before

[repentantsky]

5 People Who Should Not Be in The Gaming industry

Our choice of entertainment, when we choose video games has nearly endless potential, with works that are inspiring from varying genre’s, to varying resources, and many people who work on these games are as inspiring as they are instrumental to the industry’s continued growth and success, these 5 people, here are none of these things, and are nothing short of a detriment to it. Whether it’s because they broke the law, multiple times, clearly don’t care about the people who work under them, or are simply unable to tell their fans the truth, here are 5 people, who simply should not be here. Be warned, I may trigger you one way or the other depending on where you stand, and I’m not sorry about it if you want to defend these losers. Oh and, one final note, my lists aren’t usually ranked by how important an entry is, or in this case, how messed up they are, but rather by how much I want to talk about them, so do keep that in mind. 

5. David Cage. 

David might be the least unworthy person on this list, depending on how you look at it, (I think he’s one of the worst people here, but you do you) but he’s also possibly the biggest A-hole. Running the company Quantic Dream, most regarded for their game Detroit: Become Human, the company, Cage, and another key member have been under investigation for years, for mistreating their employees, and violating contracts. Most famously with Elliot Page, back before when he was known as Ellen Page, as the game Beyond: Two Souls, did have a fully nude model that for a time could be hacked to be visible in the game, which was a violation of the contract Elliot had signed at that time. Other accusations include, bullying, anti-woman rights shown in the work place, and harassment of employees, namely of the female variety. This isn’t mere speculation either, as Quantic Dream did a few years back, lose a case against a former employee in court, and if one thing most people have learned about abuse or mistreatment of others these days, is that if there’s one case, there’s probably more. While things have been quiet on this front in light of COVID-19, the investigation, is still on-going. 

4. Randy Pitchford. 

The laundry list of offenses this man has committed should have seen him end up in jail, but money talks, and he settled his crimes out of court. What crimes did he commit you ask? Let me see if I can remember everything. He, supposedly had child pornography on a flash drive, for which he was acquitted, with that never being shown in a way that can be confirmed or denied, he refused to work with Troy Baker on Borderlands 3 who played Rhys in Tales from the Borderlands, because Troy has joined the closest thing to a union within voice acting, which meant Pitchford would have had to follow certain guidelines, that he wasn’t willing to, he stole 12 million dollars meant to be bonuses for employees of Take Two after completing Borderlands 2, and the opening funds for Borderlands 3, which he seemingly used to pay off his court case, he assaulted Claptrap’s original VA when they were still working together, and refused to bring him back in Borderlands 3 because he wouldn’t do the voice for free after leaving like he had before, he refused to pay a musician for work done on Duke Nukem Forever, and while not nearly as heinous as the rest of these, refuses to acknowledge that any criticism against Alien: Colonel Marines is legitimate. So yeah, complete A-whole. Kind of makes you wonder how people like this stay in the industry, instead of in jail where they belong.

3. Todd Howard.

Todd Howard, is to put it lightly, a habitual liar, and often tries to play up his good guy persona while lying through his teeth. Fallout 76 is a key example of how he can lie, as just about everything he said about the game when it was announced, was untrue, though he’s used to that as he also lied about Skyrim, Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls Blades, Elder Scrolls online, seemingly favoring single player games while 76 was still not known to the public, the list goes on. Todd Howard, for as bad as his voice is for it, is basically the hype man for everything major Bethesda does, and usually seems to be in charge for finding a fall guy when his lies don’t come to fruition. It’s not really shocking per-say that he lies, but man, it would be nice if he could just tell the truth, if anyone could believe anything he says. Never, have I heard so many untrue things said about a game from one man, and yet, you literally have to question everything that comes out of his mouth, and assume all of it is overplayed nonsense, because Bethesda seemingly pays him to try and make us believe that he can say anything of factual value. But alas, he can’t, he even lied about the paid mods controversies Bethesda tried to pull, both times they did it, and nothing came of it. Someone who cannot seem to tell the truth, should not be in this industry.   

2.  Marcin Iwinski. 

This may not be a name instantly recognizable to many, but Marcin is co-founder of CD Projekt Red, and is it’s most prolific liar. Unlike other CEO’s who have people below them spread lies so fans go after them instead of the guy at the top, Marcin has been Cyberpunk 2077′s voice in a manner of speaking, as he was the one told all of us the lies surrounding the game. He tells people what to say about the game, so he’s responsible for the lies made to retailers, fans, and of course Sony and Microsoft, and he even tried to get ahead of a piece written by Jason Schreier, with a non-apology that was actually more damage control for the horrible release of Cyberpunk 2077. While he’s by no means the only person who has committed these sorts of acts in this industry, his recent example of what a CEO will do to save face for his company, regardless of much BS there is within, makes him a prime target for fans to show those who run massive game companies, that lying to people for years, be it about how a game is running, or how it’s being made, shout out to all those people he said weren’t crunching, and then trying to downplay it when we found out, is not okay. Letting people like that go, only incites more to do the same. 

1. Andrew Wilson. 

Yet another name you might not know off the top of your head, Andrew Wilson is the CEO of EA, a company that is so corrupt under his watch, that they tried to break Belgium gambling laws because they just...thought they were above it? I don’t know the whole story there, but I do know that EA, under his run as CEO, clearly thinks it can do anything it wants, and feels like they can lie about whatever they choose, regardless of how poorly it reflects on the industry, or how it hurts smaller developers just trying to turn their passion into a career. Killing off beloved studios like Visceral games, Black Box Studios, Origin, and Playfish to name just a few, EA has become the killer of studios, and every time Andrew Wilson’s face is on screen, smart people began to worry. Mr. Surprise Mechanics himself may not have committed any crimes that we know of (aside from again, breaking Belgium law because he thought he could get away with it), nor has he lied his way to success in the public, but killing off studios loved by all in order to force everyone under his employ to mainly focus on games as a service, a move that is more harmful than good in the industry, is cause enough for him to be forced out. 

And that’s my list, what did you think? It’s not often someone actually calls people out in this industry, and I honestly think more people need to do it so there’s some of that. Let me know if you can think of anyone else who deserves being a swift kick out the door, reblog this if it interested you, and feel free to leave a note. 

[mashitandsmashit]

America’s Got Talent: Season 15 - Auditions 1

Hello, and welcome to my reviews/countdowns for “America's Got Talent”, Season 15! I'm Mashitandsmashit, but you can call me Mash or Mashit for short...

So with AGT turning a decade-and-a-half old, some changes are bound to be made...I guess I'll just get them out of the way real quick...

1: Heidi Klum has officially returned to the AGT judges' desk, and yes, I will admit that after the boredom I endured from What's Her Name and That Other Chick last year, her quirkiness was sorely missed...

2: Sofia Vergara will be taking the other seat, and while she can be likable and entertaining, they probably just hired her because they wanted a chick with an even funnier accent than Mel B.

3: Due to a certain virus flying around, some of the auditions will be held remotely, like every other “live” show on TV right now...In fact, a handful of them have already been uploaded to Youtube, but I'm not sure whether or not they'll air these auditions on TV, so I'll hold off on reviewing them for now...

Anyway, it's not like we have anywhere to be these days, so let's get right down to tonight's premiere...

Here's my first act ranking for Season 15!

10: Archie Williams. The act that felt more like a Golden Buzzer than the ACTUAL Golden Buzzer, and the act most likely to win the whole season so far...And he's at the bottom of my list...Not that I don't see the value in him, his singing was very nice and all...BUT it was far from the best singing I've heard, including from old brothas like him...Indeed, when Simon said he will never forget this audition, it's pretty obvious what the reason is, and raw talent is not it...That being said...this is one case where I might be willing to throw the act a bone specifically BECAUSE of the sob story! In fact, I don't think I'm even gonna complain about this guy making it all the way to the Finals! Because you know what, as rubbish as the results on this show can be a lot of the time, even the worst results in the show's history don't even hold a candle to the injustice that this man had to suffer for all of these years! I'm at a point in my life where my mortality has hit me hard, giving me an existential crisis over not having accomplished anything significant that I would have liked to in life, and feeling trapped in my current situation, unable to improve it! I can only imagine what THIS guy went through, having the prime years of his life stripped away from him and thrown in a cage over something he didn't do! A LOT is owed to this man, not the least of which are those 37 FREAKING YEARS of his life back! But since that is a tragic impossibility, I guess the LEAST we can give him is his time in the sun on this show! And we won't let that sun go down on him! ...Even if he's by no means the best...Will he win? Probably not...But he'll probably go far either way...And maybe he can even legitimately earn some of it by improving his voice or performing an original song...Who knows...? (HOO, boy...That's a HELL of a review to open this season with!)

9: Double Dragon. I didn't know the Lee Brothers had successors! Where's the coin slot? I wanna beat up some Black Warriors with these ladies' singing and choreography! Anyway, this was entertaining, if rather gimmicky...We'll see if these ladies can pick a song choice I can take a little more seriously next time, or if they go all out on the silliness! ...Honestly, I'm kinda rooting on the latter!

8: Voices of Our City Choir. A choir getting the Golden Buzzer? STOP THE PRESSES! But seriously, I do see potential in this group...There were a few aspects to this act that we haven't seen in previous choirs, like the (very catchy and enjoyable) original song, the instruments and the choir leader actually singing with them (in a very unique singing voice, no less). I'd rather avoid another Detroit Youth Choir situation, but seeing that this IS Terry's Golden Buzzer, and the hosts' GB picks have consistently made the Top 3 AT LEAST every time...again, save for that old burlesque dancer lady...I'd say these people have the potential to keep that streak going...Then again, Angel City Chorale had similar draws to them, and they never did that well in the votes...The whole numbers factor usually only works for kids, because parents are more likely to vote than OTHER relatives...So between that and the comparisons made between this act and Archie, it's a tough one to call...We'll just see what develops as the season goes on...But if nothing else, maybe it's time to break that streak...

7: The Pork Chop Revue. We've seen dog acts, bird acts, cat acts and even a rat act, so who's to say we can't add pigs to the animal trick collective? I guess when you get down to it, it's pretty much another dog act but with pigs...And I probably wouldn't even say that pigs are the most difficult animals to train, as they're actually quite intelligent...But this was unique and different enough for the time being, and both the gigantic mother and the little baby pig stole the show...and everyone's hearts! That'll do, pigs...That'll do...

6: Ryan Tricks. I would like to take this moment to coin a new AGT term: The Shin Lim Effect! Basically, it refers to the shadow that has been cast over all magicians on this show by a certain other magician, hence the name...Because of it, all magicians that compete on this show will inevitably be compared to You-Know-Who...It's not exactly a fair comparison, but it does set the standard for what is expected of all magicians from here on out...This man, for instance, did a trick that was far from the most mesmerizing or head-scratching...BUT, he still made me wonder what made this trick possible, and as mundane as that sounds, it IS the highest of compliments you can give a magician! The only answer that could hurt his credibility is if Howie and Simon were plants...But I've long since stopped assuming that they do those things...I'm not ENTIRELY sold on him yet, but he is likable enough that I'm willing to give him a chance...

5: Broken Roots. These guys were easily the most interesting singers for me tonight! I look forward to seeing how they improve with a little more practice...

4: Muy Moi Show. Just when you thought you'd never see a more insane sideshow act than Bir Khalsa...This guy did everything short of hanging something off of his eyelids! He even put his shirt back on! That's almost a cardinal sin in the eyes of the female judges! All I have to say is, I look forward to seeing what he does with a bigger budget!

3: BAD Salsa. Is it wrong that I almost wondered if they were former V.Unbeatable members? I mean, they certainly had the acrobatic abilities! This takes the whole dance duo genre to a new level, so I guess it's no surprise that it's from India!

2: Vincent Marcus. I wish I had Eminem and Jay-Z singing my nursery rhymes back when I was little! I never watched Vine, so I'm not aware of this guy's earlier work, but he seems like a pretty funny guy! Question is, will he make good progress like Greg Morton, or will he be taken out prematurely like several other acts of this nature...? Who knows? But I hope he does well, because this was certainly one of the more memorable acts so far...

1: Malik DOPE. Looks like my dream band consisting of Tokio Myers, Brian King Joseph and Marcin Patrzalek finally has a drummer! I'm not sure if this guy blew me away to the same degree that those other guys did (yet), but I do love his moves! I see a lot of potential in this act, especially when he gets enough of a budget to add some special effects or something...(PS, I'd probably pick Courtney Hadwin to be the lead singer...I'll call them the Sounds of Chaos!)

Overall, a pretty solid opener to the season! Even the weakest acts (not counting the rejects) had something to admire, and that's always good!

Next week, Simon's apparently got the Golden Buzzer...And I figure that it's only a matter of time before his GB wins the show, so we'll see if this is the year...I just hope that WHATEVER kind of act it is, it's deserving enough to go all the way to the Finals as I'm sure it will inevitably either way...

So I guess I'll see you then...Assuming anyone else will be posting here with me, after the total silence I got at Champions a few months back...

Still looking into that podcast...

[jedivszombie]

Firing Cyril was the right decision. See how good Esteban is doing after Marcin finally cleaned uo his engineering team.

I half agree with this and I half don't. Switching Esteban's racing engineer was honestly the best decision they could have made for Esteban and the team. And honestly, the last two years Cyril was extremely focused on Daniel because they were paying him a shitload so he really needed to focus on that investment - especially since he believed that it was a longterm project together. I don't agree with the way they fired Cyril though and I think that the team would have worked well with Cyril and Marcin leading the team - as it was supposed to be this year. BUT Marcin has done a great job with restructuring and with bringing in newer eyes.

send me a ☕️ and an opinion (popular or unpopular) and i’ll say whether i agree or disagree

[thesportssoundoff]

“I....Man I dunno, dudes.” The UFC on ESPN 5 Preview

Joey

July 29th

To be honest, I don't know. Really don't to be honest with ya folks. On paper this card is utterly unappealing. I wouldn't call it bad (we saw bad last week) but I'd call it an unappealing collection of names and faces in weirdo fights designed to fill spots on an afternoon main card. There in lies the rub though; it's an afternoon card on ESPN. It's here to kill some time, try something new and give us some fights on "free" TV. It's not awful but it's also nothing special either. This card is nondescript in a string of nondescript events leading to a much more appealing late August slate. We're gonna get there, people. Our headliner is a great fight in terms of names and rankings but a potentially stinky matchup with Colby Covington vs Robbie Lawler at the top of the bill. Under that you have three really fun on paper lightweight fights that border on being somewhat inconsequential as Jim Miller vs Clay Guida, Dong Hyun Ma vs Scott Holtzman and Joakim Silva vs Nasrat Haqparast aren't going to change your top 15 around any but will at least be damn fun. Throw in some kinda intriguing fights at 125 for both men and women and ya got something not offensive but not worth hustling to your TV to catch live.

Fights: 12

Debuts: Cole Williams, Melinda Granger, Hannah Goldy

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 3 (Volkan Oezdemir vs Ilir Latifi CANCELLED/Zelim Imadaev OUT, Mickey Gall IN vs Salim Touhari/Ramazan Emeev OUT, Cole Williams IN vs Claudio Silva)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 5 (Jim Miller, Clay Guida, Robbie Lawler, Colby Covington, Mickey Gall)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 3 (Robbie Lawler, Lucie Pudilova, Salim Touhari)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 4 (Colby Covington, Nasrat Haqparast, Claudio Silva, Matt Schnell)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC):  24-18

Colby Covington- 3-0 Robbie Lawler- 1-2 Jim Miller- 2-5 Clay Guida- 3-1 Nasrat Haqparast- 2-1 Joakim Silva- 2-1 Trevin Giles- 2-1 Gerald Meerschaert- 3-3 Scott Holtzman- 3-1 Dong Hyun Ma- 2-1 Darko Stosic- 1-1 Kennedy Nzechukwu- 0-1

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Lightweight- 3 (48) Women’s Flyweight- 3 (24) Welterweight- 3 (44) Light Heavyweight- 1 (30) Flyweight- 1 (10) Middleweight- 1 (25)

Featherweight-   (37) Women’s Featherweight- (7) Heavyweight- (22) Bantamweight- (39) Women’s Bantamweight- (13) Women’s Strawweight- (19)

2019 Number Tracker

Debuting Fighters (20-44)- Cole Williams, Melinda Granger, Hannah Goldy

Short Notice Fighters (20-27)- Cole Williams, Mickey Gall

Second Fight (42-20)- Kennedy Nzechukwu, Jordan Espinosa

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (15-28)- Colby Covington, Lauren Murphy

Undefeated Fighters (25-29)- Miranda Granger, Hannah Goldy

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (9-8)-

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (23-17)-  Matt Schnell

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- Colby Covington's "Flying too close to the wings of pastrami" run has been something to take in over the past two years in the UFC. Covington embraced a Chael Sonnen run as a heel, carving up a bit of a path of solid yet unenthusiastic decisions before really hitting his stride both verbally and in actuality when he fought Demian Maia. He beat Maia after dropping the first round (in my estimation of course) and then cut a promo on Brazil that was basically his twitter rantings done live on air. The follow up to this was Covington getting into it with Fabricio Werdum where both guys threw around the unacceptable F word and Werdum also threw around a boomerang at Covington's head. Oh and after that, Covington got into a shoving match with Charles Bennett at what I'm going to bet is Camsoda's first and only MMA event. Colby Covington's reward for that stretch of idiocy was an interim title fight vs RDA, originally scheduled for Brazil before security concerns moved it to Chicago. In what seemed like the blueprint for EVERY RDA to follow, Covington point struck with RDA long enough to close distance, mind the gaps and then  get in for clinch work. To RDA's credit, he fared better vs Covington than he did the likes of Usman and Leon Edwards which I suppose paints the plight of Covington pretty well. Colby wins but never impressively enough to carry his heel gimmick beyond certain reaches of the internet. Colby's one of those guys who is very online as they say and more often than not, the translation from being VERY ONLINE to an average audience is slimmer than folks realize. Colby then managed to turn two years of productive high level fuckery into a wasted 2019 (so far) when he turned down a September fight with Tyron Woodley, got stripped of his interim title for not being ready for the beginning of 2019, got usurped as #1 contender by Kamaru Usman, chased Dana White around a hotel with a camera phone and then finally got pretty much told he takes this fight vs Lawler or else.

This fight on one hand feels like punishment but on the other hand also feels like a solid lesson to be learned for Colby. He was never good enough or popular enough on paper to dictate his own terms. That's reserved for a very select few who ultimately turn bigger profits.  The hype has never quite always matched the results for Covington who basically got passed up by a busier more talented model of himself. Kamaru Usman fought when Covington didn't, Usman was better against their respective similar opponents. While Covington was trying to coast on a gimmick that seemingly had no real serious appeal to anybody, Usman was just trucking through main event level fights until he got the Woodley fight that Covington was offered. Now Colby's fighting Robbie Lawler in what feels like the ultimate "Win this one or fuck off" style booking. It's one MORE hurdle to a title fight but the hurdle is self inflicted by a guy who got too comfortable and assumed he was a bit chummier with the boss than he was. Perhaps that's another lesson to be learned.

2- On paper this fight feels like the perfect test between two contrasting styles of fighting. Covington is a tremendous pace and space fighter; he controls distance well, understands when to push the pace and when to take a breath, knows how to rest on the inside and finds ways to always be on offense even if he's not doing much. The addition of teep kicks at range allow him to keep fighters at bay and when a fighter starts going backwards, he's got a great understanding of how to pressure them to keep that level of discomfort at a high. On the other hand, Covington still fights like a bully who needs to go one way to win and his striking defense is so lax that Lawler feels like a high risk opponent. Robbie hits really hard and when he decides to just go, few fighters can keep up with him. I have concerns about him being shopworn and about the injuries (broken hand vs RDA, torn ACLs in the past two years alone) but against Askren he looked positively brutal up until the "submission" happened. Lawler is still prone to resting against the fence, relying on his reads defensively and giving up space which plays into the hand of Covington. I also have zero idea if this version of Lawler and off for a year Covington have the cardio to go five rounds at the pace Covington's going to want to fight at. A lot of high level intrigue at play in the main event.

3- Dana White has said/suggested that if Covington beats Lawler, the title shot is his. The question is a) when and b) will either he or Usman be healthy enough to fight before the end of 2019?

4- Jim Miller vs Clay Guida is a back up main event (Oezdemir/Latifi got moved) so I can't be too too upset but the idea that Clay Guida is co-main eventing after scraping by vs the corpse of BJ Penn is quite frustrating and downright churlish.

5- I've seen some talk that Hannah Goldy vs Miranda Granger (just added to the card mind you) could be moved up to the main card with a swap happening with one of the heavier weight class fights and that just seems like an awful lot of pressure to be honest.

6- Joakim Silva vs Nasrat Haqparast is a damn interesting fight that is well worth your time. A short notice signee, Nasrat Haqparast gave a lot of trouble to Marcin Held before losing a decision in October of 2017. Since then he beat the hell out of Marc Diakiese and followed that up by beating the shit out of Thibault Gouti before he tuckered out and took it easy in the third round. Haqparast is freakishly athletic and has a lot of those flashy highlight reel techniques you see other fighters use while also being able to wrestle really well. His cardio is a concern but it's also not damning in my eyes either. Joakim Silva has one loss in his career; a close split decision to

7- Mickey Gall has had an interesting run in the UFC. He got signed off of Lookin' For A Fight at 2-0 because the UFC was looking for guys to fight CM Punk. He beat Mike Jackson as a filler fight to get some experience and then followed that up by beating up on Sage Northcutt. From there? It's ugly. Gall is super raw but athletic but he struggles with the finer points of MMA and while he's powerful, his striking and takedown defense is ass ugly.  I feel like they feel like he's going to be good but they have no idea when that'll be and have no idea how to nurture him from point A to point B. He takes on Salim Touhari on the prelims as the big prelim fight.

8- If I had told you a dude who fought on Bellator's Fight Master wound up on a UFC card in 2019, would you be shocked, surprised or saddened? Cole Williams fought on Fight Master and is making his debut as a short notice guy vs Claudio Silva.

9- Going back to card placement, I think we can move up Matt Schnell (riding a three fight winning streak) vs Jordan Espinosa (one of the best flyweight fighters signed off of DWCS) since flyweight is gonna be a thing again.

10- Antonina Shevchenko vs Lucie Pudilova should be a fun striking battle but I also have a sneaking suspicion it's going to disappoint.

11- I'm not giving up on Trevin Giles just yet. Giles started off 2-0 in the UFC and then disappeared for a bit before returning to fight proven veteran Zak Cummings. He started really good and then just kept trying to fight at the only range Cummings could win. Sure enough he gets popped, dropped and subbed to lose his undefeated record. Giles is really talented but his chin has long since been a question, this performance now bringing his fight IQ into the discussion as well. Needless to say, this fight vs proven gatekeeper veteran Gerald Meerschaert is a big one.  

12- Is Kennedy Nzechukwu (a DWCS guy signed primarily because he's big and fought twice) vs Darko Stosic (who got shut down by Devin Clark) the worst fight ESPN is going to air this year or does that still belong to Sam Alvey vs Kleidson Abreu?

[dragnews]

After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation

WARSAW — For six weeks, Jaroslaw Kaczynski kept up the charade.

By day, he appeared at political rallies, campaigning in mourning clothes as a stand-in for his twin brother, Lech, who had been running for a new term as Poland’s president before he died in a shocking plane crash over the Russian city of Smolensk in 2010.

By night, he took off his black tie, went to the bedside of his ailing mother and told her lies. Lech was on a trip to Peru and Argentina. A volcanic eruption in Iceland had slowed his return. He even printed fake newspaper articles chronicling the fake journey, which a former associate saved and showed to The New York Times.

Only after Lech was buried and his mother had recovered did Jaroslaw Kaczynski tell her what had really happened.

“There were moments that I wanted to believe those stories myself,” Mr. Kaczynski said in a rare interview the year after the crash. “That Lech was alive.”

It is an aching testament to filial duty and sibling devotion, if also to dark personal obsession. Eight years later, Mr. Kaczynski is the dominant political figure in Poland, an enigmatic man operating mostly in the shadows. His Law and Justice party has eroded democratic freedoms and weakened the rule of law in Poland, while pushing the country into an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the European Union.

The confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels is another major challenge for a European Union already under siege from anti-establishment, populist parties across the Continent — partly because of Poland’s economic and military importance, partly because of the symbolic blow of seeing a country once synonymous with democratic yearning turn the opposite way.

It is also part of a broader pattern in Central and Eastern Europe, where Mr. Kaczynski has formed an alliance with Hungary and its populist leader, Victor Orban. Their nationalist rhetoric has found emulators in neighboring countries.

When Europe’s leaders gather in Brussels this month to discuss whether Poland should be penalized for changes to its judicial system that many experts say undermine the rule of law, other nations will be watching closely. Failure to take action, critics worry, may embolden nations like Slovakia and Romania that are flirting with their own brands of “illiberal democracy.”

What complicates the situation further is Mr. Kaczynski, and how he has blended the personal with the political. From the moment of his brother’s death, he has nurtured a mythology of martyrdom and aggrieved nationalism around the Smolensk crash, using the tragedy as a narrative to try to reshape Polish identity, even as two independent inquiries placed blame on bad weather and human error.

The government has opened a new investigation and hauled up political enemies for questioning — even as his party is tightening its grip on the judiciary. His critics say he is using Smolensk as a pretense to arrest political enemies before elections in 2020. Others wonder if he is simply gripped by anguish, vengeance and paranoia, and is dragging his country along with him.

Or, perhaps, it is both.

“It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the Smolensk crash in the life of Jaroslaw Kaczynski — and in the life of Polish politics in general,” said Marek Migalski, who ran for the European Parliament as a Law and Justice candidate in 2010 and is now a lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice. “For Kaczynski,” he added, “public debate is no longer a political one — between people of different values; it’s an eschatological war between good and evil.”

For years, Mr. Kaczynski’s party has pointed to a host of possible devious scenarios — a thermobaric bomb that blew up the plane without leaving evidence; assassins using artificial fog to obscure the runway. But the heart of the narrative boils down to two basic unproven accusations: The Russians did it, and Polish political opponents of Mr. Kaczynski deliberately conducted an inadequate investigation to cover up their own negligence.

For Mr. Kaczynski’s supporters, it has become an article of faith that the crash was no accident. Instead, it reinforces ancient realities: that Poland still faces a threat from Russia to the east and should remain wary of the great powers to the west that have betrayed Poland in the past. When the governing party declares that Poland’s sovereignty is under threat, the smoking plane wreckage in the Russian woods is considered proof.

A few weeks ago, tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Pilsudski Square in Warsaw to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the crash. A new monument to the 96 people killed in the crash was unveiled — a block of solid black granite, with 18 stairs carved into the stone, a symbol of both the stairs leading onto the plane and of a stairway to heaven.

The Law and Justice party has spent years trying to discredit the findings of the earlier inquiries and, since taking power, government prosecutors have ordered the remains of nearly all the victims of the crash exhumed — sometimes without even informing the families of the victims. As the anniversary approached, officials promised that they would present new evidence that would reveal the truth.

The anniversary came and went with no new details made public.

The faithful, however, remained unshaken.

“The Kaczynski model of political strategy, within his own party and for the country as a whole, has always been ruling through division and conflict,” said Marcin Buzanski, a senior adviser at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan research institute.

During a heated session of Parliament last year, the depth of Mr. Kaczynski’s anger was captured on video.

“I know you’re afraid of the truth, but do not wipe your treacherous mugs with my late brother’s name,” he said, banging his hand on the podium. “You destroyed him! You murdered him! You are scoundrels!”

It was a rare public outburst from a man who apparently prefers to wield power from behind the scenes. He holds a seat in Parliament but is neither prime minister nor president. He does not use email, or carry his own mobile phone or wallet. He rarely holds anything resembling a news conference and gets most of his news filtered through aides.

He has never married, has no children and lives alone with his cat. Yet, as leader of the Law and Justice Party, his power is unquestioned. If he thinks a law needs to be passed, it is usually passed. His control is not total — there are factions even within his party that he must contend with — but it is sweeping, according to friends and foes alike.

For more than a month after Mr. Kaczynski went to the hospital to have knee surgery on May 5, much of the nation’s pressing business was conducted by his bedside. He recently left the hospital, but his prolonged absence from the public stage raised questions about the direction his party and country will take when he leaves.

For years, the one person who could persuade Mr. Kaczynski that he was veering off course was his twin brother, Lech. They had once starred together as child actors, appearing in a 1962 hit movie, “The Two Who Stole the Moon,” in which they played mischievous twins who set out to capture the gold moon and sell it.

Of the two, Lech grew to be the more outgoing, public figure, while Jaroslaw was regarded as brilliant but also mercurial, largely keeping his own counsel.

No one doubts Jaroslaw’s grief over his brother’s death. On the day of the crash, Lech Kaczynski was flying to visit a memorial in the Katyn Forest, a place haunted by history, killing grounds where more than 20,000 Poles were slaughtered by Red Army soldiers in the early days of World War II, a crime that the former Soviet Union long denied and outlawed Poles from discussing.

In the plane crash, Lech died along with the top ranks of the Polish military and members of Parliament.

But whether Mr. Kaczynski truly believes the conspiracy theories that he promotes is harder to know.

Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, who served as Mr. Kaczynski’s campaign manager in 2010, spent nearly every day with him immediately after the crash.

“The first thing he said to me, unasked, was: ‘Don’t think for even a second that I believe this business about it being an assassination,’” recalled Ms. Kluzik-Rostkowska, who is now aligned with the political opposition.

She says she does not know what he truly thinks anymore, even as the question has taken on far greater significance.

Mr. Migalski, another former ally, does not have a definitive answer either. “Does Jaroslaw really believe the Russians assassinated his twin brother?” he asked. “If he truly believes that, then Poland is in great danger. Because if there was a crime there must be a punishment.”

The government is moving to settle scores. Bronislaw Komorowski, who became acting president after the plane crash, was summoned to the prosecutor’s office the week of this year’s anniversary and asked about government negligence in the investigation.

Donald Tusk, who was Poland’s prime minister at the time of the crash, has been repeatedly summoned for questioning in two separate Smolensk investigations, most recently in the trial of his former chief of staff, Tomasz Arabski.

Mr. Arabski and four other government officials who played roles in organizing the trip are facing charges of negligence. If Mr. Arabski is convicted, it could pave the way for prosecuting Mr. Tusk, who is currently the president of the European Council, which represents the leaders of the European Union. Mr. Tusk is widely expected to be the main rival of Mr. Kaczynski’s party in the 2020 presidential elections in Poland.

“One of the reasons Kaczynski is so eager to commandeer the Polish judiciary may be that he wants to use it against Donald Tusk,” said Marcin Matczak, a law professor at Warsaw University.

Indeed, many say that Mr. Kaczynski is trying to use the Smolensk crash to reshape historical memory, placing his dead brother at the center of the country’s hard march to freedom, and himself as the guiding force leading it into its next chapter, what he calls the Fourth Republic.

Behind the conspiracy theories is a deeply held belief of Mr. Kaczynski’s that when Poland first emerged from Communist rule to form its Third Republic, it did not properly cast out all those who had helped the Communists keep their grip on power.

Those people, in his view, still infect the system.

That belief has fueled the growing battle between Mr. Kaczynski and the man widely hailed as the hero of the Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, who has been a vocal critic of the mythologizing of Smolensk.

Mr. Walesa has posted messages on Facebook condemning the spread of Smolensk monuments, and he was going to take part in protests last summer at one of the monthly marches that were held to mark the crash.

But in response to growing demonstrations against the marches and the politicization of the tragedy, the government passed a law limiting where protesters could gather — a law widely criticized as undemocratic — and added hundreds of police officers to the route of future marches.

Mr. Kaczynski has become more strident in his accusations that Mr. Walesa, who was imprisoned for leading striking workers during the Solidarity movement, had ties to Communists.

He claims it was his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski — not Lech Walesa — who was the real leader of Solidarity.

For outside observers, the different views on Smolensk reveal how Poland, once a pillar and paragon in the defense of democracy, has become a land divided.

Graffiti in a bar in Warsaw summed up the debate: “Smolensk — lesson, tragedy, or the first Polish fake news.”

Follow Marc Santora on Twitter: @MarcSantoraNYT.

Joanna Berendt contributed reporting.

The post After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JMeWRW via Today News

[dani-qrt]

After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation

WARSAW — For six weeks, Jaroslaw Kaczynski kept up the charade.

By day, he appeared at political rallies, campaigning in mourning clothes as a stand-in for his twin brother, Lech, who had been running for a new term as Poland’s president before he died in a shocking plane crash over the Russian city of Smolensk in 2010.

By night, he took off his black tie, went to the bedside of his ailing mother and told her lies. Lech was on a trip to Peru and Argentina. A volcanic eruption in Iceland had slowed his return. He even printed fake newspaper articles chronicling the fake journey, which a former associate saved and showed to The New York Times.

Only after Lech was buried and his mother had recovered did Jaroslaw Kaczynski tell her what had really happened.

“There were moments that I wanted to believe those stories myself,” Mr. Kaczynski said in a rare interview the year after the crash. “That Lech was alive.”

It is an aching testament to filial duty and sibling devotion, if also to dark personal obsession. Eight years later, Mr. Kaczynski is the dominant political figure in Poland, an enigmatic man operating mostly in the shadows. His Law and Justice party has eroded democratic freedoms and weakened the rule of law in Poland, while pushing the country into an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the European Union.

The confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels is another major challenge for a European Union already under siege from anti-establishment, populist parties across the Continent — partly because of Poland’s economic and military importance, partly because of the symbolic blow of seeing a country once synonymous with democratic yearning turn the opposite way.

It is also part of a broader pattern in Central and Eastern Europe, where Mr. Kaczynski has formed an alliance with Hungary and its populist leader, Victor Orban. Their nationalist rhetoric has found emulators in neighboring countries.

When Europe’s leaders gather in Brussels this month to discuss whether Poland should be penalized for changes to its judicial system that many experts say undermine the rule of law, other nations will be watching closely. Failure to take action, critics worry, may embolden nations like Slovakia and Romania that are flirting with their own brands of “illiberal democracy.”

What complicates the situation further is Mr. Kaczynski, and how he has blended the personal with the political. From the moment of his brother’s death, he has nurtured a mythology of martyrdom and aggrieved nationalism around the Smolensk crash, using the tragedy as a narrative to try to reshape Polish identity, even as two independent inquiries placed blame on bad weather and human error.

The government has opened a new investigation and hauled up political enemies for questioning — even as his party is tightening its grip on the judiciary. His critics say he is using Smolensk as a pretense to arrest political enemies before elections in 2020. Others wonder if he is simply gripped by anguish, vengeance and paranoia, and is dragging his country along with him.

Or, perhaps, it is both.

“It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the Smolensk crash in the life of Jaroslaw Kaczynski — and in the life of Polish politics in general,” said Marek Migalski, who ran for the European Parliament as a Law and Justice candidate in 2010 and is now a lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice. “For Kaczynski,” he added, “public debate is no longer a political one — between people of different values; it’s an eschatological war between good and evil.”

For years, Mr. Kaczynski’s party has pointed to a host of possible devious scenarios — a thermobaric bomb that blew up the plane without leaving evidence; assassins using artificial fog to obscure the runway. But the heart of the narrative boils down to two basic unproven accusations: The Russians did it, and Polish political opponents of Mr. Kaczynski deliberately conducted an inadequate investigation to cover up their own negligence.

For Mr. Kaczynski’s supporters, it has become an article of faith that the crash was no accident. Instead, it reinforces ancient realities: that Poland still faces a threat from Russia to the east and should remain wary of the great powers to the west that have betrayed Poland in the past. When the governing party declares that Poland’s sovereignty is under threat, the smoking plane wreckage in the Russian woods is considered proof.

A few weeks ago, tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Pilsudski Square in Warsaw to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the crash. A new monument to the 96 people killed in the crash was unveiled — a block of solid black granite, with 18 stairs carved into the stone, a symbol of both the stairs leading onto the plane and of a stairway to heaven.

The Law and Justice party has spent years trying to discredit the findings of the earlier inquiries and, since taking power, government prosecutors have ordered the remains of nearly all the victims of the crash exhumed — sometimes without even informing the families of the victims. As the anniversary approached, officials promised that they would present new evidence that would reveal the truth.

The anniversary came and went with no new details made public.

The faithful, however, remained unshaken.

“The Kaczynski model of political strategy, within his own party and for the country as a whole, has always been ruling through division and conflict,” said Marcin Buzanski, a senior adviser at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan research institute.

During a heated session of Parliament last year, the depth of Mr. Kaczynski’s anger was captured on video.

“I know you’re afraid of the truth, but do not wipe your treacherous mugs with my late brother’s name,” he said, banging his hand on the podium. “You destroyed him! You murdered him! You are scoundrels!”

It was a rare public outburst from a man who apparently prefers to wield power from behind the scenes. He holds a seat in Parliament but is neither prime minister nor president. He does not use email, or carry his own mobile phone or wallet. He rarely holds anything resembling a news conference and gets most of his news filtered through aides.

He has never married, has no children and lives alone with his cat. Yet, as leader of the Law and Justice Party, his power is unquestioned. If he thinks a law needs to be passed, it is usually passed. His control is not total — there are factions even within his party that he must contend with — but it is sweeping, according to friends and foes alike.

For more than a month after Mr. Kaczynski went to the hospital to have knee surgery on May 5, much of the nation’s pressing business was conducted by his bedside. He recently left the hospital, but his prolonged absence from the public stage raised questions about the direction his party and country will take when he leaves.

For years, the one person who could persuade Mr. Kaczynski that he was veering off course was his twin brother, Lech. They had once starred together as child actors, appearing in a 1962 hit movie, “The Two Who Stole the Moon,” in which they played mischievous twins who set out to capture the gold moon and sell it.

Of the two, Lech grew to be the more outgoing, public figure, while Jaroslaw was regarded as brilliant but also mercurial, largely keeping his own counsel.

No one doubts Jaroslaw’s grief over his brother’s death. On the day of the crash, Lech Kaczynski was flying to visit a memorial in the Katyn Forest, a place haunted by history, killing grounds where more than 20,000 Poles were slaughtered by Red Army soldiers in the early days of World War II, a crime that the former Soviet Union long denied and outlawed Poles from discussing.

In the plane crash, Lech died along with the top ranks of the Polish military and members of Parliament.

But whether Mr. Kaczynski truly believes the conspiracy theories that he promotes is harder to know.

Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, who served as Mr. Kaczynski’s campaign manager in 2010, spent nearly every day with him immediately after the crash.

“The first thing he said to me, unasked, was: ‘Don’t think for even a second that I believe this business about it being an assassination,’” recalled Ms. Kluzik-Rostkowska, who is now aligned with the political opposition.

She says she does not know what he truly thinks anymore, even as the question has taken on far greater significance.

Mr. Migalski, another former ally, does not have a definitive answer either. “Does Jaroslaw really believe the Russians assassinated his twin brother?” he asked. “If he truly believes that, then Poland is in great danger. Because if there was a crime there must be a punishment.”

The government is moving to settle scores. Bronislaw Komorowski, who became acting president after the plane crash, was summoned to the prosecutor’s office the week of this year’s anniversary and asked about government negligence in the investigation.

Donald Tusk, who was Poland’s prime minister at the time of the crash, has been repeatedly summoned for questioning in two separate Smolensk investigations, most recently in the trial of his former chief of staff, Tomasz Arabski.

Mr. Arabski and four other government officials who played roles in organizing the trip are facing charges of negligence. If Mr. Arabski is convicted, it could pave the way for prosecuting Mr. Tusk, who is currently the president of the European Council, which represents the leaders of the European Union. Mr. Tusk is widely expected to be the main rival of Mr. Kaczynski’s party in the 2020 presidential elections in Poland.

“One of the reasons Kaczynski is so eager to commandeer the Polish judiciary may be that he wants to use it against Donald Tusk,” said Marcin Matczak, a law professor at Warsaw University.

Indeed, many say that Mr. Kaczynski is trying to use the Smolensk crash to reshape historical memory, placing his dead brother at the center of the country’s hard march to freedom, and himself as the guiding force leading it into its next chapter, what he calls the Fourth Republic.

Behind the conspiracy theories is a deeply held belief of Mr. Kaczynski’s that when Poland first emerged from Communist rule to form its Third Republic, it did not properly cast out all those who had helped the Communists keep their grip on power.

Those people, in his view, still infect the system.

That belief has fueled the growing battle between Mr. Kaczynski and the man widely hailed as the hero of the Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, who has been a vocal critic of the mythologizing of Smolensk.

Mr. Walesa has posted messages on Facebook condemning the spread of Smolensk monuments, and he was going to take part in protests last summer at one of the monthly marches that were held to mark the crash.

But in response to growing demonstrations against the marches and the politicization of the tragedy, the government passed a law limiting where protesters could gather — a law widely criticized as undemocratic — and added hundreds of police officers to the route of future marches.

Mr. Kaczynski has become more strident in his accusations that Mr. Walesa, who was imprisoned for leading striking workers during the Solidarity movement, had ties to Communists.

He claims it was his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski — not Lech Walesa — who was the real leader of Solidarity.

For outside observers, the different views on Smolensk reveal how Poland, once a pillar and paragon in the defense of democracy, has become a land divided.

Graffiti in a bar in Warsaw summed up the debate: “Smolensk — lesson, tragedy, or the first Polish fake news.”

Follow Marc Santora on Twitter: @MarcSantoraNYT.

Joanna Berendt contributed reporting.

The post After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JMeWRW via Online News

[party-hard-or-die]

After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation

WARSAW — For six weeks, Jaroslaw Kaczynski kept up the charade.

By day, he appeared at political rallies, campaigning in mourning clothes as a stand-in for his twin brother, Lech, who had been running for a new term as Poland’s president before he died in a shocking plane crash over the Russian city of Smolensk in 2010.

By night, he took off his black tie, went to the bedside of his ailing mother and told her lies. Lech was on a trip to Peru and Argentina. A volcanic eruption in Iceland had slowed his return. He even printed fake newspaper articles chronicling the fake journey, which a former associate saved and showed to The New York Times.

Only after Lech was buried and his mother had recovered did Jaroslaw Kaczynski tell her what had really happened.

“There were moments that I wanted to believe those stories myself,” Mr. Kaczynski said in a rare interview the year after the crash. “That Lech was alive.”

It is an aching testament to filial duty and sibling devotion, if also to dark personal obsession. Eight years later, Mr. Kaczynski is the dominant political figure in Poland, an enigmatic man operating mostly in the shadows. His Law and Justice party has eroded democratic freedoms and weakened the rule of law in Poland, while pushing the country into an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the European Union.

The confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels is another major challenge for a European Union already under siege from anti-establishment, populist parties across the Continent — partly because of Poland’s economic and military importance, partly because of the symbolic blow of seeing a country once synonymous with democratic yearning turn the opposite way.

It is also part of a broader pattern in Central and Eastern Europe, where Mr. Kaczynski has formed an alliance with Hungary and its populist leader, Victor Orban. Their nationalist rhetoric has found emulators in neighboring countries.

When Europe’s leaders gather in Brussels this month to discuss whether Poland should be penalized for changes to its judicial system that many experts say undermine the rule of law, other nations will be watching closely. Failure to take action, critics worry, may embolden nations like Slovakia and Romania that are flirting with their own brands of “illiberal democracy.”

What complicates the situation further is Mr. Kaczynski, and how he has blended the personal with the political. From the moment of his brother’s death, he has nurtured a mythology of martyrdom and aggrieved nationalism around the Smolensk crash, using the tragedy as a narrative to try to reshape Polish identity, even as two independent inquiries placed blame on bad weather and human error.

The government has opened a new investigation and hauled up political enemies for questioning — even as his party is tightening its grip on the judiciary. His critics say he is using Smolensk as a pretense to arrest political enemies before elections in 2020. Others wonder if he is simply gripped by anguish, vengeance and paranoia, and is dragging his country along with him.

Or, perhaps, it is both.

“It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the Smolensk crash in the life of Jaroslaw Kaczynski — and in the life of Polish politics in general,” said Marek Migalski, who ran for the European Parliament as a Law and Justice candidate in 2010 and is now a lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice. “For Kaczynski,” he added, “public debate is no longer a political one — between people of different values; it’s an eschatological war between good and evil.”

For years, Mr. Kaczynski’s party has pointed to a host of possible devious scenarios — a thermobaric bomb that blew up the plane without leaving evidence; assassins using artificial fog to obscure the runway. But the heart of the narrative boils down to two basic unproven accusations: The Russians did it, and Polish political opponents of Mr. Kaczynski deliberately conducted an inadequate investigation to cover up their own negligence.

For Mr. Kaczynski’s supporters, it has become an article of faith that the crash was no accident. Instead, it reinforces ancient realities: that Poland still faces a threat from Russia to the east and should remain wary of the great powers to the west that have betrayed Poland in the past. When the governing party declares that Poland’s sovereignty is under threat, the smoking plane wreckage in the Russian woods is considered proof.

A few weeks ago, tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Pilsudski Square in Warsaw to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the crash. A new monument to the 96 people killed in the crash was unveiled — a block of solid black granite, with 18 stairs carved into the stone, a symbol of both the stairs leading onto the plane and of a stairway to heaven.

The Law and Justice party has spent years trying to discredit the findings of the earlier inquiries and, since taking power, government prosecutors have ordered the remains of nearly all the victims of the crash exhumed — sometimes without even informing the families of the victims. As the anniversary approached, officials promised that they would present new evidence that would reveal the truth.

The anniversary came and went with no new details made public.

The faithful, however, remained unshaken.

“The Kaczynski model of political strategy, within his own party and for the country as a whole, has always been ruling through division and conflict,” said Marcin Buzanski, a senior adviser at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan research institute.

During a heated session of Parliament last year, the depth of Mr. Kaczynski’s anger was captured on video.

“I know you’re afraid of the truth, but do not wipe your treacherous mugs with my late brother’s name,” he said, banging his hand on the podium. “You destroyed him! You murdered him! You are scoundrels!”

It was a rare public outburst from a man who apparently prefers to wield power from behind the scenes. He holds a seat in Parliament but is neither prime minister nor president. He does not use email, or carry his own mobile phone or wallet. He rarely holds anything resembling a news conference and gets most of his news filtered through aides.

He has never married, has no children and lives alone with his cat. Yet, as leader of the Law and Justice Party, his power is unquestioned. If he thinks a law needs to be passed, it is usually passed. His control is not total — there are factions even within his party that he must contend with — but it is sweeping, according to friends and foes alike.

For more than a month after Mr. Kaczynski went to the hospital to have knee surgery on May 5, much of the nation’s pressing business was conducted by his bedside. He recently left the hospital, but his prolonged absence from the public stage raised questions about the direction his party and country will take when he leaves.

For years, the one person who could persuade Mr. Kaczynski that he was veering off course was his twin brother, Lech. They had once starred together as child actors, appearing in a 1962 hit movie, “The Two Who Stole the Moon,” in which they played mischievous twins who set out to capture the gold moon and sell it.

Of the two, Lech grew to be the more outgoing, public figure, while Jaroslaw was regarded as brilliant but also mercurial, largely keeping his own counsel.

No one doubts Jaroslaw’s grief over his brother’s death. On the day of the crash, Lech Kaczynski was flying to visit a memorial in the Katyn Forest, a place haunted by history, killing grounds where more than 20,000 Poles were slaughtered by Red Army soldiers in the early days of World War II, a crime that the former Soviet Union long denied and outlawed Poles from discussing.

In the plane crash, Lech died along with the top ranks of the Polish military and members of Parliament.

But whether Mr. Kaczynski truly believes the conspiracy theories that he promotes is harder to know.

Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, who served as Mr. Kaczynski’s campaign manager in 2010, spent nearly every day with him immediately after the crash.

“The first thing he said to me, unasked, was: ‘Don’t think for even a second that I believe this business about it being an assassination,’” recalled Ms. Kluzik-Rostkowska, who is now aligned with the political opposition.

She says she does not know what he truly thinks anymore, even as the question has taken on far greater significance.

Mr. Migalski, another former ally, does not have a definitive answer either. “Does Jaroslaw really believe the Russians assassinated his twin brother?” he asked. “If he truly believes that, then Poland is in great danger. Because if there was a crime there must be a punishment.”

The government is moving to settle scores. Bronislaw Komorowski, who became acting president after the plane crash, was summoned to the prosecutor’s office the week of this year’s anniversary and asked about government negligence in the investigation.

Donald Tusk, who was Poland’s prime minister at the time of the crash, has been repeatedly summoned for questioning in two separate Smolensk investigations, most recently in the trial of his former chief of staff, Tomasz Arabski.

Mr. Arabski and four other government officials who played roles in organizing the trip are facing charges of negligence. If Mr. Arabski is convicted, it could pave the way for prosecuting Mr. Tusk, who is currently the president of the European Council, which represents the leaders of the European Union. Mr. Tusk is widely expected to be the main rival of Mr. Kaczynski’s party in the 2020 presidential elections in Poland.

“One of the reasons Kaczynski is so eager to commandeer the Polish judiciary may be that he wants to use it against Donald Tusk,” said Marcin Matczak, a law professor at Warsaw University.

Indeed, many say that Mr. Kaczynski is trying to use the Smolensk crash to reshape historical memory, placing his dead brother at the center of the country’s hard march to freedom, and himself as the guiding force leading it into its next chapter, what he calls the Fourth Republic.

Behind the conspiracy theories is a deeply held belief of Mr. Kaczynski’s that when Poland first emerged from Communist rule to form its Third Republic, it did not properly cast out all those who had helped the Communists keep their grip on power.

Those people, in his view, still infect the system.

That belief has fueled the growing battle between Mr. Kaczynski and the man widely hailed as the hero of the Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, who has been a vocal critic of the mythologizing of Smolensk.

Mr. Walesa has posted messages on Facebook condemning the spread of Smolensk monuments, and he was going to take part in protests last summer at one of the monthly marches that were held to mark the crash.

But in response to growing demonstrations against the marches and the politicization of the tragedy, the government passed a law limiting where protesters could gather — a law widely criticized as undemocratic — and added hundreds of police officers to the route of future marches.

Mr. Kaczynski has become more strident in his accusations that Mr. Walesa, who was imprisoned for leading striking workers during the Solidarity movement, had ties to Communists.

He claims it was his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski — not Lech Walesa — who was the real leader of Solidarity.

For outside observers, the different views on Smolensk reveal how Poland, once a pillar and paragon in the defense of democracy, has become a land divided.

Graffiti in a bar in Warsaw summed up the debate: “Smolensk — lesson, tragedy, or the first Polish fake news.”

Follow Marc Santora on Twitter: @MarcSantoraNYT.

Joanna Berendt contributed reporting.

The post After a President’s Shocking Death, a Suspicious Twin Reshapes a Nation appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2JMeWRW via Breaking News

[flauntpage]

The Trail Blazers Have a Brand New Identity Thanks to One Simple Concept

The Portland Trail Blazers had one of the NBA’s ten worst defenses last season. Before the All-Star break, only the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, and Brooklyn Nets were less competent on that side of the ball. Night-to-night mental consistency was a chronic issue, effort waned, important details were made trivial, and murmurs about whether Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum could co-exist inside a balanced framework swelled into a roar.

But that was last year. Now just over one month into the 2017-18 season, Portland is the fourth-best team in the Western Conference (trailing only the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs). They also have the league’s lowest assist rate, a bottom-10 offense, and lost Al-Farouq Aminu—their best defender—to a sprained ankle on the first day of November.

Yet somehow, instead of standing on the shoulders of two missile-launching shotmakers, the Blazers have won 13 games and elevated their overall stature by deploying one of the NBA’s stingiest defenses. According to Cleaning the Glass, they're currently allowing 100.7 points per 100 possessions, which is bested only by the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder.

Given the fact that there was no major change in personnel, and only slight tweaks to their conservative scheme, sustainability is deservedly called into question. Is this a mirage or a leap? And how far can a stabilized Trail Blazers squad go in the Western Conference playoffs if they preserve a top-three defense throughout the regular season?

I'll try and answer those questions in a bit, but for now let’s look at why Portland is so good, and how it’s doing what it’s doing. A quick look at their numbers from last year, compared to how they're performing today, reveals that there hasn’t been a dramatic change to their game plan.

Photo by Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

The Blazers still rank near the bottom of the league in deflections and charges drawn per 36 minutes, while only two teams force fewer turnovers. Their bigs still drop back near the elbow when defending a pick-and-roll, and once more they’re forcing opponents into a ton of long twos while holding them to league-low shooting percentage at the rim. Good luck pulling off a clean assist against this team, as they're also only allowing 17.8 per 100 possessions, which leads the NBA.

“Our focus [heading into this season] was not necessarily making wholesale changes, but just being more consistent,” Blazers head coach Terry Stotts said before last night's game against the New York Knicks. “We looked at some of the stats last year, where we could improve, and debated about making some changes—maybe being aggressive, trying to create more turnovers—but we ended up just trying to do what we do and being consistent with it.”

They’re also fouling less, rebounding more, and getting back in transition with increased discipline. According to Cleaning the Glass, Portland ranks first in defensive transition efficiency, a modest improvement from where they ranked (24th) last year. Talk to any player on the team (I interviewed quite a few) and the phrase “attention to detail” springs up sooner than later. It's a simple concept that's made a world of difference. They now know what type of punch the other team wants to throw before they can step into it.

“We communicate through other team’s plays. In shootaround everybody’s like ‘What’s the name of that play?’ We communicate amongst each other in how we’re gonna guard it. ‘Let’s talk about this, let’s talk about that,’” Lillard said. “So not only is the communication up ten levels, and the activity is up ten levels, but we’re doing our homework. We know what’s coming before the game. We’re watching clips on our iPads. We’re studying them. We’re doing the stuff that it takes to be a good defensive team.”

Much like an offense wants to get on a roll by stringing together successful scores, the Blazers preach a “three stops” mantra. Halt the offense on three straight trips down the floor and good things will happen. To help get them there, Portland’s coaching staff absorbs data provided by its analytics team on a regular basis, in an attempt to place the opponent in a position where they don’t normally find much success.

The Blazers also aim to hold the other team to under 24 points in every quarter. That sounds like an impossible task in today’s three-point hungry NBA, where offenses regularly crack 100 points with ease, but Portland has taken logical steps towards making it a reality.

“They can look up at the scoreboard and know that ‘Damn, they scored X amount of points this quarter. We’ve got three minutes left, we gotta lock up. These next few minutes they can’t score any points.’” Blazers assistant coach David Vanterpool told VICE Sports. “When we break it down like that, I think they kind of gravitate towards the competition of it all. It can become a game within a game.”

In last Friday’s afternoon game against the Brooklyn Nets, the Blazers got off to an understandably sluggish start, but watch what happens on Portland’s very first play after Brooklyn comes within one possession of reaching 24 for the quarter.

It’s not necessary to walk through every pivot point from this sequence. Instead just watch as all five guys help, recover, dive under screens, pressure the ball, shut down driving lanes, and eventually force a turnover without making any massive gambles. Portland’s season is filled with plays that look exactly like this one.

Their coaching staff has also placed an emphasis on closeouts. Instead of racing out to the three-point line just to get a hand up and contest the shot, the Blazers want their guys to close out to the touch—that is, getting so tight that a three-point attempt turns into a drive, or situation where the ball-handler picks up his dribble. To date, it’s worked like a charm.

This isn’t a brand new adjustment—the Blazers ranked first, first, eighth, and fourth, respectively, in opposing three-point frequency since the 2013-14 season—but it’s something Portland has valued even more of late. Right now only the Miami Heat permit fewer three-point attempts per 100 possessions, and only three teams allow a lower percentage from beyond the arc than Portland. (According to NBA.com, only the Heat allows fewer “wide open” threes than the Blazers, and from those attempts opponents are shooting a below-average 36.2 percent.)

Here’s one example from Monday’s game against the New York Knicks. Notice how Pat Connaughton treats Courtney Lee after he catches a threatening pass in transition. The third-year guard takes away the three, downs the screen, forces Lee to drive away from the middle and towards Jusuf Nurkic, then watches as the pass back to Kyle O’Quinn results in a satisfying air ball.

For that sort of aggressiveness to take place along the arc, Portland’s perimeter defenders have to believe that even if/when they get beat off the bounce, their man won’t embarrass them by scoring easily at the rim. It’s here where trust and backside help enter the equation and become so critical to the Blazers’ early-season triumph.

It’s evident in both clips already shown, but not only does Portland approach the defensive end with obvious effort, but its help rotations are consistently crisp. Everyone knows where everyone else is supposed to be, while being cognizant of the opponent’s desire. Their success boils down to a rigidity that bleeds from possession to possession, quarter to quarter, night to night, and week to week.

“We want [our defense] to be as solid and basic as possible, because if my teammates know exactly what I’m going to force this ball to do, then we don’t have any problems,” Vanterpool said. “As soon as it starts to get randomized and you get a guy just doubling out of nowhere, everybody’s looking around and you end up giving up points. The overall philosophy is solid. Be as solid as possible and stay as basic within our parameters, as far as what we want to accomplish defensively, no matter what. Always know where the ball is going to be forced towards, or where it’s supposed to be forced towards. If somebody makes a mistake, cover their backside.”

Watch here as Connaughton finds himself slightly out of position helping Lillard on Elfrid Payton’s drive.

Once the ball hits the corner and Terrence Ross starts to drive baseline, Lillard immediately slides off Payton to cut it off. Connaughton is then able to retreat back and make a smart closeout on a career 29.7 percent three-point shooter, forcing a swing pass to Aaron Gordon. Here’s where Mo Harkless finishes out the play with another solid closeout that persuades Gordon to put the ball on the floor and commit a travel.

Scheme, execution, and effort are all significant ingredients found in any good defense, but so too are quality individuals. Lillard and McCollum were once scapegoats thanks to their one-dimensional reputations, but when both are on the floor Portland allows only 102 points per 100 possessions, a figure still good enough to rank in the top ten. Each has been feisty while maintaining composure, and a relentlessness unseen in the past.

"I know from working with them in the summer...defensively has been where the focus has been, and the three of us have done a lot of different defensive drills for individual defense, help side stuff, and I think they’ve taken to it and done a great job," Vanterpool said.

Here’s Lillard matched up with Otto Porter in a recent win against the Washington Wizards.

It’s a sideline out-of-bounds play designed for Porter to pop off Marcin Gortat’s flare screen for an open three. He eventually scores on a long two, but Lillard’s effort on the play, battling through two picks and contesting the shot as a trailer, makes a difference.

“Let the media tell it,” Ed Davis tells VICE Sports, with a smirk. “We got two guards that don’t play defense. But obviously they’re showing that they’re very good defensive players, so that’s helping us a lot.”

Behind those two, Portland is filled with length, versatility, and quickness. Evan Turner is as stout and fluid as any NBA wing off the bench, Harkless is a gazelle, Aminu (when healthy) allows Portland to go small without sacrificing too much, Noah Vonleh is able to switch onto guards whenever absolutely necessary, Shabazz Napier’s hands are a pissed off rattlesnake, and Davis has been an agile ogre on the glass.

And then there’s Nurkic, the inside presence who simultaneously has no place in a modern league that's exterminating cement-footed big men, and also rank 16th in Defensive Real Plus-Minus. The 23-year-old shores up the paint, slides from one block to the next, and does a decent job putting out fires whenever they pop up elsewhere on the floor.

“He’s very smart about when to come up on a guy, when to step back,” New York Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek said. “He clogs that lane, and then that allows the guards to put a little more pressure on the outside players and get up on guys because they know he’s back there.”

The Blazers have an elite defense whenever Nurkic is on the floor, and don’t improve (or decline) when he sits. Here he is switching from Ian Mahinmi to Porter to Bradley Beal, shuffling his feet all the way to an impressive rejection.

Portland’s defense isn’t perfect, though. They still miscommunicate on switches, and the NBA’s Karma Gods have so far blessed them with a few timely misses when they do screw up. In their big comeback win against Washington, Beal was left wide open for two three-point tries in the fourth quarter because Connaughton thought he was supposed to switch onto the screener instead of fight through the pick. Portland doesn’t win the game if one of those falls.

“Even if we are top five, I’m on their behind daily about certain things we are not doing as well as we need to do, at certain things that we need to improve at, about a lot of things that, basically, we’ve gotten away with,” Vanterpool said. “Sometimes people miss shots. People miss wide open shots. We’ve been missing wide open shots. Our offense hasn’t been what it normally is. I try to keep that temperament involved in the equation so we don’t just start thinking—start poking your chest out and almost break your arm patting yourself on the back, and you end up 26th again.”

Add all this up and it’s hard to think Portland hasn’t turned a meaningful corner in an area that’s plagued them over the past couple seasons. Assuming the offense comes around sooner than later, possibly even climbing up to a top-ten level, the Blazers will have the profile of a spunky championship contender.

But executing in the regular season vs. doing so inside a seven-game series are two separate animals, and it’ll be interesting to see how sturdy their defense holds against a team that’s able to ruthlessly pick apart a relatively weak individual defender (like Connaughton, Lillard, Nurkic, or McCollum) who has physical limitations.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe their offense is a fireworks display by then, with a defense still strong enough to keep Lillard and McCollum on the court without fear of habitual abuse. We’ll see. But Portland has spent the opening month of a season that could’ve spiraled out of control into an opportunity to reshape who they are and what they’re about.

“I think [defense] has become our identity, which is...it’s strange for us,” Vanterpool said. “This is my sixth season and we’ve always been an offensive juggernaut. I had this conversation with our players and I’m like ‘Look, until our offense gets back to where we know it should be, our defense—that’s who we are now—so that has to be just as consistent as our offense has been over the past five, six years.’ I just take my hat off to them for being true to it, and just sticking to it.”

The Trail Blazers Have a Brand New Identity Thanks to One Simple Concept published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

The Trail Blazers Have a Brand New Identity Thanks to One Simple Concept

The Portland Trail Blazers had one of the NBA’s ten worst defenses last season. Before the All-Star break, only the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, and Brooklyn Nets were less competent on that side of the ball. Night-to-night mental consistency was a chronic issue, effort waned, important details were made trivial, and murmurs about whether Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum could co-exist inside a balanced framework swelled into a roar.

But that was last year. Now just over one month into the 2017-18 season, Portland is the fourth-best team in the Western Conference (trailing only the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs). They also have the league’s lowest assist rate, a bottom-10 offense, and lost Al-Farouq Aminu—their best defender—to a sprained ankle on the first day of November.

Yet somehow, instead of standing on the shoulders of two missile-launching shotmakers, the Blazers have won 13 games and elevated their overall stature by deploying one of the NBA’s stingiest defenses. According to Cleaning the Glass, they’re currently allowing 100.7 points per 100 possessions, which is bested only by the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder.

Given the fact that there was no major change in personnel, and only slight tweaks to their conservative scheme, sustainability is deservedly called into question. Is this a mirage or a leap? And how far can a stabilized Trail Blazers squad go in the Western Conference playoffs if they preserve a top-three defense throughout the regular season?

I’ll try and answer those questions in a bit, but for now let’s look at why Portland is so good, and how it’s doing what it’s doing. A quick look at their numbers from last year, compared to how they’re performing today, reveals that there hasn’t been a dramatic change to their game plan.

Photo by Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

The Blazers still rank near the bottom of the league in deflections and charges drawn per 36 minutes, while only two teams force fewer turnovers. Their bigs still drop back near the elbow when defending a pick-and-roll, and once more they’re forcing opponents into a ton of long twos while holding them to league-low shooting percentage at the rim. Good luck pulling off a clean assist against this team, as they’re also only allowing 17.8 per 100 possessions, which leads the NBA.

“Our focus [heading into this season] was not necessarily making wholesale changes, but just being more consistent,” Blazers head coach Terry Stotts said before last night’s game against the New York Knicks. “We looked at some of the stats last year, where we could improve, and debated about making some changes—maybe being aggressive, trying to create more turnovers—but we ended up just trying to do what we do and being consistent with it.”

They’re also fouling less, rebounding more, and getting back in transition with increased discipline. According to Cleaning the Glass, Portland ranks first in defensive transition efficiency, a modest improvement from where they ranked (24th) last year. Talk to any player on the team (I interviewed quite a few) and the phrase “attention to detail” springs up sooner than later. It’s a simple concept that’s made a world of difference. They now know what type of punch the other team wants to throw before they can step into it.

“We communicate through other team’s plays. In shootaround everybody’s like ‘What’s the name of that play?’ We communicate amongst each other in how we’re gonna guard it. ‘Let’s talk about this, let’s talk about that,’” Lillard said. “So not only is the communication up ten levels, and the activity is up ten levels, but we’re doing our homework. We know what’s coming before the game. We’re watching clips on our iPads. We’re studying them. We’re doing the stuff that it takes to be a good defensive team.”

Much like an offense wants to get on a roll by stringing together successful scores, the Blazers preach a “three stops” mantra. Halt the offense on three straight trips down the floor and good things will happen. To help get them there, Portland’s coaching staff absorbs data provided by its analytics team on a regular basis, in an attempt to place the opponent in a position where they don’t normally find much success.

The Blazers also aim to hold the other team to under 24 points in every quarter. That sounds like an impossible task in today’s three-point hungry NBA, where offenses regularly crack 100 points with ease, but Portland has taken logical steps towards making it a reality.

“They can look up at the scoreboard and know that ‘Damn, they scored X amount of points this quarter. We’ve got three minutes left, we gotta lock up. These next few minutes they can’t score any points.’” Blazers assistant coach David Vanterpool told VICE Sports. “When we break it down like that, I think they kind of gravitate towards the competition of it all. It can become a game within a game.”

In last Friday’s afternoon game against the Brooklyn Nets, the Blazers got off to an understandably sluggish start, but watch what happens on Portland’s very first play after Brooklyn comes within one possession of reaching 24 for the quarter.

It’s not necessary to walk through every pivot point from this sequence. Instead just watch as all five guys help, recover, dive under screens, pressure the ball, shut down driving lanes, and eventually force a turnover without making any massive gambles. Portland’s season is filled with plays that look exactly like this one.

Their coaching staff has also placed an emphasis on closeouts. Instead of racing out to the three-point line just to get a hand up and contest the shot, the Blazers want their guys to close out to the touch—that is, getting so tight that a three-point attempt turns into a drive, or situation where the ball-handler picks up his dribble. To date, it’s worked like a charm.

This isn’t a brand new adjustment—the Blazers ranked first, first, eighth, and fourth, respectively, in opposing three-point frequency since the 2013-14 season—but it’s something Portland has valued even more of late. Right now only the Miami Heat permit fewer three-point attempts per 100 possessions, and only three teams allow a lower percentage from beyond the arc than Portland. (According to NBA.com, only the Heat allows fewer “wide open” threes than the Blazers, and from those attempts opponents are shooting a below-average 36.2 percent.)

Here’s one example from Monday’s game against the New York Knicks. Notice how Pat Connaughton treats Courtney Lee after he catches a threatening pass in transition. The third-year guard takes away the three, downs the screen, forces Lee to drive away from the middle and towards Jusuf Nurkic, then watches as the pass back to Kyle O’Quinn results in a satisfying air ball.

For that sort of aggressiveness to take place along the arc, Portland’s perimeter defenders have to believe that even if/when they get beat off the bounce, their man won’t embarrass them by scoring easily at the rim. It’s here where trust and backside help enter the equation and become so critical to the Blazers’ early-season triumph.

It’s evident in both clips already shown, but not only does Portland approach the defensive end with obvious effort, but its help rotations are consistently crisp. Everyone knows where everyone else is supposed to be, while being cognizant of the opponent’s desire. Their success boils down to a rigidity that bleeds from possession to possession, quarter to quarter, night to night, and week to week.

“We want [our defense] to be as solid and basic as possible, because if my teammates know exactly what I’m going to force this ball to do, then we don’t have any problems,” Vanterpool said. “As soon as it starts to get randomized and you get a guy just doubling out of nowhere, everybody’s looking around and you end up giving up points. The overall philosophy is solid. Be as solid as possible and stay as basic within our parameters, as far as what we want to accomplish defensively, no matter what. Always know where the ball is going to be forced towards, or where it’s supposed to be forced towards. If somebody makes a mistake, cover their backside.”

Watch here as Connaughton finds himself slightly out of position helping Lillard on Elfrid Payton’s drive.

Once the ball hits the corner and Terrence Ross starts to drive baseline, Lillard immediately slides off Payton to cut it off. Connaughton is then able to retreat back and make a smart closeout on a career 29.7 percent three-point shooter, forcing a swing pass to Aaron Gordon. Here’s where Mo Harkless finishes out the play with another solid closeout that persuades Gordon to put the ball on the floor and commit a travel.

Scheme, execution, and effort are all significant ingredients found in any good defense, but so too are quality individuals. Lillard and McCollum were once scapegoats thanks to their one-dimensional reputations, but when both are on the floor Portland allows only 102 points per 100 possessions, a figure still good enough to rank in the top ten. Each has been feisty while maintaining composure, and a relentlessness unseen in the past.

“I know from working with them in the summer…defensively has been where the focus has been, and the three of us have done a lot of different defensive drills for individual defense, help side stuff, and I think they’ve taken to it and done a great job,” Vanterpool said.

Here’s Lillard matched up with Otto Porter in a recent win against the Washington Wizards.

It’s a sideline out-of-bounds play designed for Porter to pop off Marcin Gortat’s flare screen for an open three. He eventually scores on a long two, but Lillard’s effort on the play, battling through two picks and contesting the shot as a trailer, makes a difference.

“Let the media tell it,” Ed Davis tells VICE Sports, with a smirk. “We got two guards that don’t play defense. But obviously they’re showing that they’re very good defensive players, so that’s helping us a lot.”

Behind those two, Portland is filled with length, versatility, and quickness. Evan Turner is as stout and fluid as any NBA wing off the bench, Harkless is a gazelle, Aminu (when healthy) allows Portland to go small without sacrificing too much, Noah Vonleh is able to switch onto guards whenever absolutely necessary, Shabazz Napier’s hands are a pissed off rattlesnake, and Davis has been an agile ogre on the glass.

And then there’s Nurkic, the inside presence who simultaneously has no place in a modern league that’s exterminating cement-footed big men, and also rank 16th in Defensive Real Plus-Minus. The 23-year-old shores up the paint, slides from one block to the next, and does a decent job putting out fires whenever they pop up elsewhere on the floor.

“He’s very smart about when to come up on a guy, when to step back,” New York Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek said. “He clogs that lane, and then that allows the guards to put a little more pressure on the outside players and get up on guys because they know he’s back there.”

The Blazers have an elite defense whenever Nurkic is on the floor, and don’t improve (or decline) when he sits. Here he is switching from Ian Mahinmi to Porter to Bradley Beal, shuffling his feet all the way to an impressive rejection.

Portland’s defense isn’t perfect, though. They still miscommunicate on switches, and the NBA’s Karma Gods have so far blessed them with a few timely misses when they do screw up. In their big comeback win against Washington, Beal was left wide open for two three-point tries in the fourth quarter because Connaughton thought he was supposed to switch onto the screener instead of fight through the pick. Portland doesn’t win the game if one of those falls.

“Even if we are top five, I’m on their behind daily about certain things we are not doing as well as we need to do, at certain things that we need to improve at, about a lot of things that, basically, we’ve gotten away with,” Vanterpool said. “Sometimes people miss shots. People miss wide open shots. We’ve been missing wide open shots. Our offense hasn’t been what it normally is. I try to keep that temperament involved in the equation so we don’t just start thinking—start poking your chest out and almost break your arm patting yourself on the back, and you end up 26th again.”

Add all this up and it’s hard to think Portland hasn’t turned a meaningful corner in an area that’s plagued them over the past couple seasons. Assuming the offense comes around sooner than later, possibly even climbing up to a top-ten level, the Blazers will have the profile of a spunky championship contender.

But executing in the regular season vs. doing so inside a seven-game series are two separate animals, and it’ll be interesting to see how sturdy their defense holds against a team that’s able to ruthlessly pick apart a relatively weak individual defender (like Connaughton, Lillard, Nurkic, or McCollum) who has physical limitations.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe their offense is a fireworks display by then, with a defense still strong enough to keep Lillard and McCollum on the court without fear of habitual abuse. We’ll see. But Portland has spent the opening month of a season that could’ve spiraled out of control into an opportunity to reshape who they are and what they’re about.

“I think [defense] has become our identity, which is…it’s strange for us,” Vanterpool said. “This is my sixth season and we’ve always been an offensive juggernaut. I had this conversation with our players and I’m like ‘Look, until our offense gets back to where we know it should be, our defense—that’s who we are now—so that has to be just as consistent as our offense has been over the past five, six years.’ I just take my hat off to them for being true to it, and just sticking to it.”

The Trail Blazers Have a Brand New Identity Thanks to One Simple Concept syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[mashitandsmashit]

America’s Got Talent: Season 14 - Quarter-Finals 3

Okay, once again, I gotta get to bed soon, so I’ll try to make this brief...

12: Gonzo. Alright, I’ve had my laugh...This just didn’t have the fun or charisma that his previous performances had...Honestly, those kids stole the whole show! Somebody give THEM an act!

11: MacKenzie. Look, this guy has a nice voice, but this song just DIDN’T fit! My boredom with him has reached its apex, and it should be ILLEGAL to be boring when performing David Bowie! We already have better singers in the next round, and some better singers who DIDN’T make the next round...He’ll just take up space...

10: Benicio Bryant. This didn’t stick with me either, but at the very least he made a pretty danceable little jam, so I wouldn’t mind him staying a little longer...

9: Jackie Fabulous. I’m sorry, but this all felt kinda basic compared to her last set...Of course, her flat delivery does nothing for me either...But I guess one or two little chuckles made it, so it could go either way for me...

8: Matthew Richardson. Initially, I agreed with Simon that he did very little to step it up, save one or two little tricks I haven’t seen him do before...But then Matthew brought up a pretty nice point: It cannot be easy swinging around on that thing while getting soaked like that! So with that factored in, it actually is pretty impressive! That said, there’s still not enough variation to make this much of a show, unless it was a small part of a larger show...

7: Eric Chien. I’m with Simon, as close-up magic is getting pretty repetitive on this show, and there are very few surprises left that they can really blow my mind with...This guy really is living in Shin Lim’s shadow, sadly...And I know a lot of people insist that he has tricks he hasn’t done yet that can rival or even surpass Shin, but why haven’t we seen them yet? On the plus side, his sleight of hand was impressive, as usual...But each trick keeps getting weaker than the last! I may not want this guy to win, but I would like it if he made the Finals, so I REALLY want to like him more than I do...

6: Dom Chambers. Eric probably is still the better magician overall, but this guy is a better showman and has a lot more charisma...That being said...I had the trick figured out early on! He clearly used basic mathematics and set it so that everyone would end up on Tape Face no matter which male act they picked at the beginning (and I STARTED on Tape Face!) But hey, points for presentation, and mega-points for bringing the mime himself on for a little cameo! Plus he was able to factor in Simon being a clueless buffoon and not following the instructions properly...Now THAT is a fine touch! (Also, at the beginning, all I could think of was, “Hello, Dom!” “Hello, Dom!” “Hello, Dom!” “Mr. DNA! Where did you come from!?”)

5: Detroit Youth Choir. I was iffy on them before, but this really was a fun, well-choreographed, and fairly moving performance! I was pretty certain that I liked Ndlovu Youth Choir better, but now it’s a fair bit closer between them...That said, it’s hard to tell where they’ll place in the results tomorrow...

4: Lukas & Falco. They’re really growing on me! Solid tricks, fun (if weird) set, and the music brought me back to a more innocent time...

3: Berywam. I’ve got nothing to add that I haven’t said about them before, but I hope America sees the appeal in them like I do...

2: Marcin Patrzalek. Look at my Golden Buzzer...Isn’t he wonderful!? ...Buuuut, I will do the unthinkable and agree with Simon on his little criticisms on both the stage (it was an eyesore) and his lack of variation! We all know how good he is at this by now; Question is, how much can he mix it up and turn this act into a real show? I love him for his TALENT, but as I said before, I’m not sure if this is an act I’d pay to see in Vegas for an hour and a half, at least from what I’ve seen so far...I feel TERRIBLE saying that about my own Golden Buzzer...But I have faith that he will be voted through regardless and will be given the opportunity to take Simon’s criticisms to heart, and hopefully give us something REALLY special next time!

1: Emanne Beasha. I didn’t want to give her #1, mainly due to the complaints about her that I expressed before...But the night’s been such a mixed bag, and I would actually come off as a bit of a hypocrite considering that I’ve been holding up the previous entry so much when he kinda has a similar issue: A great talent, but not much means of mixing it up or surprising me...On the other hand, I’ve never seen a talent like him before, whereas Emanne is...Are we on #4 or 5 now with preteen girls singing opera now...? That being said, I suppose Emanne DID step it up more, and the song was new for this show (which at this point is ALL I ask for from all of these opera acts). So whatever...I guess tonight was carefully crafted to assure that she would look better than anyone else, which is annoying considering some of my favorite acts performing tonight...But mark my words: I do not want to see another child opera singer on this show again! And you gotta love the title of her video on Youtube saying she will “SURPRISE you with her voice!” Really? I mean, has nobody else been watching this show long enough!? Overall, great enough for #1 this week, but still TERRIBLY overrated!

Yup...Mixed opinions for everybody! That makes for one mixed bag of a night!

My Votes: I gave them all to Marcin, Berywam and Lukas & Falco, because those are the three I feel inclined to help!

Result Predictions: Emanne’s a lock, Marcin looks safe enough, and there is a chance that both magicians will go through (and I kinda changed my mind regarding what I said about that before). Gonzo is out, and Matthew probably won’t make it either, but he still has his supporters who are angry at Simon for buzzing him...Benicio’s somehow one of the most popular singers of the season, so he’ll likely go through, and Berywam will probably slip in there somewhere...The rest are a tough call...

See you tomorrow when...Well, apparently it will involve even more former contestants than the first QF week...

[thesportssoundoff]

“Short Notice PPVs are always wacky” The UFC 222 Preview

Joey

February whateverdaythisis

UFC 221 and UFC 222 sort of drink from the same bath water if we're being honest. The difference is that UFC 221 was an example of the worst of the worst case scenario short of cancelling a show. UFC 222 is the rarest example of doing the absolute best case scenario with the worst case scenario as the loss of a big time title fight somehow gave us a deeper card overall. UFC 222 has a very poor main event---but it's got a "star" and having a star is winning half the battle. The co-main event is a fantastic fight between two of the top 5 featherweights in the world with a title fight in the balance with a FRESH title challenger emerging for Max Holloway. You have big dudes Andrei Arlovski and Stefan Struve who add some size for those of us folks who like to see big dudes do big thangs. The rest of this card has a very distinct prospect feel as you have a heaping of good fights BUT a very clear direction where the fights that matter outside of those three are prospect building fights. For instance Sean O'Malley is the THIRD fight on the card, challenging a capable veteran test in Andre Soukhamthath in what should be a damn good fight. The top FS1 fight on the card is a fight designed entirely to get Mackenzie Dern over, drawing Ashley Yoder in a prospect tester fight. The one elite prospect at 135 lbs, Ketlen Vieira gets a massive step up in former title challenger Cat Zingano as well. Even Fight Pass has that kind of fight on it as prospect Jordan Johnson draws a HW dropping down to 205 in Adam Milstead. This isn't a great card but it is a card worthy of being on PPV, even if the main event isn't.

Fights: 12

Debuts: 3 (Yanit Kunitskaya, Mackenzie Dern, Alexander Hernandez)

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 2 (Bobby Green OUT, Alexander Hernandez IN vs Beneil Dariush/Max Holloway OUT, Brian Ortega IN vs Frankie Edgar)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 8 (Frankie Edgar, Brian Ortega, Stefan Struve, Andrei Arlovski, John Dodson, Cyborg Santos, Bryan Caraway, Beneil Dariush)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC:  4 (Cat Zingano, Hector Lombard, Mike Pyle, Ashley Yoder)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC:  7 (Cyborg, Frankie Edgar, Brian Ortega, Bryan Caraway, Ketlen Vieira, Jordan Johnson, Cody Stamman)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2016 (in the UFC): 18-11 Cyborg- 4-0 Yana Kunitskaya- 0-0 Frankie Edgar- 2-1 Brian Ortega- 4-0 Andre Soukhamtath- 1-2 Sean O'Malley- 1-0 Andrei Arlovski- 1-5 Stefan Struve- 2-1 Cat Zingano- 0-2 Ketlen Vieira- 3-0

Too High Up-  CB Dollaway vs Hector Lombard

A lot of people would point to Struve vs Arlovski and I can hear you out there. The problem with that argument though is that Struve/Arlovski on a card with two featherweight fights (one male, one female) and two bantamweight fights (one male, one female); you kind of need two big guys to entice people who only like big dudes. As stated before, there ARE fans who object to the lighter weight classes almost on principle and that in turn you probably could use a big boi fight for some much needed card variety. Instead I'll turn to Lombard vs Dollaway where both guys are in rough shape in their respective careers. Lombard is the ultimate example of the busted signing and since the start of 2015, he's 0-4-1 with 3 stoppage losses in the last 4 fights. On the other end of the coin, you have C.B Dollaway who is 2-3 in his last five fights and the last time he won at middleweight was in 2014 vs Francis Carmont. The last time Dollaway beat a dude coming off a win? The same year in March of 2014. Long story short, this fight being on the FS1 prelims just doesn't seem right.

Too Low- Bryan Caraway vs Cody Stamman

I know it's sort of done in by the fact that 7 of the 9 fights on the FS1 slate are at 155 lbs or lower BUT Stamman vs Caraway is a really intriguing fight. Since getting into the  UFC, Stamman showcased his wrestling en route to a big decision win over Terrion Ware and then followed that up by upsetting Tom Duquesnoy in a fight where dude pretty much did everything he wanted to do vs the more athletic Duquesnoy. Cody Stamman's overall game is about physicality and toughness complemented by some orthodox striking and top heavy wrestling and at this point, he's due a step up relative to divisional relevance. As such, this Caraway fight is a PERFECT clash between a good prospect and a good veteran----but it's basically buried as NOT EVEN THE FIGHT PASS HEADLINER. I disapprove.

Stat Monitor for 2018: Debuting Fighters (Current number: 4-8):  Yana Kunitskaya, Mackenzie Dern and Alex Hernandez

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 4-2): Brian Ortega, Alex Hernandez

Second Fight (Current number: 7-9): Sean O'Malley

Cage Corrosion (Current number: 5-5):  Adam Milstead, Bryan Caraway, Mike Pyle, Cat Zingano

Undefeated Fighters (Current number: 6-8): Kelten Vieira, Sean O'Malley, Jordan Johnson, Brian Ortega, Mackenzie Dern

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- So why should we care about this main event? What necessarily is the appeal or the allure of this fight? I know there's a sizable segment of the audience that's gonna want to see this title fight but I gotta admit that this is the first title fight in a long time where there's really nothing I care about. I'm not one of those folks who thinks dudes are right to walk out before a main event they don't give a shit about and I find it pretty unfortunate that I'm on the fence about even watching this main event. It's just hard to see anything about this fight that I feel any sort of general emotion about.

2- Is it fair to say that Yana Kunitskaya is the worst UFC title challenger since Chris Cariaso back in 2014?

3- I know a lot of people think that Cyborg stepped up to save this show but it seems obvious to me she's just trying to fight her way through her contract as quickly as possible. Works out best for both parties!

4- Frankie Edgar vs Brian Ortega is going to test how many MMA fans actually follow prospects vs the ones who pretend to follow prospects. I've seen a few knuckledraggers do the whole "The Answer is gonna derail the hype train!" bit and I've seen enough "Ortega will get exposed!" talk to the point I'm left wondering when MMA fans stop considering a dude to be a prospect. Brian Ortega is not a prospect. He is 27 years old with wins over Clay Guida, Renato Moicano, Thiago Tavares and Cub Swanson without spending more than five seconds thinking about his resume. He has showcased every skill necessary to ensure that there isn't one significant area in his game that is such a glaring unproven untested area as to put a cap on his ceiling as a pro fighter. We've seen him tested and we've seen him face adversity. Ortega isn't a prospect! What he is is a young PROVEN in his prime 145er facing another proven 145 lber. The idea that Ortega is some prospect who will eventually get exposed is flawed because if that's the case, it would've happened by now. You're no longer a prospect if you're seven years into your MMA career, have had six fights in the UFC and have main evented an event. As much as people want Brian Ortega to NOT be a thing, he is a thing and will continue to be a thing no matter what happens between Edgar and Ortega.

5- NOW if you wanna talk a hype train in some danger; Andre Soukhamtath vs Sean O'Malley. Let's briefly point out why this is the right idea; O'Malley is fighting in a division where everybody is pretty good. This isn't a 155 or a 170 where there's a sizable underbelly of fluff that exists to sort of allow certain fighters a chance to eat up on the mediocres. A lot of those dudes have either retired or been cut, leaving a really thick division with a lot of fighters who can all beat one another. Soukhamthath is probably at the very bottom of that totem pole; a guy who looks good in spurts but can be outworked and hurt. Stylistically he's a bit what O'Malley wants; a guy who will come forward at him in a straight line, not exactly give you a ton of craft and ultimately can be taken down or hit at will. NOW for why it might be a bad idea; Andre Soukhamtath has three UFC fights but in those three fights he's lost two split decisions (Albert Morales and Alejandro Perez) and iced Luke Saunders in a fight he was losing up until that point. He has dropped all three opponents he's faced so you know he hits hard. O'Malley CAN be hit, giving us an imminent sense of danger right off the jump. Soukhamtath also works at such a slow pace that he's probably not going to tire out compared to O'Malley who was sucking wind in a frenetic second round before finding a big energy jump in the third. This is, in many ways, a sneaky tough fight for a flawed prospect.

6- Andrei Arlovski staved off retirement by upsetting Junior Albini in a showcase fight for the diaper wearing Brazilian in November and his reward is a more appeasing stylistic matchup with Stefan Struve. The weird thing about Arlovski's fights these days is that he's not entirely faded to the point where you'd say he's done (he gave Overeem some tense moments against the fence, had spurts of success vs Josh Barnett and almost finished Marcin Tybura) but those glimpses are becoming less and less frequent. The same could be said for Stefan Struve who battled back from a broken jaw and some serious heart related issues to resume his MMA career to modest success. Struve had success vs Alexander Volkov but couldn't keep it up and in what has become a Struve habit; faded when the pressure got too hot and he couldn't get the fight to the ground. I guess my question is whether this is less a test about who has more to offer the heavyweight division but rather which guy has the most left?

7- So what's going to be our fight that gets cancelled the week of? Bonus points if you with "the day of" and get it right!

8-Fun debate to be had; is the UFC rooting for Ketlen Vieira to win so they have a new 135 super contender OR are they hoping for Cat Zingano to win knowing that Cat coming off a win probably makes for the most appealing 145 lb title fight Cyborg can have outside of a Nunes/Cybrog clash?

9- John Dodson has never lost two fights in a row BUT it feels like his career is heading in a pretty precarious place now. He's 3-3 in his last 6 with just one finish in those six fights. His calling card was "the smiling guy who moves really fast and hits really hard" but that loses its luster when you stop putting people out with frequent regularity. Now he's just the smiling guy who moves really fast and loses split decisions. Dodson vs Pedro Munhoz is the perfect fight for both guys as Munhoz needs a really legitimate win and Dodson could really use a dynamic performance to get his career sorted out. Both guys have something to offer the other which creates for, on paper at least, a really compelling clash with high stakes involved.

10- Does a finish get Jordan Johnson any sort of attention at 205 lbs?

11- Beneil Dariush has one of MMA's low key elite resumes at 155 lbs with Edson Barboza, Michael Johnson, Evan Dunham, James Vick, Tony Martin and Rashid Magomedov all on the resume. He just lacks the chin (and the requisite consistent pop in his hands) to really be considered among the tops in his division.  I also think he probably earned the win over Dunham in hindsight.

12- Wonder if  Mackenzie Dern gets the strawweight division out of this prolonged funk it's been in.

Must Wins

1- Frankie Edgar

At 36 years old, Edgar really really needs this one. A loss to Brian Ortega and you almost have to close the book on Frankie Edgar ever getting the 145 lb crown. Edgar is a hall of famer but at some point he's going to wake up and fight like a 36 year old who is heavily reliant on timing, explosion and quickness. Ortega is a really big dude for 145 lbs in build and bulk. He's more reminiscent of former Edgar rival Benson Henderson than any opponent that Edgar has faced recently at 145 lbs. He's massive, deceptively slick, a frequent powerful kicker and blessed with a wide array and assortment of submission tricks that Edgar will need to be mindful of. This is a toss up fight for me but for Edgar, if he doesn't win, you're left realizing that the bar has been set at 145 lbs and he's no longer in the necessary class to compete with the elite.

2- Sean O'Malley

The first name out of Dana White's mouth when he talks about star building is Sean O'Malley. I'm not as on board. O'Malley is a really fun fighter who has good fights and does have a bit of that star power vibe in the package.  The problem is that conversely, I feel like O'Malley flaws are a lot tougher to get away with at 135 than it would be at 185 and up. Soukhamthath is basically bottom of the barrel and he's still pretty damn good. This is an unforgiving division to be learning on the fly but O'Malley's gotta do it.

3- Mackenzie Dern

The UFC Is trying to jolt some life into their WMMA rankings and so Dern who is in that "good enough to beat 99% of the regional chicks but still too raw to make serious noise soon" is being tasked with...well...making serious noise soon. Dern's striking looked better but is a ways away---but her ground game is absolutely the key to her success going forward. Dern's job is going to be to beat up the sort of women who make up the "nameless faceless opponent" rankings at 115 and 125 lbs. Let's just hope the UFC learns to take it slow.

Five Can't Miss Fights

1- Brian Ortega vs Frankie Edgar

2- Andre Soukhamtath vs Sean O'Malley

3- Pedro Munhoz vs John Dodson

4- Andrei Arlovski vs  Stefan Struve (even if it's bad, it'll still be fun enough to laugh at)

5- Cat Zingano vs Ketlen Vieira

[writingsubmissions]

UFC Fight Night 105 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *UFC 208 was not good. I could pretty much just stop there and just write "Sigh." about thirty straight times and call it a wrap, but I guess I do have an obligation to go over exactly what happened. Germaine de Randamie won a narrow decision over Holly Holm to become UFC's first women's featherweight champion, even though a division doesn't really exist, and the fight wasn't ever really good enough to not feel as pointless as it did going in. It was a perfectly fine kickboxing match, but after about five hours of mediocre action (and only one finish, a record-low for a UFC event), the crowd wasn't really having it, and it just fell sort of flat. De Randamie won the early rounds, but began to tire and allowed Holm to take over, and the scoring basically seemed to come down to who you thought won the third round, even though de Randamie was much more accurate in countering Holm throughout the balance of the fight. Anyway, besides the group of people who thought Holm won, the other big controversy was some late strikes by de Randamie after the horn in two rounds, one of which seemed to rock Holm pretty badly. There was an outrage in the moment that referee Todd Anderson should've at least docked a point from de Randamie, but once people looked into the rules, they didn't really have a case - apparently the by-the-book rule is that the round doesn't end until the horn sounds AND the referee steps in, and Anderson was in fact late stepping in between the fighters on both occasions. So while it's probably still a bit of a cheap shot by de Randamie, with the caveat that in the moment, she may have not been focusing on the horn, it's also hard for Anderson to punish her for his own mistakes. So, de Randamie won, and it's not unclear where any of this leads. The close scoring and the late punches by de Randamie would normally generate enough controversy that you could try to book a rematch, but nobody really cared about this fight going in, and it was uninspiring enough in practice that I don't really see any sort of clamor to run it back. During the aftermath of the fight, and on a lot of their post-fight programming, UFC was pushing a fight between de Randamie and Cris Cyborg, who was in attendance, but Cyborg's status is up in the air thanks to a failed drug test; she might be out as long as two years, though there's no whispers of UFC trying to strong-arm USADA into granting her a retroactive exemption. And complicating matters further, de Randamie said immediately after the fight that she needs surgery to repair a nagging hand injury, which should put her out of action for a bit. Fitting, though - we might as well have a champ who can't fight in a division that doesn't exist. *The co-main wasn't any less strange, as Anderson Silva won a unanimous decision over Derek Brunson despite, well, not really winning the fight. As someone who expected Brunson to pretty much run over Silva on the first exchange of the fight, Silva actually did better than expected in places - he just kind of threw enough movement and bullshit at Brunson to keep him from getting too aggressive, and did an excellent job of stifling pretty much all of Brunson's takedown attempts. But at the end of each round, you'd just sort of take stock and realize that while Silva was dictating the terms of the fight, and did a lot more in terms of attention-grabbing stuff, at the end of the day it was Brunson pretty much doing all the damage in the fight, while Silva was mostly just playing defense and missing most of the stuff he tried. But that was apparently enough to win over the judges, and Silva gave an excellent post-fight interview after, talking about how he's probably getting too old for this, but loves to fight. Still, Silva looked diminished enough here that he should probably retire by the end of the year - the upcoming card in Rio might be a good spot for that to happen; plus there's a certain dream match that's suddenly on the table again, but more on that in a bit... *Alright, let's just run through the rest of the results. Jacare Souza got the lone finish on the card, tapping out Tim Boetsch in a stay-busy fight as expected. Glover Teixeira's win over Jared Cannonier was the big disappointment on the card - there was the promise of some fireworks here, but Teixeira, who was apparently injured going into the card, just decided to take Cannonier down and work for a submission. It was impressive that Cannonier survived, and a solid sign for him as a prospect, but it was death to watch. The only really good fight on the card opened the pay-per-view, as Dustin Poirier won a decision over Jim Miller that was surprisingly tough going at times, showing that Miller still has a lot left in the tank. Miller also worked over Poirier with leg kicks that really seemed to take their toll - there was some worry that Poirier may have broken his leg, but it seems like there's been no structural damage, and he'll be good to go. The only real solid prelim was Wilson Reis's win over Ulka Sasaki that continued to cement Reis as a flyweight contender; Reis looked great here, but so did Sasaki, who has seemingly improved a ton, hanging with Reis on the feet and even getting the Brazilian's back at the very end of the fight, even though he wasn't able to get the finish. Other than that, the undercard was a whole ton of nothing - prospect Randy Brown looked flat and lost to Belal Muhammad, Islam Makhachev out-wrestled Nik Lentz, Ryan LaFlare came back from a long layoff with a solid win over Roan Carneiro, and Rick Glenn won a fairly blah decision over Phillipe Nover. Whee. *You might notice two fights missing from that rundown - on Friday, the card was seemingly set at twelve fights, but two still managed to fall through in more or less the day leading up to the fight. The heavyweight bout between Marcin Tybura and late-notice replacement Justin Willis got scrapped once Willis had complications making weight. Willis is in fact a gigantic man, but it's still surprising, since nobody can seem to remember the last time someone wasn't able to make weight for a heavyweight bout. And, of course, Ian McCall's fight with Jarred Brooks fell through, continuing a comedy of errors. This marks McCall's sixth straight scrapped bout for some reason or another, with four of the six happening during fight week. This time, there was apparently some sort of digestive issue, possibly related to gallbladder issues, as McCall had to be taken to the hospital the day of the fights. At this point, one just has to wonder what the hell seems to be going on with McCall, even though a lot of these fallings-through have been due to his opponents. Ridiculous. *Well, the ax finally fell. The UFC roster has often been hard to keep up with - on the UFC website, it'd often be out-of-date in spots, leaving fighters on the roster that were long cut or retired, and you were basically better off just gleaning what you could from fighters firsthand, or seeing who popped up in other promotions, rather than wait for the infrequent announcement from the company, which often didn't even cover everyone who was off the roster anyway. But on the brief times they would update it, the UFC website was still sort of the "end all be all" of who was on the roster - there was a period in say, 2014, 2015, where the company was reliably keeping up with the roster churn every month, and various bots and accounts dedicated to tracking who came and went were often pretty accurate. And on Friday, the day before UFC 208, UFC finally caught everything up to speed. It was initially guys who had long signed with Bellator (like, say, Matt Mitrione and Josh Koscheck) and fighters who had retired (like Urijah Faber and Miesha Tate), but by the time all was said and done, UFC had deleted over one hundred fighters from the listed active roster. Now, a great majority of these cuts were public knowledge, but that still left about 35 or so cuts that were news to everyone, including some surprises. For one, it appears like when people's contracts are over, UFC is more or less just letting them walk - known free agents Lorenz Larkin, Rick Story, and Cole Miller were taken off the roster, following up similar reports with guys like Ryan Bader, Ali Bagautinov, and Zach Makovsky - all solid, all ranked (save Miller) fairly highly, and some in thin divisions that just need talent. But it essentially seems like new ownership has taken the tact of trying to slash costs, offer guys low contracts, and then letting them go if they don't like it, unless they're a proven star. Quite short-sighted, but WME-IMG also has debt to pay off. There's also some other contract weirdness, as a bunch of guys coming off wins, but weren't known to be free agents, were taken off the roster, led by Erik Perez - but the agent of Bartosz Fabinski, a Polish fighter who was 2-0 in UFC, but was still removed in the roster, is saying that Fabinski is just facing a long injury layoff, and UFC has frozen his contract in the interim. I guess there must be some sort of time component involved in these contracts, since I don't think UFC is paying these guys while they're hurt, but, here we are. Strange new world. *And it looks like two highly-ranked contenders might be joining them in fairly short order, as Kyoji Horiguchi and Misha Cirkunov are apparently set to leave UFC. There hasn't been much publicly, but word is that Horiguchi is now a free agent after negotiations to renew did not go well, which would be yet another blow for a flyweight division that's rapidly hemorrhaging talent. Horiguchi got rushed into a title fight with Demetrious Johnson due to a lack of other options, but the Japanese prospect has shined since, putting on showcase performances against Chico Camus, Neil Seery, and Ali Bagautinov. Horiguchi's pretty obviously a top-five talent in the division, and still young enough to improve, so it's kind of ridiculous UFC would let him walk, though that looks like it's going to happen. Hell, Horiguchi can probably get a ton of money from RIZIN and other Japanese promotions, though, so good on him. And in another dumb move, Dana White said that UFC is letting Cirkunov walk after negotiations with him also didn't go well. Cirkunov's a Latvian-born judoka who emigrated to Toronto and was talked about in Canadian MMA circles for years as a stud prospect. And he lived up to pretty much all the hype, capping off a 4-0 UFC record with a win over fellow top prospect Misha Cirkunov in December. It looked like UFC could turn Cirkunov into something - they had put some promotional effort into him, and he could fulfill two badly-needed spots as both a young Canadian star and a rising light heavyweight - but instead the promotion is going to look at someone who could be a star, say that they aren't there yet, and let them walk just to save some money in the short term. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. *And in one last cost-cutting note, WME-IMG also seems to be further squeezing fighters, who already don't make enough, on the margins. Carla Esparza groused on social media that for her fight in Halifax, UFC is apparently not willing to pony up the cash for her traditional walkout music by Metallica - hopefully this is just a one-off with a notoriously litigious artist and not a sign of things to come. And Brandon Gibson, a coach with Jackson-Wink who's worked wonders for a lot of different fighters, most notably Donald Cerrone, has said that UFC is no longer willing to offer camps footage of their fighters; instead, coaches must use UFC Fight Pass, and, of course, will not get it comped, instead being forced to pay $10 per month. In addition, Fight Pass doesn't provide a lot of things (slow motion, frame-by-frame rewinding) that the old footage did, so not only are you pissing off your cheap labor, you're making it less productive. But hey, you may get a few hundred more bucks per month. Bravo. *Whenever this happened, I never thought it would be this far down on the list, but hey, among all that bad news and penny-pinching, it looks like GSP is back in the fold! Ariel Helwani is reporting that UFC and Georges St. Pierre have come to terms and are hammering out a new deal for the former welterweight champ and MMA legend, and, well, good. It looks like GSP will be set to return sometime this fall, roughly four years after his last fight, and it'll be good to see what he has to offer, since St. Pierre does seem like the kind of guy who will age well. And, hey, way to save the pay-per-view fiscal year. *So, the state of Nevada promoted Staci Alonso to take the vacant spot in the state athletic commission in December, and about two months later, someone did some research and found that, hey, she's an executive at Station Casinos. And, of course, Station Casinos is the company owned by the Fertitta brothers, who apparently still have a fifteen percent or so stake in UFC even after selling the majority of it to WME-IMG. That's not good. Nevada addressed the conflict of interests concerns by saying that, well, they trust her to report any conflicts of interest, but this is just the fox watching the hen house. *UFC announced the cast for this upcoming season of TUF, which reportedly was going to have some sort of "All-Stars" theme featuring fighters from past seasons. And, uh, they forgot the stars. The biggest names here are TUF 2 winner and former lightweight title contender Joe Stevenson, and...Jesse Taylor? It may actually be a pretty solid season, since a lot of these guys are talented fighters who just don't move the needle, but I don't expect this to draw any viewers back in. Also notable is that James Krause, a TUF alum who was already on the UFC roster, is among the cast - apparently the deal is that contestants get $10,000 for every fight they win, with $250,000 going to the winner. So, go get paid, James. ------ BOOKINGS: *UFC announced a bunch of stuff this go-round, as the company fills out its schedule for April and beyond. The headliner is, better late than never, Jose Aldo and Max Holloway unifying the featherweight and interim featherweight titles, which will main event UFC 212 on June 3rd in Rio de Janeiro. The fight was initially slated to headline UFC 208, but Holloway wound up jacking up his ankle after beating Anthony Pettis in December, so the fight had to be pushed back to here. *During the UFC 208 broadcast, UFC announced a bunch of fights for some cards in April, particularly the Fox card in Kansas City and a newly announced FS1 card in Nashville. And the Nashville main event is a weird one, as fresh off his fight of the year candidate against Doo Ho Choi, Cub Swanson will face...Conor McGregor training partner Artem Lobov, who's coming off two wins over Chris Avila and Teruto Ishihara, the latter of which was his only impressive UFC appearance to date. Um, okay. Lobov seems like a really nice guy, but this is just MMA politics slapping every fan in the face, since Lobov, who was a solid European journeyman, only even really got his UFC chance because of his ties to McGregor, and definitely only stayed on the roster because of it, since he showed nothing while losing his first two UFC fights. Admittedly, Lobov did look the best he ever has against Ishihara, but, come on, man. On the plus side, the Nashville card at least has some other fun stuff - the co-main will see the return of Al Iaquinta against Diego Sanchez, Sam Alvey gets his biggest fight to date against Thales Leites, and Dustin Ortiz and Brandon Moreno are set to square off in a fun flyweight bout. Plus Jessica Penne/Danielle Taylor, Hector Sandoval/Matt Schnell, and Scott Holtzman/Michael McBride all figure to be fun undercard bouts. As for Kansas City, no main event has been announced, but UFC did announce one fun bout that figures to be the co-main, as "The Karate Hottie" Michelle Waterson returns from her win over Paige VanZant to face Rose Namajunas. Also, top middleweight prospect Andrew Sanchez moves up the ladder against Anthony Smith, and Devin Clark and Jake Collier face off in a fight originally set for December. Strangely, the arena in Kansas City, when putting up the listing for ticket sales, initially listed Doo Ho Choi against Renan Barao, complete with UFC graphic, as the main event, but per the promotion, that fight is not happening. I assume it was probably targeted for the card, but someone got hurt or there was a snafu somewhere. *UFC 210 in Buffalo added two more really fun fights - former Bellator lightweight champ Will Brooks will take on Charles Oliveira, who moves back up from 145 after repeated weight issues, and top welterweight prospects Kamaru Usman and Sean Strickland square off. Plus the London card in March finally has a viable co-main as Gunnar Nelson and Alan Jouban will square off in a really fun grappler-versus-striker welterweight bout. Plus in some undercard bouts, bantamweights Joe Soto and Rani Yahya will go at it on the Brazil card in March, while UFC 211 in Dallas added a third heavyweight bout between Germany's Jarjis Danho and Ukrainian newcome Dmitry Poberezhets. *And lastly, it looks like some top strawweight fights are coming together, though UFC hasn't announced anything officially. Rumors out of Poland said that Joanna Jedrzejczyk would be defending her strawweight title against Jessica Andrade at UFC 211 in Dallas, but Jedrzejczyk herself debunked that shortly thereafter. Still, Jedrzejczyk/Andrade looks like it's the next title fight, particularly since Michelle Waterson, the other obvious potential contender, is now booked. And per Claudia Gadelha, who's probably still the biggest threat to Joanna Champion's crown, she'll be facing Karolina Kowalkiewicz next, though there's no indication about when or where that fight is taking place. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Brock Lesnar (5-3 [1] overall, 4-3 [1] UFC, last fought 7/9/16, NC vs. Mark Hunt): Of all the new deletions on UFC's website, Lesnar was by far the biggest name - it was assumed at the time it was UFC, somewhat unsurprisingly, cutting ties with Lesnar for the time being, but it came out shortly thereafter that Lesnar has notified UFC of his retirement from MMA...however long that lasts. Let's at least do a rundown of Lesnar's career as it stands right now, since looking back, it is fairly ridiculous. Lesnar, a former heavyweight wrestling champion at the University of Minnesota, was one of the top stars in WWE before getting burned out and deciding to leave the company in 2004, and took a pretty circuitous route to the UFC, initially trying to make the Minnesota Vikings (and apparently coming damn close), then winning a lawsuit over WWE to wrestle a bit in Japan, and then going into MMA. Lesnar's MMA debut was a bit of a scene, main eventing K-1 Dynamite!! USA, a one-off show in the L.A. Colosseum in a giant spectacle, and there, Lesnar destroyed Korean journeyman Min Soo Kim in a little over a minute. And, from there, UFC signed Lesnar and the sideshow was on, as at that time, a company signing a 1-0 fighter just for his notoriety was fairly unheard of. UFC promoted Lesnar's debut heavily through the pro wrestling media, and purchased commercials during WWE programming, and it paid off with a big buyrate, and even though Lesnar lost, his fight with Frank Mir went absolutely perfectly to set things up down the line. Lesnar immediately took down Mir, a former heavyweight champion who, at the time, was still struggling to recover from a career-altering motorcycle accident, and started beating the piss out of him, but things got restarted when Lesnar accidentally punched Mir in the back of the head. From there, Lesnar got another takedown, but got caught in a kneebar, and Mir got the submission win after just 90 seconds of a crazy sprint. It was better than anything Lesnar had scripted for him in WWE - Mir and his fans could claim that he used skill to beat the big, dumb beast, while Lesnar's contingent could, rightfully, say that most referees wouldn't have stopped things after the accidental blow to the head, and that Lesnar was well on his way to running through Mir in short order. After that, Lesnar rebounded with a win over Heath Herring, and then, in just his fourth MMA fight just seventeen months into his career, Lesnar knocked out Randy Couture to become the UFC heavyweight champion. That set up a rematch with Mir at UFC 100, and the banter between the two (along with a stacked card) built things up to create the biggest-drawing UFC card of all-time at that point, with Lesnar getting a stoppage win over Mir in the second round. But the post-fight antics were probably even more memorable, with Lesnar foaming at the mouth and flipping off the crowd, then giving one of the most infamous interviews of all time, where he said he was going to go lay on top of his wife and then drink a Coors, because UFC's primary sponsor, Bud Light, wasn't paying him anything. And that was pretty much the peak of Lesnar - he wouldn't fight for a year thanks to a sudden bout of diverticulitis, and after a comeback win over Shane Carwin (and another gigantic pay-per-view buyrate), Cain Velasquez pretty much destroyed Lesnar to take the heavyweight crown. From there, Lesnar coached a season of TUF against Junior dos Santos that was shockingly drama-free, missed another large chunk of time with diverticulitis issues, and then got finished in the first round once again, thanks to a debuting Alistair Overeem. Lesnar retired after that fight, theoretically ending a crazy, brief MMA career, and popped back up in WWE a few months later on a limited schedule, doing an excellent job of melding his MMA background into his pro wrestling skill. And so Lesnar went on, as a top attraction in WWE, though there was a brief tease that he might return to MMA before announcing he was signing a new deal with WWE, until the night of UFC 199, when a teaser for UFC 200 ended with an unexpected shot of Lesnar, who suddenly found himself back in UFC for one fight. There was apparently some sort of deal in his WWE contract that he could do a fight if WWE signed off on it, and I don't know how they got Vince McMahon to agree to it, but the fight was on. And...well, it was sort of a clown show from the start - even though the agreement had apparently been set a few weeks prior (thanks again to UFC's website briefly accidentally putting Lesnar on the active roster), UFC obtained a waiver so Lesnar could fight without going through the mandatory four months of drug testing for an unretiring fighter. Lesnar had his fight, mostly taking down Mark Hunt at will in a strange sideshow that just added to the weirdness that was UFC 200, and, of course, failed his drug test shortly thereafter. Lesnar blamed it on some foot cream, but still got fined a nominal amount and suspended for one year, which probably would've been how long Lesnar would've waited to fight anyway. Good work. And now, Lesnar's announced his retirement, though I have the feeling that when he's clear of any suspensions and the money is worth it, he'll be back. 2) Lorenz Larkin (18-5 [1] overall, 5-5 UFC, last fought 8/20/16, W vs. Neil Magny): Larkin, who was a free agent, apparently won't be given an offer by UFC, which about says it all for the state of things - a few years ago, UFC held onto Larkin even as he was losing, but now that he's come through on his talent and gone on a winning streak, the new management doesn't want to pay him. Larkin was expected to do big things when he came into UFC - the Californian was undefeated during his time in Strikeforce, and after a run as one of their top young light heavyweights, Larkin cut down to middleweight and capped off his Strikeforce career with a win over Robbie Lawler. But for whatever reason, when Larkin came over to UFC, he just showed...nothing, losing a bunch of flat decisions and going on a 1-4 stretch that included a knockout loss to Costas Philippou. Larkin then cut down again, this time to welterweight, and it looked like his January 2015 bout against John Howard was more or less his last chance in the UFC, and Larkin made the most of it. Since cutting to welterweight, Larkin has suddenly rediscovered his old fire and looked absolutely awesome - there's a narrow loss to Albert Tumenov in there, but that came after a scintillating brawl and knockout win over Santiago Ponzinibbio, and Larkin's last two fights were a win over Jorge Masvidal that continues to just look better, and then an absolute annihilation of Neil Magny, as Larkin just destroyed him with leg kicks before putting him away at the end of the first round. That was supposed to be the big win that got Larkin into big fights and title contention, but instead he's just found himself out of the company. Surprisingly, rumor is that Bellator hasn't even made him an offer yet - surprising, given his Strikeforce ties and that former Strikeforce head Scott Coker is running Bellator - but hopefully Larkin gets some solid money wherever he lands in the current landscape. 3) Rick Story (19-9 overall, 12-7 UFC, last fought 8/20/16, L vs. Donald Cerrone): Story's pretty much the most unsurprising surprising cut, if that makes sense, as he's the type of guy that UFC has often let go - a really good veteran who's probably a top ten or so fighter in his division, but not getting any better, not particularly exciting, and not particularly near getting any sort of title shot. Story's big run was from 2009 to 2011, shortly after he signed with UFC - Story's a relentless wrestler, and he used that tenaciousness to grind out wins over then-undefeated prospect Johny Hendricks and Thiago Alves. But after the Alves win, and near a title shot, Story decided to do UFC a solid and take a fight with Nate Marquardt on a four-week turnaround. Marquardt wound up having issues with his testosterone use and was pulled from the card, so instead Story faced late replacement Charlie Brenneman in a fight that Brenneman shockingly won, scoring a career-defining upset and completely derailing Story's title hopes. Story's career honestly never fully recovered from that - he'd be highly regarded, but trade wins and losses. A one-sided win over Gunnar Nelson in a main event on a smaller card looked like it was reviving Story's career, but an eighteen-month injury layoff kind of killed that momentum, and after winning a solid fight over Tarec Saffiedine, Donald Cerrone handled Story rather easily this past August. Story's good, so hopefully he finds a spot somewhere that'll pay him, but if his asking price was too high, I see why UFC would balk. 4) Takeya Mizugaki (21-11-2 overall, 8-6 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Eddie Wineland): Sadly, this was probably the right time for UFC to cut Mizugaki, as the Japanese vet had lost four out of his last five and just seemed to be spiraling downward. Mizugaki was a solid upper-card bantamweight in WEC, and pretty much continued that after joining UFC, alternating wins and losses for a bit. But in 2014, everyone just sort of looked around and suddenly realized that Mizugaki was a bantamweight contender, as he had strung together five straight wins over decent competition without anyone really taking much notice. That earned him a shot to be Dominick Cruz's comeback opponent, and Cruz proceeded to take out all his years of injury-induced rage on Mizugaki, showing uncharacteristic aggression and knocking out Mizugaki in just 61 seconds. Sadly for Mizugaki, that was the beginning of a trend, as a win over George Roop was the only one Mizugaki would have after that, and his losses to Cody Garbrandt and Eddie Wineland were both brutal knockouts. Mizugaki was always sort of a jack of all trades, master of none, and once his athleticism and skill dipped a bit, things were pretty much all over, especially now that it looks like his chin is gone. Given his emotional interview after the Roop win where he talked about fighting for his career, I feel bad saying this, but Mizugaki's best days are probably behind him. 5) Cole Miller (21-11 [1] overall, 10-9 [1] UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Mizuto Hirota): Miller probably lasted longer than anyone could've expected, as the gangly Georgian carved out a niche for nine years a solid gatekeeper at lightweight and featherweight. Miller was pretty much the perfect test for guys rising up the ladder - Miller was skilled everywhere and ridiculously lanky for his weight classes, so UFC could basically use him to see if guys were able to adjust to an unorthodox test. And Miller had a bunch of success, winning about two fights for every loss until things turned sort of sour near the end. Miller was facing a three-fight winless skid heading into his bout Hirota - Max Holloway beat him, as expected, an eye-poke turned what was looking into a win over Jim Alers into an early stoppage and a no contest, and Miller was set to face B.J. Penn before Penn got flagged for an illegal IV, instead resulting in Miller losing to short-notice replacement Alex Caceres. So Miller was already feeling his back against the wall, and then his relationship pretty much fell apart when the Manila card in October got cancelled; the Miller/Hirota fight was initially slated to take place there, and Miller had to find out about it second-hand while he was on his way to the airport to catch his flight. UFC re-booked a lot of the Manila fights in fairly short order, but they waited a while to do so for Miller/Hirota, which pissed off Miller to no end, per an interview he gave - this basically forced him to pay for a second training camp, UFC didn't pay him anything to make up for the cancelled fight, and worst of all, he was getting the cold shoulder when he wanted to meet with UFC higher-ups about his concerns. In that interview, Miller was basically openly contemplating retirement just from being frustrated with the whole deal, and that showed in his performance against Hirota, which was a flat loss. Miller was also in the last fight of his contract, and unsurprisingly, it looks like he won't be re-signed, and frankly, it seems like both parties are going to be okay with that. 6) Erik Perez (17-6 overall, 7-2 UFC, last fought 11/5/16, W vs. Felipe Arantes): I assume there must be something else going on here, since Perez really should be in UFC's plans, since he's finally coming through on some of the potential he's had as UFC tried to push him as a Mexican star. Pretty much upon his arrival in 2012, UFC saw dollar signs in Perez, then a super-young talent who showed up just when the company was looking for someone Mexican to showcase, and his development happened in fits and starts, as whenever Perez would chain together a win or two, they'd immediately rush him into a fight against a Bryan Caraway or a Takeya Mizugaki, and then when he lost, start the cycle anew. But after missing over a year thanks to injuries over parts of 2014 and 2015, Perez returned and looked like he was finally cashing in on his potential, somewhat amusingly just as Yair Rodriguez was supplanting him as UFC's next big Mexican hope. But Perez put together wins over Taylor Lapilus, Francisco Rivera, and Felipe Arantes that were both exciting and showcased Perez's newfound striking skills, and while it didn't look like "El Goyito" would be quite the star UFC hoped, he could at least be a Mexican fan favorite with some notoriety going forward. I'm hoping that Perez being taken off the roster has something to do with him seemingly suffering a major knee injury during the Arantes fight and either freezing his contract or just letting him be a free agent until he's healthy, but I don't think they'd be paying him either way, so the whole thing is just weird. UFC's not dumb enough to let Perez go just as he's becoming a going concern...right? 7) Francisco Rivera (11-7 [1] overall, 4-6 [1] UFC, last fought 7/30/16, L vs. Erik Perez): Rivera's one of those cuts that almost had to happen, as he's lost five out of his last six at 35 years old, though it still sucks to see. Rivera's first UFC run was over before it began, as he was coming over from WEC after a loss and got cut after one more against Reuben Duran. But the Californian earned his way back and then came out of the gates blazing upon his return, winning four straight and earning some shots at bigger names. Takeya Mizugaki just straight up out-wrestled him, but the fight after that is going to be Rivera's biggest "what if," as he probably could've gotten a win over Urijah Faber in December of 2014. Rivera was pretty handily winning the first round and the earlier stages of the second, when Faber accidentally poked Rivera in the eye. But neither Faber nor the ref seemed to see what happened, and as Rivera cringed from the poke, Faber used the opportunity to just take advantage, swarm Rivera, and then eventually get a submission. Rough luck, but it looked like Rivera would be alright in the long run, as he absolutely annihilated Alex Caceres in his next fight. But that turned out to be the end of the good times - Rivera lost one of the best fights of 2015 against John Lineker, a two-minute sprint that saw both men just swing at each other in ridiculous fashion, got robbed via decision against Brad Pickett, and then simply got outclassed by Erik Perez to lose three straight. Rivera's pretty reliably a fun striker, so I was hoping they would keep him around for one more fight, but given his age and the way his record was trending (even if it did include two controversial losses), it's understandable that they cut him. 8) Phillipe Nover (11-8-1 overall, 1-6 UFC, last fought 2/10/17, L vs. Rick Glenn): Nover wasn't part of the massive UFC roster cuts, instead announcing his retirement a few days after losing at UFC 208, in his hometown of Brooklyn, to Rick Glenn. Nover was a fine journeyman, but he'll pretty much live in infamy as one of a few "next Anderson Silva"s thanks to Dana White. Nover starred on season 8 of TUF, finishing all three of his opponents in rather one-sided fashion, leading White to throw a whole bunch of crazy hyperbole Nover's way - he was the next Anderson Silva, the next Georges St. Pierre - pretty much every ridiculous thing you could think of. So, of course, Nover didn't even wind up winning the season, instead getting out-wrestled by Efrain Escudero and losing the final. Nover then lost his next two fights - though one was an iffy decision - and found himself out of the promotion within a year, at which point he started popping up on regional cards and the occasional Bellator prelim. But apparently UFC kept his name in their Rolodex, as when they decided to run Manila for the first time, they surprisingly brought Nover back, probably because the Filipino-American was one of the few "hometown" fighters they could think to bring in. Nover probably didn't deserve to win his comeback fight, a decision over Yui Chul Nam, but it was a nice moment, especially since it wound up being his only UFC win. After that, Nover's luck sort of reversed itself, as he lost a clear decision to Renan Barao that was sandwiched between split decision losses to Zubaira Tukhugov and Glenn. All of those fights showed off the flaw in Nover's game at a UFC level - he was pretty much solid everywhere, but he just didn't really have the style to finish fights or win rounds against better competition, so it just wound up being tough loss after tough loss. All in all, Nover seems at peace with the decision, as he's going back to focusing on his other job as a nurse, so good on him - despite not living up to the ridiculous expectations, he still had a fairly solid career, all in all. 9) Jessamyn Duke (3-5 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought (in UFC) 7/25/15, L vs. Elizabeth Phillips): Oh, poor Jessamyn Duke. Edmond Tarverdyan has ruined a lot of careers, and Duke's a somewhat forgotten name on that list. The Kentuckian was an interesting prospect discovered by Invicta - a former model, Duke has marketable good looks, and thanks to her leggy, lanky frame, the thought was that she could be a lot of trouble once she figured out how to use her reach. But Duke struck up a friendship with her coach on TUF, Ronda Rousey, became one of her "Four Horsewomen" group of BFF's, went to train in Glendale, and that was pretty much the beginning of the end. Duke did win her first post-TUF fight over Peggy Morgan, but after that showed nothing - Bethe Correia outboxed her handily, Leslie Smith more or less annihilated her, and Elizabeth Phillips won a fairly clear decision, as Duke just basically had no idea how to use her range or, even worse, defend anything as she was getting hit. The Phillips loss figured to be Duke's last in the promotion, particularly when she popped up back in Invicta, but word got out that UFC had allowed her to head to Invicta while still remaining under contract, because that's the kind of leeway being a friend of Rousey gets you. But Duke just looked completely broken in her last two fights, getting wrecked by Irene Aldana and tapped out in short order by Cindy Dandois, so it's not a surprise that UFC decided to cut their losses somewhere along the way. I don't know how successful Duke would've been in a different camp, but I feel bad that she wound up in Glendale. 10) Maximo Blanco (12-8-1 [1] overall, 4-5 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Chas Skelly): Well, at least Maximo Blanco went out in appropriately ridiculous fashion. Blanco, a Venezuelan fighting out of Japan, was pretty much guaranteed entertainment every time he stepped into the cage, since he was ridiculously aggressive and it was often unclear if he was aware of the rules. His November 2013 fight against Akira Corassani is a perfect example - Blanco just decided to throw a knee full-bore at Corassani's head while Corassani was down, getting himself disqualified. And weird stuff would just follow Blanco around - there was that fight, his win over Mike De La Torre where the ref stopped it way too early, and his last fight, where both him and Chas Skelly decided to start the fight with running, flying karate kicks, Skelly's landed cleaner, and Skelly clamped on a choke for a submission in just nineteen seconds. Ridiculous. Anyway, it's probably better off that Blanco is probably headed back to Japan, where he can stomp people in the face to his heart's content. 11) Taylor Lapilus (11-2 overall, 3-1 UFC, last fought 9/3/16, W vs. Leandro Issa): UFC seems to sign fighters to four-fight deals to start, so I'm assuming Lapilus is a case where he fought out his contract, since it seems unlikely they'd go out of their way to cut a talented mid-level prospect. Lapilus had an interesting entry into the UFC - as a backstory, before UFC ran a show in Sweden back in 2014, the country's commission had pretty much ruined some smaller-level shows by refusing to license a few different fights, citing the difference in experience between some of the opponents. Local promoters cried foul about a double-standard between themselves and UFC, so when Lapilus was signed as a late injury replacement to face the much more experienced Dennis Siver, Sweden caved into local pressure and denied Lapilus a license. Lapilus wound up being a pretty solid fighter, one of UFC's better signing out of a burgeoning French scene - he lost to Erik Perez, but otherwise more or less styled on low-tier competition like Ulka Sasaki and Leandro Issa. But even after winning his last fight impressively, Lapilus didn't have enough of a name for WME-IMG to see him as worth keeping. 12) Seohee Ham (17-8 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Danielle Taylor): Seohee Ham is awesome, and it sucks that she's off the UFC roster, particularly since he last loss was a complete robbery. Ham was one of the top atomweights in the world when UFC signed her as a late replacement to face Joanne Calderwood, and she was good for a fun action fight every time out - despite being tiny, Ham mostly lived up to her "Hamderlei Silva" nickname, constantly throwing punches, with the added benefit of much better dance moves coming to the cage than Wandy ever showed. After a 1-1 start, Ham lost a narrow decision to Bec Rawlings, which showed that the Korean had a clear ceiling and was facing an uphill battle in the UFC, since Rawlings was just able to shut down Ham at times due to her size; thankfully, UFC matched her up with the similarly small Danielle Taylor in her last fight, which everyone figured Ham had won, but somehow Taylor was gifted the decision, and it looks like that cost Ham her UFC job. Sad face. 13) Sean O'Connell (17-9 overall, 2-5 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Corey Anderson): O'Connell was fun as hell for a few different reasons. Outside the cage, he was a fascinating guy - his full-time job was as a sports radio host in his native Utah, he wrote a sci-fi fantasy novel, and he was one of the more reliable characters at weigh-ins, often trying to get a reaction out of his opponent or the fans. But for such a renaissance man, inside the cage, O'Connell's game was fairly simple - he was a pure brawler, just trying to punch his opponent in the face as hard as he could while attempting to walk through damage to do so. Sometimes this got him annihilated, like against Ryan Jimmo and Ilir Latifi, but sometimes magic happened - a forgotten fight against Gian Villante highlighted UFC's lone card in New Zealand, and his fight last June against former hockey enforcer Steve Bosse was just a ridiculous bit of violence, a back and forth bar fight that just saw each guy seemingly knock the other out multiple times. Coming off a decision loss in that fight, UFC then pretty much fed O'Connell to rising contender Anderson, and it sounded like O'Connell was ready to retire after the fight, stopping just short of making it official. He experienced some hope that UFC would have him on in a broadcasting role, given his background in the field, but it doesn't look like that'll be the case, sadly. 14) James Moontasri (9-5 overall, 2-4 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Alex Morono): Like Nover above, Moontasri wasn't a part of UFC's massive roster purge, but instead retired over social media in the past week. Moontasri was frustrating as hell - a former Tae Kwon Do champion, when Moontasri was on, the Californian could string together some fun, violent combinations, but more often than not he just found himself looking for the perfect shot, and would just not do much of anything while losing rounds. And as time went on, opponents like Kevin Lee and Alex Oliveira figured out they could take Moontasri down and beat the piss out of him, and that was the beginning of the end. 15) Augusto Montano (15-3 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Belal Muhammad): Ah, the ballad of "Dodger" Montano. When UFC decided to break into Mexico in 2014, that meant they needed Mexican fighters, and to be fair, Montano was one of the better ones they could find out of a thin scene. A popular veteran, Montano had a fun, one-sided win over Chris Heatherly on UFC's debut card in Mexico City, but things fell apart the next time around, when Montano faced Cathal Pendred. The fight was awful, with Montano suddenly losing all of his aggression and not doing much of anything, to the point that he got booed by his hometown crowd, and then Montano failed a drug test shortly thereafter, getting suspended for a year. In the interim, pretty much every Mexican fighter UFC had under contract was doing way better than expectations, thus making Montano sort of expendable as an ethnic draw, and after coming back from his suspension and looking fairly blah in a loss to Belal Muhammad, he was, in fact, expended. 16) Anthony Birchak (12-3 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 7/7/16, W vs. Dileno Lopes): Birchak was a known free agent, and I guess this is the sign UFC isn't going to renew his deal, which is a bit disappointing, since Birchak was fairly fun. A solid prospect, Birchak lived up to his "El Toro" nickname, just sort of charging forward a lot of the time and trying to overwhelm his foes. In his UFC debut, this caused him to run immediately into an Ian Entwistle leglock, but he annihilated Joe Soto in his next fight, and looked alright against Thomas Almeida before getting dropped in one of the scarier knockouts of 2015. Birchak looked good in his last fight, a win over Dileno Lopes where the loser would seemingly get cut, and now neither man is with the promotion. 17) Bartosz Fabinski (13-2 overall, 2-0 UFC, last fought 11/21/15, W vs. Hector Urbina): Poland's Fabinski was one of a bunch of Polish fighters that UFC signed for their show in Krakow back in 2015, and he did well enough in his two UFC fights, out-wrestling Garreth McLellan and Hector Urbina fairly effectively, even if neither fight was all that exciting. Fabinski was slated to fight Nicolas Dalby in Croatia this past April, but pulled out due to injury, and as mentioned above, per Fabinski's management, his contract is being frozen as he takes time off to recover. Alright then. 18) Tiago Trator (20-6-1 [1] overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Shane Burgos): It's strange for UFC to cut someone after only one loss, but this could also be a case where UFC just decided not to renew Trator's contract after a four-fight deal. Anyway, Trator was expendable, and might be the guy I have the least to say about on this list - he wasn't particularly impressive anywhere, but on the upside, he also wasn't bad enough that I could really talk about any of his weaknesses. Trator was a Brazilian man who didn't really win that impressively, but didn't lose in blowout fashion either. He was there, and it's about right that he's near the middle of this list. 19) Lance Benoist (7-2 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 6/7/14, W vs. Bobby Voelker): Benoist is sort of the American version of Trator, just a guy who was decent everywhere, though there's at least the intrigue of wondering where the hell he's been for the last two and a half years. It's unclear if his contract is frozen, or if he just retired, since Benoist doesn't appear to have much of a social media presence anymore. Anyway, all four of Benoist's fights went to decision, which about says it all, but hey, at least the Midwestern vet ended his UFC career with a win over Bobby Voelker. 20) Tony Sims (12-4 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 1/2/16, L vs. Abel Trujillo): In another time, Sims would've probably gotten another chance in UFC after two straight losses, since at his best he was pretty exciting. Sims's first two UFC fights showed the Colorado native's strengths and weaknesses pretty clearly - his UFC debut saw him knock out Steve Montgomery on the feet, but his sophomore effort saw Olivier Aubin-Mercier just take him down and out-grapple him at will. I guess Sims tried to be well-rounded after that bout, but it cost him against Abel Trujillo - after doing pretty well on the feet, Sims decided to mix things up for the sake of mixing things up, and when he went for a takedown, he just pretty much dove right into a guillotine that cost him the fight and his spot on the UFC roster. Whoops. 21) Yaotzin Meza (21-11 [1] overall, 2-4 [1] UFC, last fought 2/27/16, L vs. Arnold Allen): Hey, Meza made it about four years in the UFC, which isn't that bad for someone who only got the gig because they were willing to step in and get smoked by Chad Mendes on about a week's notice. Meza, a training partner of Benson Henderson, was cornering Henderson on a UFC card the week before Mendes needed an opponent in Australia, so he begged for the spot, got it, and then parlayed that into a solid low-level gatekeeper role. Meza was pretty much matched up with guys in their first or second UFC fights so they could have a showcase, and for the most part, that's what happened, although Meza won just enough to keep the gravy train going for seven fights. Not bad. 22) Geane Herrera (9-3 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Ben Nguyen): Herrera was sort of a victim of the weird structure of UFC's flyweight division, as well as the company often not having any idea about how to bring along raw prospects. Herrera was pretty much all athleticism when UFC signed him in 2015, and they immediately threw him against top prospect Ray Borg in a fight that Herrera unsurprisingly lost. And at flyweight, pretty much half the division is top-fifteen worthy veterans, so after a win over Joby Sanchez, Herrera was immediately thrown back into the fire, put in way over his head in losses against Ali Bagautinov and Ben Nguyen. The Nguyen fight was the last on Herrera's deal, and he was apparently pessimistic about being re-signed; looks like he was right. 23) Clay Collard (14-7 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 9/5/15, L vs. Tiago Trator): Utah's Collard had an impressive late-notice debut in August of 2014 - he was completely overmatched against Max Holloway, but Collard made it entertaining, pretty much charging like a zombie through whatever Holloway would throw at him until he finally got put down late in the third round. After that, Collard rebounded with a win over Alex White, but in both that and his next two fights, Collard was more frustrating than effective, a physical talent that basically had a lot trouble turning that into anything resembling a functional MMA game. 24) Elvis Mutapcic (15-5-1 overall, 0-2-1 UFC, last fought 12/3/16, L vs. Anthony Smith): It's nice Mutapcic finally got his UFC shot, though his run wound up being fairly disappointing. Mutapcic, who fled Bosnia at a young age and grew up in Iowa, was one of the better regional middleweights out there, racking up wins against solid competition and earning a brief stint in WSOF, but UFC-level competition pretty much showed all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Mutapcic was just too passive to do anything against Francimar Barroso, and both that fight and his other two UFC affairs were mostly just boring slogs, at least until he got knocked out by Anthony Smith this past December. It would've been nice to see Mutapcic at least notch one UFC win, but sadly, no dice. 25) Jon Delos Reyes (8-5 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 10/24/15, L vs. Neil Seery): Like a few guys on this list, Guam's Delos Reyes probably would've gotten another shot at a different time in UFC roster management, since his fights were fun as hell. Delos Reyes was often overmatched, but he would throw power behind every punch and had a fun, scrambling submission style, so while he'd often lose, he'd often lose in exciting fashion. Though, that said, his lone UFC win, over Roldan Sangcha-an, was probably his most fun fight. 26) Fredy Serrano (3-2 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Hector Sandoval): Serrano was an interesting curio for a bit - a former Olympic wrestler for his native Colombia, Serrano looked impressive in his first two fights against the dregs of the roster, knocking out TUF: Latin America castmate Bentley Syler and breaking TUF: China alum Zhikui Yao's arm on a takedown. But once Serrano faced any legitimate level of competition, it became apparent he really wasn't that good, with an offensive game consisting of little except power takedowns, and, strangely, axe kicks. Serrano didn't get into the sport until his late thirties, so there's an alternate universe out there where he starts much earlier and develops into an actual prospect, since he's a hell of an athlete, but unfortunately that universe is not this one. 27) Buddy Roberts (12-3 overall, 1-1 UFC, last fought 8/11/12, L vs. Yushin Okami): I'm not sure anyone remembers Buddy Roberts, but yes, he was still on the UFC roster. Roberts needed two tries to get his UFC debut back in 2012 - the first time, his debut got scrapped literally minutes before it was set to start, as his opponent, Sean Loeffler, managed to injure his ankle while warming up backstage. But Roberts did wind up winning his eventual UFC debut against Caio Magalhaes, then actually had a pay-per-view fight at UFC 150 as a late replacement against Yushin Okami, where Okami, then still a top contender, pretty much ran through him. And that was the last we ever saw of Roberts - he was slated to face Michael Kuiper on a card in January of 2013, but pulled out due to injury, and, well, that must have been a hell of an injury. 28) Hector Urbina (17-10-1 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 9/24/16, L vs. Vicente Luque): Urbina showed little on season 18 of TUF, but UFC needed Mexican fighters for their debut card in the country, so Urbina, a Mexican-American fighting out of Indiana, got the call anyway. He got a debut win over fellow underwhelming vet Edgar Garcia, but lost in one-sided fashion in his next two fights, and was cut. Amusingly, Urbina's already resurfaced as a cast member of this upcoming TUF season, so...good on him for somehow already finding a way back in, I suppose. 29) Lukasz Sajewski (13-3 overall, 0-3 UFC, last fought 10/8/16, L vs. Marc Diakiese): Poland's Sajewski was a fine prospect when UFC picked him up, but didn't really get the chance to show much in the UFC, losing a flat decision to Nick Hein and then getting matched up against top prospects Gilbert Burns and Marc Diakiese. Sajewski took the Diakiese loss on late notice, so there was some thought that doing the favor could've bought him a fourth chance, but it looks like still being around to even take the Diakiese fight may have been the favor. 30) Milana Dudieva (11-5 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 11/19/16, L vs. Marion Reneau): Dudieva didn't really show a whole hell of a lot over three UFC fights, although the Russian did manage to eke out a split decision win over Elizabeth Phillips in her UFC debut. After that, she got annihilated in Julianna Pena's comeback fight from a major knee injury, and then wound up taking time off due to pregnancy - I believe she was the first UFC fighter to do so, though I know Alexis Davis also got pregnant around the same time. Anyway, Dudieva came back about a year and a half later, still didn't really do much in a loss to Marion Reneau, and that's that. 31) Roldan Sangcha-an (4-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 5/16/15, L vs. Jon Delos Reyes): Sangcha-an was one of a few raw Filipino fighters that UFC signed in 2014, during the company's failed expansion into Asia. The most notable thing about Sangcha-an, frankly, was his young schoolboy looks, although his last UFC fight, a submission loss to Jon Delos Reyes, came in a hell of a barnburner. That fight was fun enough that I thought Sangcha-an might at least get a third fight whenever UFC ran a card in Asia again, but no such luck. 32) Brendan O'Reilly (6-3 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 12/3/16, L vs. Dong Hyun Kim): I'm kind of surprised UFC even bothered as long as it did with Brendan O'Reilly, though I suppose he did have some popularity in his native Australia. O'Reilly didn't really do a hell of a lot on TUF: Nations, but eventually got the call when UFC needed someone, anyone, that TUF: China winner Lipeng Zhang could beat. And, frankly, when you're starting your UFC career by getting out-wrestled by Zhang, the bar is pretty low. O'Reilly managed to beat TUF: Nations castmate Vik Grujic in Australia, and that was pretty much that - O'Reilly was then weirdly pitted against Alan Jouban and absolutely annihilated, and then showed little in a loss to Dong Hyun Kim. 33) Joe Gigliotti (7-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Gerald Meerschaert): Well, Gigliotti's UFC tenure ended quickly, lasting only two fights over four months. An Ohio native, Gigliotti had some hype thanks to some impressive finishes against solid competition outside the UFC, but Trevor Smith just out-wrestled him and wore him out, and Gigliotti could do little against solid vet Gerald Meerschaert before getting tapped out. Gigliotti's still only 23, so I wouldn't be surprised if he just keeps improving and winds up in a major organization once again, even if his run was brutally disappointing. 34) Zhikui Yao (2-4 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Jenel Lausa): I actually watched TUF: China, and I liked Zhikui Yao, as he was one of the better prospects on the show, since he had some athleticism and a basic understanding of what he was trying to do. UFC picked him up, but he never really developed, and wasn't particularly good, with his only win coming over Nolan Ticman in a decision that Yao mostly earned with aggression rather than doing anything actually effective. C'est la vie. 35) Joey Gomez (6-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Jose Quinonez): Gomez apparently quietly retired in December, but when he was deleted from the UFC roster and that wasn't common knowledge, the cut was still rather expected. Gomez was an interesting flier when UFC picked him up at the beginning of 2016 - a former Marine, Gomez actually faced some solid competition in the Northeast and racked up a 6-0 record with six knockouts. But UFC-level competition was too much, too soon, and Gomez lost one-sided fights to Rob Font and Jose Quinonez. 36) Fernando Bruno (15-4 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 7/8/16, L vs. Gray Maynard): I saw Fernando Bruno get to the finals of TUF: Brazil 4, but I'm still not really sure how it happened, since Bruno didn't seem to be particularly good at anything. Still, he got there before getting tapped out by Glaico Franca, and Bruno's follow-up fight saw him tire out early and just lose a flat decision to Gray Maynard. Alright then. 37) Anton Zafir (7-3 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 7/8/16, L vs. Jingliang Li): Zafir, a full-time teacher, was a late-notice replacement on a card in his native Australia, and ran into the same problem a lot of Australian fighters that are dependent on their wrestling have - people in the UFC can actually defend wrestling, so that tends to leave guys like Steve Kennedy, Damien Brown, and Zafir without a lot to fall back on. To make matters worse, Zafir took damage probably worse than any UFC fighter in recent history, as James Moontasri and Jingliang Li put his lights out with the first solid blow of each fight. Eek. 38) Adam Hunter (7-1 overall, 0-0 UFC): Adam Hunter joins the ranks of guys who wound up getting cut by UFC without ever making it to a fight. Hunter, a New Brunswick native, was signed to fight Ryan Janes in Vancouver over the summer, as UFC looked to add whatever Canadian talent they could find. And Hunter was a solid pick - an aggressive striker, Hunter ran through opponents, with all seven of his wins coming via first-round knockout. But right before the Janes fight was set to happen, Hunter was notified that his drug test had been flagged, and it turned out that he had failed for a rather impressive, Chael Sonnen-like combination of drugs. Well done. It was unclear if UFC would keep him under contract, but it looks like they decided against it. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 3/4 - UFC 209 - Las Vegas, NV - Tyron Woodley (c ) vs. Stephen Thompson, Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Mark Hunt vs. Alistair Overeem 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa, Alan Jouban vs. Gunnar Nelson 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Daniel Cormier (c ) vs. Anthony Johnson, Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 4/15 - UFC on Fox 24 - Kansas City, MO - Rose Namajunas vs. Michelle Waterson, Gilbert Melendez vs. Jeremy Stephens 4/22 - UFC Fight Night 108 - Nashville, TN - Artem Lobov vs. Cub Swanson, Al Iaquinta vs. Diego Sanchez, Sam Alvey vs. Thales Leites 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic (c ) vs. Junior dos Santos, Ben Rothwell vs. Fabricio Werdum 5/27 - UFC TBA - Copenhagen, Denmark - Christian Colombo vs. Damian Grabowski 6/3 - UFC 212 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - Jose Aldo (c ) vs. Max Holloway (ic) ----- UFC Fight Night 105 - February 19, 2017 - Scotiabank Centre - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada What better way to celebrate President's Day weekend than with a Sunday night fight card from Halifax? (There are many better ways.) This is a fairly solid, if thin card - the top two matches are pretty well-matched, and should do a lot to show exactly where each of the four guys are at, but past that it's a few fun fights and then just a lot of weird matchmaking in the recent mold, with interesting fighters sort of slumming it against lower-level talent. But, hey, it probably won't be as bad as UFC 208. MAIN CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 9:00 PM ET): Heavyweight: (#8) Derrick Lewis vs. (#9) Travis Browne Middleweight: (#10 Welterweight) Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard Featherweight: Sam Sicilia vs. Gavin Tucker Middleweight: Cezar Ferreira vs. Elias Theodorou Women's Bantamweight: (#7) Sara McMann vs. Gina Mazany Lightweight: Paul Felder vs. Alessandro Ricci PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 7:00 PM ET): Welterweight: Santiago Ponzinibbio vs. Nordine Taleb Women's Strawweight: (#3) Carla Esparza vs. Randa Markos Bantamweight: Reginaldo Vieira vs. Aiemann Zahabi Middleweight: Jack Marshman vs. Thiago Santos PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 6:30 PM ET): Middleweight: Ryan Janes vs. Gerald Meerschaert THE RUNDOWN: Derrick Lewis (17-4 [1] overall, 8-2 UFC, 0-1 Bellator) vs. Travis Browne (18-5-1 overall, 9-5-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): So...is Derrick Lewis actually a prospect? He's only 32 years old, which is young for heavyweight, and he's racked up five straight wins, so I guess Lewis kind of has to be in such a thin division, but there's a ton of red flags that "The Black Beast" has a clear ceiling. But, then again, Travis Browne is going through a whole bunch of issues of his own, so he might not exactly be the right guy to test how good Lewis is at this point. Lewis came into UFC with a bang in 2014, basically looking like the living nightmare of a white supremacist - Lewis is a gigantic black man from Houston, and his gameplan is pretty much based around using his enormous power to bash his opponents' faces in, and he did just that in quick wins over Jack May and Guto Inocente to kick off his UFC career. But after following that up by losing two out of three to Matt Mitrione and Shawn Jordan, both by fairly one-sided knockout, it looked like Lewis was more sideshow than anything else, and that he wouldn't be much more than someone who could annihilate lower-level guys and get exposed fighting anyone better than that. And since then, it's been a weird mixed bag, even though it's resulted in a five-fight winning streak for Lewis - outside of running over Damian Grabowski, Lewis has struggled as opponents have been willing to wrestle him. While he's often able to use his strength to just get opponents off of him (even Roy Nelson, who was the one man with a chin tough enough to at least take Lewis to a close decision), it's probably a bad sign that his last win over Shamil Abdurakhimov looked a lot like the first one of this streak, over Viktor Pesta, as Lewis was just helpless on the ground and losing a fight to a not-particularly-good heavyweight before coming back to get the late knockout. And Lewis's whole approach in the Abdurakhimov fight was particularly worrying, as even after getting taken down on the first kick of the fight, Lewis just kept continuing to throw kicks and get taken down, not showing an ability to adjust to the goings-on in the fight. On the one hand, Lewis has the power to knock out anyone in the division, save Nelson apparently, but on the other hand, that'll only get you so far if opponents figure out how to avoid it, and as Lewis moves his way up the ladder, guys are going to have more and more tricks to do so. But, that all said, none of this applies to Travis Browne, who's purely a striker, and is going through a ton of gameplanning issues of his own. On the same card Lewis debuted on, Browne was headlining in a #1 contender's fight against Fabricio Werdum, and was actually favored to earn the next title shot. But, well, that fight turned out to be the beginning of the end for the Hawaiian, as Werdum just outboxed him for five rounds and made Browne look completely unclassed. That started a bit of a downward spiral for Browne, who went from vicious contender to just sort of an athletically talented, but defensively crappy kickboxer, and that makes a hell of a lot more sense in retrospect, since that's about the time Browne left Jackson-Wink in Albuquerque and started training in Glendale, with the same team as his girlfriend, Ronda Rousey. After a frankly embarrassing performance in his last fight, a rematch with Werdum, and Rousey getting blown out by Amanda Nunes, there were some rumors that Browne had started training with Kings MMA, whose aggressive style would make for an interesting fit with Browne, but Browne himself debunked those, which is...not a good sign. Well, unless you hate Travis Browne, which would be completely understandable given his background of domestic violence, in which case, good sign. And it also makes this fight a whole lot harder to call - for as much hype as Lewis has, his best win is that narrow decision over Nelson, and his second-best UFC win after that is...Abdurakhimov, I guess? Add in how dependent on the finish Lewis has gotten as he's fought better competition, all of which is worse than Browne, and it gets harder and harder to consider Lewis an actual prospect and not just a fun knockout artist. But, with that all said, as long as Browne is training in Glendale, he's there to be hit - admittedly, he can probably hit Lewis himself, and Lewis's losses have shown that he can be knocked out - but Browne's probably going to box with him, not be particularly defensively sound, and wind up getting himself lamped. So, despite being fairly low on Lewis, I'm still picking the Texan to win by first-round knockout, and then probably wind up being in way over his head in his next bout. Johny Hendricks (17-6 overall, 12-6 UFC, 2-0 WEC) vs. Hector Lombard (34-6-1 [2] overall, 3-4 [1] UFC, 8-0 Bellator, 0-2 PRIDE): This is some delightfully fun and weird matchmaking, as two of 2016's biggest disappointments square off in what may be the last chance for both. Johny Hendricks, man. I remember that going into 2016, I thought Hendricks was probably the best welterweight in the world - the former champ's title loss to Robbie Lawler in 2014 was a nip-tuck decision, and Hendricks's lone fight in 2015 saw him come back in the best shape in years, outwrestling Matt Brown in one-sided fashion. Sure, Hendricks had issues with his weight cut that scrapped a prior fight with Tyron Woodley, but that seemed to be a weird one-off thanks to some kidney stones. And then, well, 2016 happened. Hendricks kicked off the year by getting absolutely destroyed by Stephen Thompson as part of Thompson's run towards a title shot, and while things would eventually get better inside the cage, they spiralled out of control outside of it. Leading up to Hendricks's fight with Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 200, word was that Hendricks was having another tough weight cut, and the scenes from the early weigh-in were rather harrowing, as Hendricks had shaved off his signature beard, was visibly shaking out of weakness, and still missed weight by three-tenths of a pound. And then a loss added insult to injury, as Gastelum won a close, but clear decision. So it looked like it was Hendricks's last gasp this past December, at UFC 207, and things somehow went even worse there. A few days before the card, at media day, Hendricks, who seemed visibly out of it, just suddenly went a little crazy, talking about how people talking about his weight didn't know what they were talking about, just sort of railing into the media, and challenging individual media members to cut weight themselves and see how difficult it is. All the while, Hendricks was promising he would be in great shape come weigh-ins, so, naturally, Hendricks missed weight by two and a half pounds, resulting in an iconically sad image of Hendricks covering his eyes as he stepped onto the scale. And it was once again a frustrating loss for Hendricks - much like the Gastelum fight, Hendricks didn't look shot or anything against Neil Magny, but just...diminished and ineffective, as Hendricks got his wrestling game going a bit, but didn't really do much while Magny did a ton of work from the bottom, and the striking was a bit of a wash. But that's now suddenly three straight losses for the former top contender, and with the weight issues, Hendricks has decided to move up to middleweight, which is understandable, but also a bit strange, given that Hendricks was somewhat small at welterweight. Though, on the plus side, that may not matter here, as Hector Lombard is a welterweight-sized middleweight himself. It was considered a coup when UFC signed Lombard away from Bellator, where he was middleweight champ - Lombard had put together a 24-0-1 record over the prior five years, a lot of which were explosive knockouts from the Cuban-Australian judoka. But his UFC run was pretty much immediately a disappointment, as Lombard lost two out of his first three - first an awful decision against Tim Boetsch where neither guy did much or anything, and then a narrow decision loss to Yushin Okami. After the Okami loss, Lombard decided to cut down to 170, and actually had some success, even if the fights weren't that great - he scored wins over Nate Marquardt, Jake Shields, and Josh Burkman, though the Burkman win was soon overturned due to a failed drug test that kept Lombard out of action for pretty much all of 2015. Still, Lombard was expected to come back in 2016 and keep gaining momentum, but instead he got two knockout losses for his efforts. He blitzed Neil Magny fairly early, but Magny survived, wore Lombard out, and eventually finished him, and then Lombard moved back up to 185 to receive of one of the more memorable knockouts of 2016, as he caught a Dan Henderson kick and then got elbowed upside his head and sent completely unconscious in Henderson's last huge bit of brutality. Now at 39 - in Cuban years - Lombard does seem to have his early burst of explosiveness left, but it's not as effective as it used to be, and honestly, there doesn't seem to be much else. This is similar to the main event, as it's kind of hard to have faith in both guys, only here it's even more extreme - I suppose I actually favor Hendricks, despite what figures to be a strength advantage, since I actually think all the weight issues and outside-the-cage stuff just winds up making Hendricks's decline seem bigger than it is. Sure, Hendricks is diminished, but there have been other fighters who have been completely shot, and even though Hendricks's game suddenly doesn't seem like it's working, I still have some confidence that he could beat guys outside the top ten or so, like, say, Matt Brown in a rematch. However, Lombard's dangerous, and while Magny and Henderson were able to survive his early offense, there's no guarantees that Hendricks can, particularly moving up for the first time into a new weight class. Still, if Hendricks survives, I like him to win a fairly clear decision - while Hendricks has had gas tank issues his whole career, Lombard's are even worse, and while I don't really think it'll be a fun fight, I just trust Hendricks a bit more to push the pace and sort of do more stuff to earn an uninspiring win. Though, at this point, for either guy, a win's a win. Sam Sicilia (14-7 overall, 5-6 UFC) vs. Gavin Tucker (9-0 overall): UFC's gotten into the trend of putting hometown fighters higher on cards lately, and this is the most obvious case in a while, as Halifax's own Gavin Tucker makes his debut against journeyman Sam Sicilia. Sicilia's pretty much the perfect gatekeeper at featherweight - he's solid enough to go about .500 over his UFC career, but save a weirdly grappling-heavy win over Yaotzin Meza, Sicilia's pretty much a one-dimensional boxer who can put on an exciting fight while testing up-and-coming prospects. After one-sided losses to Doo Ho Choi and Gabriel Benitez, it was assumed that Sicilia might be on the way out, but here he figures to get one more shot against Tucker. It's hard to know what to make of Tucker - he missed two straight years, from February 2013 to February 2015, due to injury, and has only had two fights since coming back, both of which were fairly quick knockouts. And there's not even a ton of footage out there on those, so all there is basically to glean is that Tucker looks like a pretty solid, athletic striker, though not so much so that he particularly jumps off of whatever film there is. Tucker being such an unknown makes this a coin flip, so I'll favor Sicilia via decision pretty much based solely on experience, though on the plus side, this should be a really fun bout no matter how good Tucker turns out to be. Cezar Ferreira (11-5 overall, 7-3 UFC) vs. Elias Theodorou (12-1 overall, 4-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): One of the nicer stories in the UFC undercard during 2016 was the sudden resurgence of Cezar "Mutante" Ferreira, who looked like a complete bust of a prospect as recently as a year ago. Ferreira won the middleweight bracket of the first season of TUF: Brazil, and the Vitor Belfort protege fought a lot like his mentor, an explosive finisher that ran through his opponents in fairly short order. But Ferreira didn't really cash in on his hype in any manner - he wasn't particularly popular with the Brazilian fans, who just plain didn't like him, and once Ferreira got any step up in competition, things pretty much went to hell. As it turns out, Ferreira was pretty much the platonic ideal of a "glass cannon" - sure, he was explosive, but if an opponent was able to weather the storm, or even just get in before it happened, Ferreira turned out to pretty much have no chin whatsoever and wound get his lights turned out on the first exchange of the fight. An ill-advised cut to welterweight for one fight didn't help, as Ferreira just looked drained before suffering another first-round knockout to Jorge Masvidal, and after a bit of a layoff, Ferreira's fight against Oluwale Bamgbose this past April looked to be his last chance. But in that fight, and his follow-up win over Anthony Smith, Ferreira showed that he had suddenly reinvented himself as a grappler, outwrestling both opponents with relative ease. And in his last win, against European vet Jack Hermansson, Ferreira flashed a pretty solid range kickboxing game while mixing in his grappling, eventually scoring a second-round submission win. It's been an impressive re-tooling, as Ferreira has basically learned to plan around his weaknesses, and just rebuilt his game in such a way that he doesn't really have to get hit. Compared to Ferreira, Elias Theodorou's slow progression up the middleweight ranks has been fairly normal. I was among a solid group of people that tabbed Theorodou for potential stardom coming off the Canada versus Australia season of TUF - Theodorou has dreamboat good looks, even appearing on the cover of some romance novels, and a star's personality that walks a fine line between likability and cockiness. And in the cage, he's been pretty solid, even if it's a bit amusing that someone so pretty fights so ugly - Theodorou just prefers to grapple and take things into the clinch, where he'll try to wear down his opponents or eventually work for a submission. Theodorou's added a bit of a striking game, mostly built around weird single karate strikes, but it's hard to tell if that's effective - his last fight against Sam Alvey just didn't see Alvey try to do much of anything, and his fight before that was a narrow loss where Theodorou had trouble with the athleticism of Thiago Santos. And that brings to mind one of the more frustrating things about Theodorou - he never really feels like he has a ton of momentum because he just doesn't fight that much. Add in the fact that a lot of his fights are on FS1 cards like these or Fight Pass, and Theodorou really does feel like a guy who would've been a star when there were fewer, more focused cards rather than sort of lost in the shuffle here. But anyway, the fight. It's a really well-done piece of matchmaking that could go either way, but I'll favor Theodorou. I figure both guys will generally want to take things into the clinch, and Theodorou just seems to be more powerful there - while Ferreira is skilled on the ground, I'm not really sure how good he'll look if it's Theodorou that's taking the advantage and getting control throughout the fight. On the other hand, I do think if Ferreira can keep this standing, Mutante's newfound mobile kickboxing game is probably too much for Theodorou to keep up with, though again, while Theodorou's not really a knockout artist, that does increase the chance of him finding Ferreira's jaw for a finish. But I do see this mostly taking place in the clinch and on the ground, and I do think Theodorou will mostly be able to control things - while it may not be pretty (outside of Theodorou himself), I'll say the Ontario native wins a clear decision. Sara McMann (10-3 overall, 4-3 UFC, 1-0 Invicta) vs. Gina Mazany (4-0 overall): So, it finally seems like Sara McMann is putting it all together, and reminding us all that sometimes prospects don't all improve on the same timeline. When McMann came into UFC as part of the first wave of female fighters, a lot of people looked at her Olympic silver medal in wrestling and thought she could be the one to neutralize Ronda Rousey's judo game and beat the most unstoppable fighter in the game. And, well, no - McMann was sort of rushed into a fight with Rousey in just her second UFC bout, and got chewed up in pretty quick fashion, falling to a standing knee in just 66 seconds. And from then on, it was just disappointment after disappointment - a wrestling-heavy decision win over Lauren Murphy that nobody really seemed to think McMann actually won, and then two fights that saw McMann's opponent pretty much take her down and beat her up, as Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes both scored big wins over her. So heading into 2016, there were a lot of questions if McMann was really that good - her wrestling game wasn't translating much defensively, her striking was still a work in progress, and she just generally didn't seem like a fighter you could rely on to gut through for a win. But the past year has seen McMann's game surprisingly click - her win over Jessica Eye wasn't a scintillating affair, but saw her neutralize a dangerous opponent, and then she just looked excellent against Alexis Davis this past December; McMann's striking game was suddenly on point, and when she needed to, she went to the ground with a talented submission expert and wound up getting the tap herself, clamping an excellent arm triangle onto Davis. So McMann suddenly has a ton of momentum, and surprisingly seems to be a contender once again, just when it seemed like she was a lost cause for good. Initially, this was supposed to be a matchup against fellow veteran wrestler Liz Carmouche, which would've been interesting, but with Carmouche out, UFC somewhat surprisingly found Alaska's Gina Mazany to step in against McMann. Mazany wasn't really on anyone's radar, as her sole high-level exposure was getting destroyed by Julianna Pena while trying to get into the house on TUF, during the Rousey/Tate season. That was in 2013, and Mazany's only had one fight since then, a win on an Alaskan regional over a fairly overmatched opponent. In that fight, Mazany just looked like a trained athlete in taking her opponent down, getting quickly to the mount, and then winning via ground-and-pound, and having watched a surprising amount of Alaskan MMA, just being athletic and trained by a decent camp (in Mazany's case, Xtreme Couture in Vegas) puts you ahead of pretty much everyone else. This is a ridiculously tough ask for Mazany - hell, she's only fought four times since her MMA debut all the way back in 2008 - and given that McMann looks as good as she ever has, she's probably going to destroy the newcomer. Mazany may be tough enough to just survive getting taken down and mauled for three rounds, but I'll call for this to be over with merciful quickness, and for McMann to score the first-round submission. Paul Felder (12-3 overall, 4-3 UFC) vs. Alessandro Ricci (10-4 overall, 0-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): UFC has no idea what the hell they're doing with Paul Felder, basically. The Philly native had a solid debut against Jason Saggo, and then absolutely styled out on Danny Castillo, finishing him with a spinning back fist, and that was enough for UFC brass to decide to push Felder in way over his head. And while fights with Edson Barboza and Ross Pearson were fun, they also didn't really do Felder any favors, as he lost two straight and was facing the cut line in pretty short order. And so UFC continued to yo-yo him around - fights against Daron Cruickshank and Josh Burkman, both Felder wins, were a solid progression for Felder, but then UFC rushed him against a top fifteen opponent once again, and Francisco Trinaldo pretty much split his eyebrow open for an injury stoppage. And while this fight just sort of happened since both men's opponents got hurt, UFC is zig-zagging wildly with Felder's opposition once again, heading to the bottom of the card to face Alessandro Ricci. Ontario's Ricci made his late-notice UFC debut in August, and while he's ostensibly a muay thai expert, Ricci didn't really get the chance to show any of that, as Jeremy Kennedy more or less held him against the fence and kept him under control for fifteen straight minutes. On the plus side, this should be pretty close to a pure striking match, so if Ricci does in fact have striking chops, this is a fight where he'll get to show it off. But on the downside, this is also a ridiculous step up in competition from fight to fight. I'll give Ricci the benefit of the doubt and say he hangs in there for all three rounds, and this should be pretty fun, but this seems like it should be a pretty clear Felder win. Santiago Ponzinibbio (23-3 overall, 5-2 UFC) vs. Nordine Taleb (12-3 overall, 4-1 UFC, 2-1 Bellator): Santiago Ponzinibbio is pretty great. The Argentinian started out as a bit of a curio, a TUF: Brazil standout with a funny name, but he's turned out to be a pretty great addition to the welterweight roster, a high-volume knockout artist who's started racking up the wins. 2016 saw Ponzinibbio become the first man to stop Court McGee via TKO, then follow that up with a fun beating of Zak Cummings, and now Ponzinibbio's become a guy where those in the know perk up whenever they hear that he's fighting. Ponzinibbio might be able to win over some hearts and minds here in Canada with a win over Quebec's Nordine Taleb - based off some of the matchmaking UFC has tried to do with Taleb lately, it seems like they consider him an action fighter, but while he's not quite that, he's still a solid welterweight entrant himself. Taleb is a fairly technical, meat-and-potatoes boxer/wrestler - he's big for the division, but as a tradeoff, he's glacially slow, though Taleb more often than know just knows what he's doing and is able to handle his foes. His most recent fight was his most fun one to date, as Erick Silva got over-aggressive and sort of brought Taleb out of his shell, and Taleb eventually wound up getting his biggest win to date, catching a kick and then putting Silva's lights out with a perfect punch. I just wondering if that's a bit of false advertising, though, since as mentioned before, UFC seems to subsequently be trying to match Taleb up with action fighters in hopes of sparking up a brawl. I favor Ponzinibbio here, though I think the current betting odds that have him as a three-to-one favorite are a bit much - Ponzinibbio's not much of a wrestler, so I could easily see a boring fight where Taleb is able to take Ponzinibbio down and use his size to neutralize him for three rounds. But I think Ponzinibbio's speed and combination punching will be too much for the Quebecois, and I see him slowly wearing down Taleb before scoring a knockout or TKO stoppage sometime in the second round. Carla Esparza (11-3 overall, 2-1 UFC, 3-0 Invicta, 0-2 Bellator) vs. Randa Markos (6-4 overall, 2-3 UFC): This fight shows that sometimes, timing can be everything, as there was a point where I was hoping this fight would be made, and now that it's here, my interest is, well, not so much. UFC decided to crown an inaugural strawweight champion via a TUF season back in 2014, and Esparza and Markos were probably the two standouts; Esparza was the reigning Invicta champion and favorite to win the whole thing, and Markos was the breakout star of the whole thing, a relatively unknown fighter out of Canada who had an impressive backstory as an Iraqi refugee and came out of nowhere to score wins over Felice Herrig and Tecia Torres. And Esparza/Markos seemed to be the fight the whole season was building towards - Markos was portrayed as the obvious rooting interesting for the show, while Esparza led a pack of "mean girls" that constantly tormented her. Add in the post-show segments and interviews where the two would just throw catty shade at each other, and for a while, a fight between the two seemed like the biggest fight UFC could make at strawweight. But it didn't work out - Esparza did indeed pretty much run through the competition en route to becoming the first strawweight champ, but Markos lost her first post-TUF fight in a close split decision against Jessica Penne. After that, Joanna Jedrzejczyk suddenly burst onto the scene herself to annihilate Esparza and put her on a shelf for a year, and by that point, the moment had more or less passed. And, frankly, the ensuing two years or so haven't been particularly kind to either fighter. Esparza's struggles have mostly been outside the cage - she had that long injury layoff, and then after returning with a flat win over Juliana Lima, she apparently just had trouble getting booked - she'd openly grouse at not being able to get a fight on social media, and then apparently had to sell the motorcycle she won on TUF just to make ends meet in the interim. Meanwhile, Markos's career has just gone off the rails...and crashed...and now it's on fire, and the rails are also on fire, and everything is on fire. After a solid win over Aisling Daly, Markos moved to Tristar for one fight against Karolina Kowalkiewicz, and then left because they were making her "too passive" of a fighter, in her mind. So instead she trains in Michigan, with a team led by Daron Cruickshank, and...the results have not been great. Funnily enough, she actually looked really passive in a decision win over Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger, which was a sloppy fight that really did neither woman any favors, and then a subsequent fight against Cortney Casey just saw Markos continue to look kind of aimless, eventually going for a head-and-arm throw and leaving herself open enough in the aftermath that Casey was eventually able to work for an armbar win. Markos badly needs to figure things out, and putting her against someone as good as Esparza seems kind of cruel, frankly. Esparza's quite underrated - between her portrayal on TUF, the way she was annihilated by Jedrzejczyk, and the long layoffs between fights, people just seem to forget that she's an excellent strawweight, and probably the best wrestler in the division, with a knack for chaining together all sorts of takedowns while dragging her opponent to the floor. And given that that's theoretically Markos's wheelhouse, that only makes the fight even more difficult for the Canadian - it's not even a case where she's overmatched but has a good style matchup. Unless fighting Esparza suddenly awakens the old Markos or something, this seems like a one-sided win for Esparza all the way - I'll give Markos credit and say she hangs on for a decision, but a stoppage wouldn't surprise me. Reginaldo Vieira (13-4 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Aiemann Zahabi (6-0 overall): Aiemann Zahabi's a pretty interesting prospect - because of his talent, yes, but also because of his last name, as he's the younger brother of Tristar coach Firas Zahabi, GSP's main man and one of the brightest minds in the game. But as far as Aiemann goes, his record to date is a mixed bag - unfortunately, he's been relatively inactive and has faces a relatively weak level of competition. But on the plus side, Zahabi's done exactly what you'd want a top prospect to do, finishing all six of his opponents within the first round, all in fairly one-sided fashion. So it's hard to tell what to make of Zahabi - the history of high-level MMA is filled with guys who destroyed some cans on the way up and just flamed out as soon as they faced actual competition, but thankfully UFC has given Zahabi a bit of a softball to see where he's at in his UFC debut. Reginaldo Vieira was an unlikely winner of TUF: Brazil season four - for one thing, he probably didn't deserve to win the final, a narrow split decision win over Dileno Lopes. Vieira was considered a non-prospect before he won the show, and that's pretty much held true - he's a tough, experienced guy, and a bit of a solid trashy grappler, but his lone post-TUF fight saw him get tapped out by Marco Beltran, and when you're getting beaten at your own game by Marco Beltran, that's probably a sign you're not long for UFC. Vieira could easily win here - even with me being so down on him, he's still by far the best, most experienced guy that Zahabi has ever faced, and we have no idea what Zahabi's game looks like past the first round or if he can't get the finish. But I'll say Zahabi gets into some early trouble, adjusts (particularly since he's the brother of one of the best gameplanners in the sport), and gets a second-round knockout. Jack Marshman (21-5 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Thiago Santos (13-5 overall, 5-4 UFC): A really fun middleweight bout here, as it seems like UFC matchmakers are embracing Thiago Santos's destiny as a mid-tier action fighter. Santos has had a weird run - brought in essentially as cannon fodder to lose to Cezar Ferreira on late notice, Santos shockingly rebounded by knocking out top middleweight prospect Ronny Markes, and then suddenly became a thing. Santos was ridiculously raw when he came into UFC, enough so that it didn't look like he was going to make anything of his athleticism before he got himself cut, but after a rocky beginning, Santos strung together four straight wins, three via brutal knockout, and actually became a ranked fighter. But the latter stages of 2016 saw Santos pretty much lose all his momentum - a loss to Gegard Mousasi was nothing to be ashamed of, but Santos followed that up by getting tapped out by Eric Spicely in one of the biggest upsets of the year. In a weird bit of symmetry, it was sort of a similar situation as the win that got Santos on the map, as the theoretical cannon fodder instead wound up getting a first-round finish. Santos looks to rebound against Jack Marshman, the first Welshman to be signed by UFC (although countryman Brett Johns beat him into the cage), who's coming off an impressive UFC debut win over Magnus Cedenblad. That fight pretty much showed off all of Marshman's pros and cons - Cedenblad outwrestled him at will, showing Marshman's lack of grappling, but Marshman got the comeback KO and showed off that he's a fun as hell blood-and-guts brawler, who'll gladly walk through danger for a chance to hit his opponent in the face. Thankfully, Santos still has basically no grappling, so this should be a really fun stand-up fight for as long as it lasts. And it's a hard one to call - Santos's offense can just be ridiculously violent, particularly his kicks, but Marshman does seem like the kind of guy who'll be punching Santos in the face before he can try to get anything off. But that said, I still trust in Santos's athleticism and power, and I think he'll find the knockout in, say, the second round, after some fun back-and-forth action. Ryan Janes (9-1 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Gerald Meerschaert (25-8 overall, 1-0 UFC): Saying they were "standouts" is probably a bit strong, but this fight puts together two guys who got big UFC debut wins on the Albany card this past December after long waits to get there. Gerald Meerschaert's wait was the more typical one - after about nine years just taking fights across the country (and beating Sam Alvey in the process), the longtime Midwestern vet got the call as a late injury replacement, and handled raw prospect Joe Gigliotti pretty easily, fighting calm and taking what was given to him before getting an early submission win. On the other hand, Janes's path to the Octagon was a bit weirder. The Canadian had your typical path to getting signed, winning fights in your typical Canadian promotions, but it took him three tries to make it to the cage. Janes was first slated to debut on the Vancouver card in August, but his opponent, Adam Hunter, got pulled on about a day's notice after failing a drug test. So Janes was then slated to fight Dongi Yang on the card in Manila this past October...until that card got entirely scrapped. So Janes finally made his debut in Albany, and made it count, getting a decision win over Keith Berish. Despite being advertised as a submission expert, Janes actually depended on some solid striking to get the win, although it still wasn't all that pretty - Janes is technically fine, but just looks sort of stiff and mechanical, standing completely upright and leaving himself open to getting annihilated against someone who can connect with his chin. I'm not sure Meerschaert is that guy, but he should have more than enough well-rounded experience to handle whatever Janes throws his way. I'm not sure it'll be a pretty fight, but I just like Meerschaert to be better more or less everywhere and then coast his way to a decision, though a finish is certainly possible.

[thesportssoundoff]

The Preview: UFC on Fox from Colorado

Joey 

Jan 23rd, 2017

The  UFC's first foray (HA!) on Fox for 2017 is a pretty solid affair all things considered. We're beginning to creep our way out of the winter bad show doldrums (although the Canada card ain't too pretty) with the next two cards being pretty damn solid all things considered and UFC 208 quickly falling into the "So hated it's now underrated" department. Slowly but surely we're emerging from the drek. Just gotta get by that Canadian card, fellas. Compared to the last two Fox cards in January (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_on_Fox:_Johnson_vs._Bader) and (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_on_Fox:_Gustafsson_vs._Johnson), I'd say this one really holds up pretty well. There's a lot of meaningful stuff on the main card and there's JUST enough meaningful stuff on the prelim slate to not feel like you're wasting your time there either. The headliner is a battle at bantamweight between Julianna Pena and Valentina Shevchenko with the winner almost certainly getting a title shot in the spring or summer time. The co-main event is a pretty damn awesome fight between two guys who are riding hot streaks at 170 lbs with Donald Cerrone fighting Jorge Masvidal. There's a super big heavyweight fight featuring the top prospect and an aging HW hero and the opener is a fucking war and a half with Alex Caceres taking on Jason Knight. Let's get to it then!

Fights: 12

Debuts: 5 (Jordan Johnson, Eric Shelton, Alejandre Pantoja, Bobby Nash and Jeremy Kimball)

Fight Changes/injury cancellations: 3 (Hector Lombard vs Brad Tavares cancelled due to injuries, John Phillips out/Jeremy Kimball in, Yancy Medeiros out/Bobby Nash in)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 6 (BJ Penn, Yair Rodriguez, Joe Lauzon, Marcin Held, Court McGee and John Moraga)

Fighters On Losing Streaks: 2 (Andrei Arlovski, Jason Gonzalez)

Fighters On Winning Streaks: 6 (Jorge Masvidal, Andrei Arlovski, Donald Cerrone, Valentina Shevchenko, Nate Marquardt and Alex Caceres)

Stat Monitor for 2017:

Debuting Fighters (Current number: 0-0)- Jordan Johnson, Eric Shelton, Alejandre Pantoja, Bobby Nash and Jeremy Kimball

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 2-2)- Bobby Nash, Jordan Johnson and Jeremy Kimball

Second Fight (Current number: 1-1)- JC Cottrell

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

-So right away, we have to acknowledge this main event. Shevchenko vs Pena, barring something unforeseen, will be a #1 contender fight given the fact that off the top of my head, these two are the only ones streaking currently in the division. Both represent interesting stylistic challenges for Amanda Nunes and there's stories built in about of that layer. For Shevchenko, she fought Nunes before and lost a very open ended 29-28 decision. Open ended meaning that there's doubt as to whether or not Nunes would've won had the fight been a five round affair. Julianna Pena seems to have a better grasp on fight promotion, even if she annoys plenty of people, and so you'd imagine if this turns into a trash talking feud, Pena would be the better fit. It doesn't make sense to take Nunes from headlining two big PPVs (even if it was as the B-side twice) and then ask her to be on Fox or co-main event a PPV. From a business standpoint, it's a matter of "who should the UFC want to win?" and I'm not quite sure there's a clear answer here just yet.

-This fight is a big challenge for Shevchenko primarily. Julianna Pena for the most part has a style that negates the strengths of her opponents, often turning fights into bully clinch fighting and squirrely exchanges on the mat. Pena has a skill set that probably works regardless of opponent because it's not predicated on anything but her own strengths. Shevchenko's two biggest UFC performances have seen her start slow but build up momentum as she figures out her own path to victory. Against Holly Holm, the five round format allowed her to make adjustments long term that paid off in the end en route to a big decision win. Vs Nunes, she never got in gear until the third round and that was primarily due to how physical Nunes is.

-What will the legacy of Jorge Masvidal be if he wins vs Donald Cerrone? Masvidal theoretically could be riding into this fight on a ridiculous nine fight winning streak across two weight classes. Masvidal's been a victim of some rough judging but also a victim of his own malaise in fights, taking his foot off the gas and coasting to the judges en route to a "WTF happened?" split decision loss. He won't be afforded that luxury here vs Cerrone.

-Assuming Cerrone wins, what would be next? Give in to the assumption that Maia has a guaranteed title shot waiting for him so Woodley/Thompson winner and Maia are both out. What else can Cerrone do? Does Robbie Lawler make sense?

-THREE major challenges for Francis Ngannou on this card. The first is the obvious acknowledgment of the competition jump here. Arlovski is so far and away the best opponent Ngannou  has ever faced that it's almost laughable to try and compare him to anybody on his resume. That said Arlovski's not the same guy he was in his prime so you can sort of kind of negate that. The second  is the altitude in Denver which makes cowards of many a men. Ngannou's not a guy who fights like he's paid by the round either but he's also not somebody who rushes. For a young fighter he's very patient so while the altitude is seriously something to watch, I'm not TOO too concerned I suppose. Lastly, Greg Jackson. Both Anthony Hamilton and Francis Ngannou train with Greg Jackson which is going to represent an interesting quandry I suppose.  Jackson's going to have trained twice for Francis Ngannou with Hamilton basically acting as a test run for Arlovski. Did he learn anything new during Ngannou vs Hamilton?

-Let's say Ngannou breezes through Arlovski. Just runs right through him. When do we start the title talk?

-There's been some scuttlebutt about Aljamain Sterling vs Rafael Assuncao being neither the prelim main event nor the opening fight on the main card. I'd like to offer, I suppose, a few explanations:

1- This fight has been rebooked twice now. Your best ability sometimes is availability and it could be argued or reasoned that the UFC has zero reason to trust either Rafa or Aljamain to make it to a main card fight or a prelim headliner capacity. Injury prone guys get hurt a lot so it's harder to feel like you can commit to them in higher profile engagements.  You can kind of count on Sam Alvey and Nate Marquardt to make it to their commitments.

2- Knight vs Caceres is going to be wild and wacky fun while Sterling vs Assuncao  is for the purists, as one might say.

3- Jason Knight is a guy the UFC thinks has star potential so they're giving him the big push.

-Nate Marquardt's recent wins have me kind of sort of excited. Allow me to explain before y'all bury me under my own words.  Marquardt's chin is a seriously broken one from years of fighting elite competition. Having said that, his hand speed, technique and ground game all looked pretty damn solid vs Tamdan McCrory and he removed CB Dollaway from consciousness before that in a really impressive come from behind win. Sam Alvey is going to really test what Nate has left----but I feel like it's worth pointing out that in the UFC, Alvey recently has only lost to dudes like Elias Theodorou and Derek Brunson. I'm not saying I'm all in on Nate's comeback yet BUT I'm willing to be convinced if he can get by Alvey who is all kinds of wrong for him at this point in his career.

-Of the fights on this prelim slate that I'm most into, Alessio Di Chirico vs Eric Spicely is the one I'm really excited to see. Italy's got a few good middleweight prospects and Di Chirico is one of them; a whirling dervish of offense on the feet with decent-ish grappling chops. Spicely has the ability to shut those guys down as he did vs Thiago Marreta. Big challenge here for Di Chirico.

-We've talked a bit about how the TUF flyweight season is already a bit of a hit given how Tim Elliott vs Mighty Mouse was a great fight and Brandon Moreno has rejuvenated 125 lbs. Alexandre Pantoja vs Eric Shelton is buried way down onto the card but it's a really great fight with two guys who could have long term futures at flyweight in the UFC.

-Li Jingliang fight week! The Leech is getting ready to claim another foe.

-Welcome to the UFC, Jordan Johnson! Your opponent is Henrique da Silva who we all kind of expect to be in the top 15 eventually and you're taking the fight on super short notice. Good luck, dude!

Must Wins:

Julianna Pena

Pena's fighting style and her attitude are not everybody's cup of tea but she has something unique at bantamweight. She can sell a fight, sell herself and she's got the ability to quite possibly be champion. Cringe if you like but seriously, she CAN beat Amanda Nunes. It's not like Nunes hasn't lost time and time again to hyperactive grapple first ground and pound artists before. Shevchenko vs Nunes II would be a darned good fight but Pena vs Nunes might be a bigger fight.

Donald Cerrone

The narrative on Cerrone continues to be and will continue to be a story where every "big fight" he loses, we'll have to hear about how he chokes. Jorge Masvidal is a fighter he should beat in a co-main event slot on big Fox.  Big fight opportunity for Cerrone to shut some people up.

Jason Knight

I was torn between Ngannou and Jason Knight here. I went with Knight because even IF Ngannou loses to Arlovski, it's heavyweight and heavyweights are always one win away from relevancy. Jason Knight fights in a much tougher weight class where you need to string together like four good performances in a row to get an eyebrow raise.

Five Underlying Themes:

1- Whether the winner of the main event can put on a performance worthy of getting people excited about a potential PPV headliner vs Nunes.

2- Whether or not the altitude turns what should be a very good card into a very sloppy card.

3- The on-again/off-again love affair between the UFC and Donald Cerrone as Jorge Masvidal comes to ruin the show.

4- How hard they push Francis Ngannou.

5- If we see more complaining than usual about the commentary with Jon Anik leading the charge on big Fox.

Predicting (Bonus) Winners!

Current record: 8-4

Julianna Pena Donald Cerrone Andrei Arlovski Jason Knight Nate Marquardt Aljamain Sterling Li Jingliang Luiz Henrique da Silva Alessio Di Chirico Jason Gonzalez Marcos Rogerio De Lima Eric Shelton

FOTN: Donald Cerrone vs Jorge Masvidal POTN: Aljamain Sterling and Andrei Arlovski

[thesportssoundoff]

“A Very Good Card In A Very Divisive World” UFC 209 Preview

Joey

Feb 27th, 2017

Well well! It's time to do one of these deals, eh? Time and general malaise on MMA has prevented me from really writing one of these out but it's well overdue now. The UFC returns to Las Vegas and it's got a really, really solid showcase for us with a really good PPV card, a decent prelim slot and some great FP prelims to occupy our time on a Saturday night. I'll be going from combine footage to UFC 209 on a string so I'll be all sport'd up. The main card is anchored by two tremendous fights for championships. Sorta. The main event is a rematch of a FOTYC for 2016 when Tyron Woodley defends his championship vs Stephen Thompson. The co-main event is the fight of the year for me thus far as undefeated Russian lightweight phenom Khabib Nurmagomedov takes on the real funkmaster of the UFC in Tony Ferguson for the interim lightweight championship. If Conor McGregor is bullshitting us, again, then it might as well be the real championship. The main card features a wealth of veterans and "names" like Rashad Evans, Mark Hunt and Alistair Overeem. OH! and Lando Vannata is back fighting a scary powerful stand up specialist in David Teymur. That fight's going to be fucking cool. There's a few heavyweight scraps on the FS1 slate plus Mirsad Bektic is back! Anyways let's get our numbers right real quick:

Fights: 12

Debuts: 3 (Daniel Spitz, Cynthia Calvillo, Andre Soukhamathath)

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 3 (Todd Duffee out, Daniel Spitz in/Igor Pokrajac out, Gadzhimurad Antigulov in/Gadzhimurad Antigulov vs Ed Herman cancelled)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 7 (Tony Ferguson, Wonderboy, Tyron Woodley, Mark Hunt, Alistair Overeem, Rashad Evans and Lando Vannata)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 2 (Albert Morales and Rashad Evans)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 8 (Khabib Nurmagomedov, Tony Ferguson, Dan Kelly, David Teymur, Mirsad Bektic, Darren Elkins, Luis Henrique and Luke Sanders)

Stat Monitor for 2017:

Debuting Fighters (Current number: 6-4)- Daniel Spitz, Cynthia Cavillo, Andre Soukhamthath

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 5-6)- Daniel Spitz

Second Fight (Current number: 3-8)- Mark Godbeer, Luke Sanders (Tyson Pedro and Paul Craig also but they're fighting so who knows)

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- I suppose we need to address the elephant in the room, primarily on ticket sales being poor thus far. Now we've been here before; ticket sales don't equal PPV sales so who knows what this event will do with the main revenue getter. NOW having said that, I'm reminded of Jim Cornette's "venue that needed a show, not a show that needed a venue" line about Royal Rumble 1997. Vegas is a finicky market and we've seen big shows struggle to sell tickets there (UFC 182 and 183 struggled to move tickets) and if you don't have a BIG main event, you're sort of going to lose going there. They booked a venue needing a show and while UFC 209 is an amazing card, it''s not a "Vegas" card. Now where would this show do better numbers? With New York and Texas out of the equation, you're kind of stuck finding the right sort of venue for two big title fights. Wonderboy is from South Carolina and Woodley is from Missouri so maybe something southern-y would work although you leave out Tony and Khabib as well. I wonder if Florida would've been a good fit for a PPV or even maybe making a return to Atlanta. Whatever the case, ticket sales either will or they won't fix themselves.

2- This main card really does have something for everybody. Wonderboy/Woodey 1 was really great and heavy on drama, the trashtalk between Khabib and Tony Ferugson has only amplified that this is a great fucking fight for a title that may or may not exist nor matter, Overeem/Hunt and Teymur/Vannata are for those of you who love striking and if granddads fighting is your game then Rashad Evans/Dan Kelly should be all the rage. The prelims have some fantastical fights with divisional relevance too, namely Darren Elkins vs Mirsad Bektic at 145 lbs and Marcin Tybura vs Luiz Henrique.

3- So the main event is hard to predict because rematches more often than not don't follow the tone of their predecessors. The first fight between Woodley/Thompson was almost all striking outside of the Woodley dominant rounds (1 and 4) where he found a way to get the fight to the ground. The first round was off a caught kick and the fourth was off an insanely tight looking guillo that Thompson somehow survived. The rest of the fight was a Tyron Woodley fight with bits of a Wonderboy Thompson fight mixed in. Woodley lived against the fence, picking his moments for big power shots while Thompson was happy to point box and take advantage of Woodley's lulls. So what can change in the rematch? I suppose Woodley can try for more takedowns and Wonderboy can try to kick more. Otherwise the fight will look the same, the question being whether we'll get more rounds like 1 and 4 or more rounds like 2, 3 and 5. I 'unno.

4- Fair to say Thompson vs GSP would never happen but what about Woodley vs GSP? If money is the goal (and it is), I wonder if Nick OR Nate get a call from Dana about fighting the winner.

5- The Khabib vs Tony Ferg fight is SUCH a tough one to call. Both are really great wrestlers in unconventional ways. It's hard to imagine a single fighter as strong as Khabib at 155 lbs who can wrestle the way he does and at the pace he does. Tony Ferguson's wrestling is slippery, unorthodox and his submission game may be the best Khabib has faced. Ferguson was taken down at will vs Danny Castillo but that may have been primarily due to his desire to try and work for submissions. That's not going to work vs Khabib who if he takes Ferguson down will probably notlet him up. In Ferguson's favor, he's fought at altitude for five rounds before with zero let up and Khabib's striking is subpar at best even if he packs serious power. This fight is going to be awesome.

6- LET'S SAY for the sake of argument McGregor ducks the winner of this fight between Tony and Khabib. Who is next? Edson Barboza if he beats Beneil Dariush?  Poirier/Alvarez winner? God don't tell me Michael Chiesa!

7- Will Mark Hunt get a live mic if he wins? I'm betting he doesn't.

8- Are we all  overlooking David Teymur? Sweden is kind of a big market for MMA and Teymur, a kickboxer who has taken to MMA very quickly, is super powerful in his hands and feet and won't be at a serious athleticism disadvantage vs Lando. What's more, he went through TUF which exposed him to a wide variety of fighters and styles. I'm not sure if Teymur wins but given how Lando is quickly on the path to superstardom, it feels like its the UFC's luck for him to drop the ball.

9- How did Rashad Evans get cleared? Will he even make weight for this fight?

10- Nice to see Luke Sanders back. For those who  forgot, Sanders stepped up on like two weeks notice to submit Maximo Blanco in a round. Then he disappeared! He pulled a ghost to steal a phrase. Sanders is a really strong talented sturdy bantamweight but Iuri Alcantara only loses to the elites of the world (even Frankie Saenz is pretty stout) so this is a fine test for Luke.

11- We bemoan the lack of genuine 205ers but the UFC's giving us two really good young fighters in Tyson Pedro and Paul Craig. Both are under 30, coming off big wins and in the case of Pedro, they may be a lot of upside in that package. I'm excited to see that fight and IMO it's main card worthy.

12- If I told you Darren Elkins has had 16 UFC fights and he just finished 1 of those fights, would you be surprised?

Must Wins:

1- Tyron Woodley.

Well duh. Remove the title fight aspect from it and Woodley's STILL got the most pressure on him. Woodley is a guy who talks a lot about social justice and trying to do the right thing in a rather muddled MMA  scene and social climate. His words will have power regardless of whether he's champion or not. For Woodley though, his social impact and his big money fights can only come through with a win in a main event.

2- Tony Ferguson

"El Cucuy" doesn't have an in to the road to UFC stardom. He doesn't have a big Russian fanbase that can be mobilized to try and garner support. He isn't from some big city where the UFC can go and run shows based around him. He's not a talker either. Tony's just a tremendous fighter who puts on top notch performances and finishes fights. That has never meant less than it does now. Ferguson beating Khabib, given the legend of Nurmagomedov and his standing in the company, would basically catapult him into superstardom. If such a concept exists.

3- Rashad Evans

The UFC did Rashad a solid by giving him a fighter who for the most part isn't going to trouble him a whole bunch. While BJ Penn got Yair and Arlovski got Ngannou, the UFC is giving Rashad a very good wrestler/judoka with okay-ish power and okay-ish submission skills. It's Rashad's first fight at 185 lbs and it's a sensible test to see what he still offers to the company and what he offers at a new weight class.

Five Underlying Themes:

1- How they dance around the rather obvious concern that Conor McGregor might not even defend his 155 lb title while promoting an interim title.

2- If the three man booth, Anik, DC and Rogan, can improve from a decent debut. Primarily whether or not Rogan and DC improve their chemistry.

3- Will the UFC suffer its second decision heavy PPV in a row?

4- Is Lando Vannata still on his way up the rankings as a star?

5- The continued remaking of the HW division with three fights including a really good one as the prelim headliner.

Predicting (Bonus) Winners!

Current record: 12-12 (Missed on: Houston card, UFC 208, the Canada card. Went 4-8 on the last show I did, UFC on Fox)

Tyron Woodley Tony Ferguson Rashad Evans Lando Vannata Mark Hunt Marcin Tybura Mirsad Bektic Iuri Alcantara Mark Godbeer Paul Craig Amanda Cooper Albert Morales

[writingsubmissions]

UFC on Fox 23 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *It wasn't much on paper, but in practice, UFC's offering on FS1 over MLK weekend wound up being perfectly fine, even though the ending was pretty much a total bummer. As a lot of people expected, Yair Rodriguez pretty much styled on B.J. Penn before becoming the first man (at least in UFC) to knock him down, eventually landing a ridiculous amount of blows on the ground against the Hawaiian legend before it got stopped, and leaving all of us wondering exactly what the hell we're doing here. The weird part is, in some ways Penn actually looked better than expected, at least technically - he had some brief early success clinching Rodriguez up, and landed a few solid strikes at one point based around his jab, but he just looked so old physically that the optics were absolutely awful, particularly once Rodriguez figured things out and was basically hitting Penn at will. It's kind of amazing looking back that Penn was once UFC's welterweight champion, given how small he looked here - nowadays, his natural weight class may be bantamweight, let alone featherweight. But anyway, Penn looked old even in his last fight two-plus years ago, so this was just...really, really bad. Anyway, who knows where we go from here - Rodriguez is now among the ranks of fringe contenders at featherweight, even though it's still unclear exactly how good he is - he's obviously talented and probably a top ten fighter or so at worst, but one does get the sense that there's a level where his dynamic but not particularly strategic style gets figured out and stifled. Though, on the other hand, there are guys like Anthony Pettis who can ride that all the way to a championship reign before it happens, so maybe Rodriguez is just in that class of fighter. And as for Penn, he should probably hang it up, moreso now than ever, but this is also the third or fourth straight fight of his where people have been saying that. *And a bunch of other fights happened, nothing too amazing, but also nothing too bad. Going through the rest of the main card, the biggest thing about the co-main was that two of the three judges seemed to be the only people in the building who thought Joe Lauzon beat Marcin Held, and this included Lauzon, who immediately started shaking his head after the decision was read for him and used his post-fight interview to make clear that he lost the fight. It was a bit of an ugly one, as after Lauzon had some success early, Held mostly just out-wrestled him and neutralized everything he did - on the one hand, Held didn't really do much with a lot of the advantageous positions he had, but on the other hand, Lauzon also didn't really do enough to win the fight either. Ben Saunders won a perfectly fine fight that could've gone either way that there's not much to say about, and I suppose the biggest win on the main card went to Sergio Pettis, who solidly won a fight over John Moraga and suddenly finds himself as sort of a contender. Sergio's sort of taken the complete opposite path of his brother Anthony - while Anthony burst onto the scene as a dynamic phenom, Sergio went through some struggles early in his UFC career and got kind of written off before putting together a really steady, well-rounded game and racking up decision win after decision win. So Pettis is now one of the best rising young fighters at flyweight, but unfortunately in a division with a champ that's currently cleaning house, that basically makes me worry that UFC doesn't rush Pettis into a title fight just for a lack of other available options. *As far as the prelims go, well, we already have 2017 submission of the year pretty much wrapped up, as Aleksei Oleinik hit one of the weirder ones in UFC history, an Ezekiel choke on Viktor Pesta while being fully mounted. On the one hand, Pesta probably should've seen it coming, as Oleinik already has close to double-digit wins via Ezekiel choke in his long career, but on the other hand, it's a strange choke that you don't really see often, and I don't think anyone expected it, least of all Pesta. As far as other standout performances, BJJ stud Augusto "Tanquinho" Mendes made good on his blue-chip prospect status, getting a narrow win over Frankie Saenz in a fight that looked like it was being set up for a Saenz victory. Although he's lost three straight, Saenz is a good fighter, so hopefully they hang onto him, especially since this was the best fight of the night. When it comes to other notable stuff, heavyweight Walt Harris looked good in picking apart fellow prospect Chase Sherman, Nina Ansaroff finally got her first UFC win with a one-sided performance over Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger, and Devin Powell continued the curse of Dana White's reality show, "Lookin' For A Fight", losing a one-sided decision to fellow debuting fighter Drakkar Klose. It's a funny one, that, particularly since it's Klose that's the projectable athlete and fits much more in the mold of who Dana White has personally signed, rather than Powell, a reedy brawler-slash-scrambler. *Well, Conor McGregor against Floyd Mayweather has progressed from "completely not a thing" to "almost completely not a thing," per a bunch of people. I'm assuming this basically has to do with WME-IMG looking at pay-per-view numbers for 2016, realizing that their biggest pay-per-view year ever was built on the backs of McGregor, Ronda Rousey, and possibly Brock Lesnar, and then realizing two of those people are gone and panicking about how to top it. The big thing a few weeks back was Dana White doing a radio appearance and offering Mayweather and McGregor $25 million each for the fight. This was dismissed pretty much immediately, given that it's less than Mayweather's made for a fight in years, and Floyd soon said as much, laughing off White as someone he used to remember carrying his bags. And to make the offer even stupider, $25 million is about twice as much as McGregor has made for a fight in his career, so you're pretty much telling McGregor his market value is double what he was already making, and now he has even more leverage to use that against you. Good work all around. Also, in a side note that should probably just be tagged onto this story, Nate Diaz applied for a boxing license in Nevada and is apparently close to getting it, so who the hell knows what long game the Diaz brothers are trying to play. *Bellator had a show. Tito Ortiz tapped out Chael Sonnen, who looked awful off the gas, in what was Ortiz's final fight, so now Sonnen is damaged goods, even though he'll be able to talk people into watching. I mean, the card did a really good rating, so there's that, but it never feels like Bellator is building momentum towards anything. Paul Daley kneed Brennan Ward's face in, so that was pretty cool, at least. *The Ultimate Fighter is coming back for a twenty-fifth (and perhaps final?) season, and the coaches have been announced - new bantamweight champ Cody Garbrandt and former teammate (and former bantamweight champ himself) T.J. Dillashaw. As long in the tooth as TUF is, these seasons start to live and die more and more based off the feud between the two coaches, and with the bad blood from Dillashaw's departure from Team Alpha Male, and Garbrandt replacing him as the top young fighter in the camp, this should be a good one. The two are slated to fight sometime after the show wraps, which will probably wind up being UFC's big July pay-per-view this year. As for the cast, it's going to consist of former TUF fighters, including some who are on the UFC roster, but none of the names leaked are particularly inspiring - either middle-of-the-road UFC roster guys like Zak Cummings or James Krause, guys who are past their prime like Joe Stevenson, or just fuck-ups there for personality who can't really fight, like the infamous Junie Browning. So...that'll be something. *A whole bunch of news is going on about various camps. First of all, it looks like the Blackzilians camp is pretty much no more after almost a year of rumors - team owner Glenn Robinson was going through issues with his main company filing bankruptcy, and apparently as time went on, this started to affect the camp. So, basically, a lot of the coaches, including striking coach Henri Hooft, and a lot of the team's best fighters, like Rashad Evans, Anthony Johnson, and Kamaru Usman, have all set up shop at Combat Club elsewhere in Florida, which essentially looks like the Blackzilians rebuilt under a new name. Meanwhile, the Blackzilians' main rival, American Top Team, lost one of its own mainstays, as former welterweight champ Robbie Lawler has surprisingly left the camp, where he pretty much revitalized his career, in favor of somewhere to be determined. And in a pretty interesting move, heavyweight Travis Browne has moved from the Glendale Fighting Club to Black House - it's interesting mainly because Browne is the boyfriend of Ronda Rousey, and moved to her team once the two started dating, and given how much of a hard line Rousey keeps when it comes to loyalty, this really does suggest that Rousey is done with Glendale coach Edmond Tarverdyan. On the plus side, at least the I.R.S. no longer considers Tarverdyan a fraud, as he's settled an ongoing case for a reported $160,000. *So the death knell for UFC Fight Pass may have come, as Eric Winter, head of the service, left after eighteen months on the job. Winter was a bit of a coup when he was hired from Yahoo! Sports, and he really did an awesome job with UFC's streaming service, getting the whole website re-designed, making sure a whole bunch of fights got cataloged and uploaded, and often making sure that the service would get one of the better fights on the card, as the "Fight Pass main event" was a landing spot for a lot of really excellent fights. Winter's stepping down to spend more time with his family, and it appears to be his decision, so it's unclear exactly where Fight Pass goes from here - 2017 has already been a bit down, since it looks like we're back to the service just getting the bottom-tier fights for the first two cards of the year, but then again, both of those cards have been so thin that that may not exactly be an indication of anything. *UFC re-booked Jessica Andrade and Angela Hill for the upcoming Fight Night in Houston, and it looks like this may portend an interesting change in UFC's drug testing policy. Basically, Hill, who was cut from UFC in 2015 and then spent 2016 moving up the ranks and becoming Invicta strawweight champion, was tabbed as a late replacement to face Andrade at UFC 207, but wound up falling victim to a quirk in the language of the drug testing policy - basically, anyone who was formerly in the UFC drug testing pool would be subject to a four-month window of testing before being allowed to fight again. This was to prevent guys from basically fake retiring, juicing up, and then suddenly returning, though, the rule only really initially came to light when UFC waived it to sign Brock Lesnar, who kind of wound up doing exactly that. Anyway, UFC I guess finally realized they could set the rules here and waived the rest of the four months for Hill, and the statement in which they did so included a note that apparently UFC and USADA are working to change this policy, so that fighters who are cut involuntarily from UFC aren't subject to these waiting periods, which would also make previous UFC fighters available once again as late-notice replacements. Good, smart stuff. *And now just a bunch of notes to wrap things up. UFC is currently off Russian TV, which is a bit odd as the company is seemingly set to expand into Russia as much as they can - basically, UFC I guess has left negotiating up to a third party who is demanding a much bigger contract from their Russian TV partner, and said network is balking. This all sort of feels like UFC's attempt to expand into China, which was scuttled as a bit of a disaster after a failure to understand the complex national politics going on. Invicta held another show - a good one as always - headlined by Megan Anderson beating Charmaine Tweet to become interim featherweight champion, basically the top true 145er out there with Cris Cyborg dealing with drug test issues. Anderson then called out the Holm/de Randamie winner, and given that the Australian prospect has marketable good looks and can beat the piss out of people, we should see her in UFC sooner rather than later. World Series of Fighting postponed their next show to a date a few weeks later, suggesting things aren't that great at everyone's favorite byzantine MMA pyramid scheme, and French prospect Tom Duquesnoy finally signed with UFC. Duquesnoy's topped prospect lists for years, and he's currently both the bantamweight and featherweight champion of BAMMA, one of the top promotions in Britain. Duquesnoy's reportedly had an offer on the table for years, but was just waiting until he felt ready to make a run in UFC, and even though he's just 23, apparently that time is now - I look forward to seeing what he can do. ------ BOOKINGS: *There's some actual pretty big stuff that's been announced, but let's do the usual run-through chronologically. First, as mentioned above, the Super Bowl weekend show in Houston added a fight between strawweight contenders Jessica Andrade and Angela Hill in a fight where Andrade will pretty much lock up a title fight if she wins. It'll be interesting to see what happens if Hill takes it, though - UFC just sort of threw her to the wolves as a 1-0 kickboxer in her first UFC stint, but she's improved greatly since then, and this would be a hell of a statement in a return. Plus with a few injuries on the card, some undercard fights got changed - with Sheldon Westcott out, Niko Price comes back from his debut win over Brandon Thatch to fight Alex Morono, Volkan Oezdemir will become the first Swiss fighter in UFC history when he steps in as a replacement against Ovince St. Preux, and with Evan Dunham and Johnny Case both hurt, their original opponents, Abel Trujillo and James Vick, will square off. And I guess to make up for the loss of a bout in that Trujillo/Vick shuffle, UFC added a late-notice heavyweight bout, with Anthony Hamilton facing the debuting Marcel Fortuna. *From there, we head to Brooklyn, where UFC 208 got a viable co-main to seemingly round out the card, as Anderson Silva will surprisingly return to take on Derek Brunson. The matchmaking makes sense if you figure the two are close in the rankings and Brunson was the best guy available for Silva to face on the date, but it's still a weird fight. Brunson isn't exactly a dream fight, someone UFC seems to be looking to build, or someone that Silva can just beat, so it's sort of minimizing the asset that is an Anderson Silva fight at this point, but it's still an interesting matchup to see exactly where both guys stand at middleweight from a purely sporting standpoint. Unfortunately, UFC 208 also wound up losing two fights in order to bolster the Halifax card a week later, but more on that in the next bullet point... *The original headliner for Halifax was supposed to be Junior dos Santos taking on Stefan Struve, but with Struve hurt and a search for a replacement turning up fruitless, dos Santos has been taken off the card entirely (more on him in a bit) and the new main is Derrick Lewis taking on Travis Browne in a fight originally slated for Brooklyn. It's not the biggest main event, but UFC actually wound up doing a good job filling out the rest of the card after a few weeks of radio silence. In what one assumes will be the co-main, Johny Hendricks will be moving up to middleweight to take on Hector Lombard, in a matchup of guys who badly need a win to rebound from a really rough 2016. Plus there's some other fun stuff - Liz Carmouche and Sara McMann will square off at bantamweight in a fight between two veterans who are suddenly relevant again, and with Gilbert Burns injured, Paul Felder's bout at UFC 208 has been scrapped, and he instead faces Canada's Alessandro Ricci here. Plus there are two fights in UFC's "let's get some Canadians on the card" division: British Columbia's Ryan Janes takes on Gerald Meerschaert at middleweight, and Halifax-based featherweight Gavin Tucker makes his UFC debut against Sam Sicilia. *And then there's stuff for March! The nightmare is finally over, as everything's finally agreed to, and Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson will face off at UFC 209 for the interim lightweight title. It's a hell of a fight between two excellent contenders, and the third time UFC has tried to put this fight together, but the whole interim title thing does feel a bit cheap since Conor McGregor is still fully healthy - this really seems like a deal where WME-IMG is just seeing the upside of having two title fights on a card without realizing that a second title probably doesn't really mean anything if it's just sort of made up, and if anything it just sort of hurts the drawing power of belts in the long term. One could say this is what UFC needed to do to have this fight go five rounds, but, well, they can just sort of arbitrarily decide that anyway. So that's the lone new fight for UFC 209, while the card the week after from Brazil added four undercard fights. Bethe Correia returns to face Marion Reneau, Jussier Formiga and Ray Borg square off in a fairly relevant flyweight fight, and in a fairly interesting featherweight bout, original TUF Brazil winner Rony Jason takes on Canadian prospect Jeremy Kennedy. Plus, UFC has signed TUF Brazil 3 alum Paulo Costa to debut on this show - he was initially matched up with Alex Nicholson, but Nicholson got hurt almost immediately after that fight was announced, so instead Costa faces South Africa's Garreth McLellan. And then we go to the London card, which still doesn't have a main event, but added two more undercard bouts to seemingly fill out the card - Tim Johnson and Daniel Omielanczuk square off at heavyweight, while bantamweights Lina Lansberg and Veronica Macedo square off in a bit of cruel matchmaking - Lansberg just fought Cris Cyborg at 145, while Macedo is so undersized for the division she might even be better off at strawweight. *UFC's still filling out stuff for March, but UFC 210 and UFC 211 are already set - 210 will be taking place in Buffalo on April 8th, while 211 heads to Dallas on May 13th. There's only one fight announced so far for Buffalo, and it's a good one, as Gegard Mousasi looks to keep breaking through in this latest run at middleweight by taking on former champ Chris Weidman. But it looks like UFC might be loading this one up, as there's a few big fights rumored for this card - the strongest one seems to be that this is where Daniel Cormier will finally defend his belt against Anthony "Rumble" Johnson, but there's also some whispers that the Jose Aldo/Max Holloway featherweight title fight may take place here, as well as a fight between Frankie Edgar and Ricardo Lamas, although all of that has yet to be confirmed by someone that credible. And as for Dallas, this all seems to be preliminary, but apparently the targeted main event is Stipe Miocic defending his heavyweight belt against Junior dos Santos, who I guess between Cain Velasquez's injuries and Fabricio Werdum feuding with UFC over money sort of wound up skipping the line, though JDS also has a win over Miocic in a pretty fun war that took place at the tail end of 2014. Also, there's two more bouts apparently set without a date just yet - as mentioned above, Cody Garbrandt is expected to defend his bantamweight title against T.J. Dillashaw after this coming season of TUF, and apparently Joe Rogan let slip that Anthony Pettis's return to lightweight will be against Russian striker Mairbek Taisumov. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Tim Kennedy (18-6 overall, 3-2 UFC, last fought 12/10/16, L vs. Kelvin Gastelum): Longtime middleweight contender Kennedy retired, which had been brewing for a while, leaving behind a sort of complicated legacy. Kennedy kind of seemed like someone everyone could get behind - a former military sniper who earned a Bronze Star, Kennedy would fight between military commitments before being able to fight full-time as his career started with Strikeforce. And Kennedy had a ton of success as mostly a grinder - he would come up short in title fights against Jacare Souza and Luke Rockhold, but Kennedy was a solid third in Strikeforce's middleweight division, earning wins over guys like Robbie Lawler and Melvin Manhoef. And when Kennedy's UFC tenure started, it looked like he was pretty close to earning a title shot himself - he got a deathly boring win over Roger Gracie to start, but followed that up by knocking out Rafael Natal in the main event of a fight at Fort Campbell, which was a cool moment, and then getting another main event win in one-sided fashion over Michael Bisping. But Kennedy lost a fight to Yoel Romero in controversial fashion in late 2014 - Kennedy seemingly had Romero on the ropes at the tail end of round two, Romero's corner used a bunch of tricks like "forgetting" to take the stool out of the cage to buy Romero time to recover between rounds, and an obviously frustrated Kennedy took his eye off the ball and got knocked out in the third round. That loss and the way it happened seemingly broke Kennedy's will to compete in MMA for a bit, as he took about two years off and made an occasional bad headline. Kennedy spent his hiatus doing some weird reality show where he was hunting Hitler, and would just spend a lot of time in the alt-right sphere of things, appearing on shows with Alex Jones and firing off the sporadic crazy post on social media, highlighted by one where he talked about killing women and children while in the military, circling it all back to show that having PTSD is a choice, essentially calling those who suffered from it mentally weak "pussies." Just...gross stuff. So Kennedy finally returned in 2016, at first slated to fight Rashad Evans at Madison Square Garden, but after Evans had medical clearance issues, Kennedy wound up taking on Kelvin Gastelum this past December. And Kennedy looked like his old self, overpowering Gastelum for a bit, but that lasted about a round, as Kennedy suddenly gassed, and basically got wrecked before the referee called things off in the third round. So about a month after that, Kennedy retired via social media, and, say what you will, it looks like he'll be focusing on efforts to help unionize MMA fighters - hopefully that becomes a positive part of his legacy. 2) Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger (6-4 overall, 0-3 UFC, last fought 1/15/17, L vs. Nina Ansaroff): Jones-Lybarger announced her retirement a few days after her loss to Ansaroff, although honestly, she was probably getting cut after a 0-3 UFC record anyway. Jones-Lybarger, a former basketball player out of Arizona, is obviously an athlete, and was a solid pickup by UFC in late 2015, given that she was coming off a win against solid vet Zoila Frausto to cap a 5-1 record. But she never really showed much, as she seemed to struggle to impose her game against UFC-level athletes, even as the matchmaking sort of moved her down the ladder - a debut against top contender Tecia Torres did her no favors, the follow-up against Randa Markos was just sort of a sloppy affair, and a bout against Ansaroff, who was 0-2 in UFC herself, was just mostly a one-sided beating in her hometown. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 2/4 - UFC Fight Night 104 - Houston, TX - Dennis Bermudez vs. Chan Sung Jung, Alexa Grasso vs. Felice Herrig 2/11 - UFC 208 - Brooklyn, NY - Germaine de Randamie vs. Holly Holm, Derek Brunson vs. Anderson Silva 2/19 - UFC Fight Night 105 - Halifax, NS - Travis Browne vs. Derrick Lewis, Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard 3/4 - UFC 209 - Las Vegas, NV - Tyron Woodley (c) vs. Stephen Thompson, Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Mark Hunt vs. Alistair Overeem 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic (c) vs. Junior dos Santos ----- UFC on Fox 23 - January 28, 2017 - Pepsi Center - Denver, Colorado Even though UFC's slate for early 2017 is fairly disappointing in the wake of them loading up big shows in November and December, they did well to put together a solid card here, as the company continues to sort of nail down the Fox format. We've got a photogenic fight on top that may determine a title contender, the biggest test yet for what could be UFC's next great heavyweight, and two really solid action fighters. And even the undercard is pretty solid - the top two prelims are pretty strong, and while things rapidly go downhill after that in terms of relevance, thankfully a lot of the card is prospects with some upside, rather than low-ceiling veterans matched together due to there not being much else to do. At least on paper, this card looks like it could be the highlight of the first two months of the 2017 calendar, so hopefully it comes through in practice. MAIN CARD (Fox - 8:00 PM ET): Women's Bantamweight: (#1) Valentina Shevchenko vs. (#2) Julianna Pena Welterweight: (#5) Donald Cerrone vs. (#12) Jorge Masvidal Heavyweight: (#7) Andrei Arlovski vs. (#10) Francis Ngannou Featherweight: Alex Caceres vs. Jason Knight PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 5:00 PM ET): Middleweight: Sam Alvey vs. Nate Marquardt Bantamweight: (#4) Raphael Assuncao vs. (#7) Aljamain Sterling Welterweight: Jingliang Li vs. Bobby Nash Light Heavyweight: Henrique da Silva vs. Jordan Johnson Middleweight: Alessio Di Chirico vs. Eric Spicely Light Heavyweight: Marcos Rogerio de Lima vs. Jeremy Kimball PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 4:00 PM ET): Flyweight: Alexandre Pantoja vs. Eric Shelton Lightweight: J.C. Cottrell vs. Jason Gonzalez THE RUNDOWN: Valentina Shevchenko (13-2 overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Julianna Pena (8-2 overall, 4-0 UFC): Welcome to the new normal, as this fight, which UFC has been trying to put together for a while, will probably determine Amanda Nunes's next challenger in the first fight of the post-Rousey era. And it's a pretty excellent fight, pitting striker against grappler in what's becoming a rarer and rarer matchup of the two obvious top contenders for a title. Back in late 2013, when Julianna Pena pretty much ran through the rest of the TUF 18 cast to become the first female Ultimate Fighter winner, there was some thought that she might be facing Ronda Rousey for the belt sooner rather than later - for one thing, she looked good in her fights, but with marketable good looks, a friendship with Rousey blood rival Miesha Tate, and a division that was still in an early state of flux, Pena had all the tools to work her way up the ladder in fairly short order. But that got derailed almost immediately thanks to a massive knee injury suffered before her first post-TUF fight, and things have gotten sort of weird from there. In the cage, Pena has done her job well enough since coming back, running through Milana Dudieva in her comeback fight and then getting wins over Jessica Eye and Cat Zingano, but outside of the cage, she hasn't really connected with the fanbase much, and if she has, it's been quite negatively. Essentially, if Pena pops up in the MMA news, it's usually for one of two things - either one of a surprising amount of bar fights she and her teammates seem to find themselves in, or just some weird comment where Pena apparently thinks she's a much bigger star than she actually is, demanding a title shot and just pretty much making it clear with every fight that we should be thankful she's fighting rather than holding out for a title shot she thinks she's already earned. All that talk is well and good, but there's a point where it becomes more delusional than anything, and Pena's probably past that - unless she manages to win this fight, of course. On the other side of things, Valentina Shevchenko just sort of quietly became a contender in pretty quick fashion - she came in as a late injury replacement on the last card of 2015 and beat Sarah Kaufman, and then had a performance that looks even better in retrospect against Nunes, becoming the second fighter to last fifteen minutes with the current champ and winning a fairly one-sided third round in a close decision loss. From there, Shevchenko was seemingly expected to be a set-up win for Holly Holm to rebound against after losing the bantamweight title, and I could see the logic - Shevchenko is primarily a striker by trade, and Holm had already theoretically proven herself to be the best striker in women's combat sports, but after a slow start, Shevchenko pretty much figured Holm out standing and then started to use her wrestling, earning an increasingly lopsided win and establishing herself as a top contender. So, yeah, this is a really fascinating fight - Shevchenko's proven herself to be a top-tier well-rounded fighter in just a little over a year in UFC, while Pena's still somewhat of a question mark, and it's unclear if she's truly at the level of a title contender, or just sort of at the top of the next tier. Pena's two most recent fights, those wins over Eye and Zingano to get her into this spot, are just weird ones because they're so one-dimensional - either Pena or her opponent just keeps looking for the clinch and to grapple, and Pena's been able to win narrow victories by using strength and positioning to do just enough to win. But she's really unproven on the feet - outside of some flailing punches early in the Eye fight that did not look good, there's just not enough to go on to call her striking game anything other than a question mark. Add in some questions about how good those wins over Eye and Zingano really are - Rousey's fall from grace has sort of shown that we're in the middle of an evolution process in women's MMA, and Eye's losing streak and Zingano's flat last few fights suggest those two may be on the wrong side of it - and there's just a lot of uncertainty around Pena's resume, though she's enough of a talent where any skepticism should also be laced with some optimism. Pena definitely still has a shot to win, particularly after re-watching Shevchenko's fight with Nunes - I remembered it being a lot closer of a fight before Nunes got tired and Shevchenko took over, but Shevchenko did struggle a lot early when Nunes was able to get her to the ground and get on top of her, and that pretty much figures to be Pena's gameplan. One would think that Shevchenko should just be able to keep the fight standing and probably handle Pena rather easily on the feet, but if nothing else, Pena's last two fights have shown she can usually get the fight where she wants, although that comes with the caveat that Zingano, and Eye in particular, have some questions about strategy. A Pena victory is certainly possible, but I just have too many concerns to call it, so I'll say that Shevchenko wins this rather handily, in fact keeping things on the feet and just out-striking Pena - I'm assuming Pena is better than some of those flailing punches she showed in the Eye fight, because if not, a quick finish is certainly on the table, but instead I'll say that this is more of an extended beatdown, finally ending late due to a TKO stoppage. Donald Cerrone (32-7 [1] overall, 19-4 UFC, 6-3 [1] WEC) vs. Jorge Masvidal (31-11 overall, 8-4 UFC, 5-1 Strikeforce, 2-1 Bellator): A fun fight here, as Donald Cerrone, as always, is keeping busy, and good on Jorge Masvidal for calling his shot. It's pretty impressive how quickly Cerrone regained his momentum in 2016 - after losing a lightweight title fight in one-sided fashion to Rafael dos Anjos, Cerrone pretty much seemed eternally cemented as UFC's top non-contender, a fan favorite who was probably better off fighting whoever's available as soon as possible and putting on a good showing rather than trying to make a focused run for a belt. And, well, Cerrone's sort of split the difference - he moved up to welterweight just to take another fight that eventually wound up being against Alex Oliveira, and with that his striking has taken another leap forward, as he became the first man to knock out Patrick Cote, the first man to knock out Rick Story, and the first man to cleanly knock out Matt Brown, quickly becoming a contender once again despite not really changing much in his approach to taking fights. At the moment, Cerrone doesn't really seem to have a clear path to a title shot, with Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson scheduled for a rematch, and the winner likely to get Demian Maia, who's holding out for a well-deserved title fight, so, as "Cowboy" is wont to do, he's just taking whatever fight is available, so here he is in his hometown against Jorge Masvidal. Credit to Masvidal for being a smart man, since while many fighters just say they'll fight whoever UFC puts in front of them, Masvidal straight up called out Cerrone after his win over Jake Ellenberger this past December, putting a fight on management's radar that nobody else was probably thinking of at the moment. Masvidal's had a strange career - he came up in the same Miami street-fight scene that birthed Kimbo Slice and turned into a pretty solid, well-rounded fighter, fighting all over the world in Japan, the nascent days of Bellator, and Strikeforce before landing in UFC. But Masvidal's also ridiculously frustrating - he's not much for overall fight strategy, and even when he's winning a fight based off his talents, he has a bad tendency to start coasting, making his wins closer than they need to be and even sometimes turning them into losses. Anyway, this should be a solid win for Cerrone - he has some flaws, particularly when dealing with fighters who can pressure him like Brown did, but I really don't have any faith in Masvidal to do what he needs to do and keep winning rounds - plus even the grappling game is sort of a wash, as both guys are underrated on the mat. I'll give Masvidal the benefit of the doubt that he's tough enough to survive all three rounds with Cerrone, since he hasn't been knocked out since 2008, even though Cerrone's on a streak of breaking formerly unbreakable chins. So I'll say Cerrone wins a clear decision in a fight that's fun and never quite reaches blowout status. Andrei Arlovski (25-13 [1] overall, 14-7 UFC, 0-3 Strikeforce) vs. Francis Ngannou (9-1 overall, 4-0 UFC): A really, really fascinating fight here, as Francis Ngannou is the rare blue-chip heavyweight prospect, and he has a shot to become a legitimate contender way quicker than anyone could've really anticipated. Ngannou was always viewed as someone with potential, as the Cameroonian fighting out of France is a giant mountain of a man built like a NFL defensive lineman, but he was only about two years into the sport when UFC signed him in late 2015. But, well, Ngannou wound up being a natural when it comes to picking things up, as you can trace a clear line of upward progression through his four UFC fights. In his first bout, against Luis Henrique, Ngannou mostly got taken down at will before uppercutting Henrique's head into the bleachers, and by his next fight, against stud wrestling prospect Curtis Blaydes, Ngannou was stuffing takedown after takedown without much of a problem. After a quick showcase win over Bojan Mihajlovic, Ngannou showed last month that he's somewhat scarily already learned submissions - Anthony Hamilton tried to clinch up with him and wear him out, but Ngannou just grabbed a kimura and basically took Hamilton, who's a large man himself, down by sheer force, getting the quick tap. So Ngannou is pretty much the prospect to watch at heavyweight, especially given that he's one of the younger fighters on the roster at age 30, though there's still a bunch of questions to be answered when he goes into deeper waters, like how he responds to getting hit and exactly how he'll deal when facing higher level athletes that he might not have such an obvious advantage against. It'll be interesting to see what type of a challenge Andrei Arlovski offers him, particularly as his career is sort of sputtering after the luck of his UFC comeback run has started to turn the other way. A former UFC heavyweight champ over a decade ago, Arlovski was sort of left for dead after a run of four straight losses in Affliction and Strikeforce from 2009 to 2011, three of which came via vicious knockout - basically, the book was out that Arlovski suddenly had a glass jaw, which at heavyweight is pretty much a death sentence. But Arlovski quietly rebounded a bit, racking up wins in various promotions, though when UFC re-signed him in 2014, it was still seen as little more than a novel signing for depth in an extremely thin division. But the next two years saw Arlovski make a run towards an unlikely title shot - it included deathly boring decision wins over Brendan Schaub and Frank Mir, but Arlovski also scored quick knockouts of Antonio Silva and Travis Browne that, admittedly, haven't aged particularly well. And in 2016, the luck pretty much ran out - Stipe Miocic ran through him in just 54 seconds en route to his own title shot, Alistair Overeem knocked him out, and while a loss to Josh Barnett was less one-sided, Arlovski eventually got tapped out late there as well. As it is, Arlovski's pretty much just a fringe top-ten fighter at this point - while he's not particularly physically imposing anymore, he makes up for that by just knowing what he's doing; despite the recent knockout losses, Arlovski's done a solid job of protecting his chin, especially compared to where he used to be, and he basically has a much better sense of physical space and technical striking than at any point in his career. So there's the chance that, by being the smaller and quicker guy, Arlovski can just use his veteran savvy to avoid danger and pick Ngannou apart - and hell, given that we haven't really seen Ngannou get hit, that may also turn downhill quickly into some sort of a knockout. But, more likely than not, Ngannou will probably use his athleticism to hit the great equalizer and put Arlovski's lights out. I do think Arlovski's a bit underrated here - Arlovski's currently between a three- and four-to-one underdog, and he really could just make Ngannou chase him and wear him out in an ugly fight - but I'll say Ngannou in fact does get another first-round knockout and makes the win look a lot easier than it actually is. Alex Caceres (12-9 [1] overall, 7-7 [1] UFC) vs. Jason Knight (16-2 overall, 2-1 UFC): UFC pretty much always opens up the main Fox card with a good action fight, and with this one, they've done it once more. Alex Caceres is a frustrating talent, since while he has a bunch of skills and often puts on an exciting show, it's unclear whether or not that's all coalesced into anything all that good. Caceres was more notable for his "Bruce Leeroy" persona rather than anything he really showed in the cage on season 12 of TUF, but UFC still saw fit to pick him up thanks to his potential. It took a bit for that gamble to pay off, as Caceres started 1-3 in the UFC, but it eventually did, as Caceres soon reeled off a five-fight unbeaten streak that was mostly over the lower reaches of the bantamweight division, but culminated with what was a big win at the time over Sergio Pettis. And even the fight that snapped that streak, a July 2014 loss to Urijah Faber, was considered a plus performance at the time for Caceres, since he gave a much better showing than expected from a non-contender. And then, well, the wheels came off a bit - Caceres lost in an upset to Japanese vet Masanori Kanehara, and then got blown out of the water by Francisco Rivera, causing Caceres to move back up to his original weight class at featherweight. Results have been mixed - after an obvious tune-up win over Masio Fullen, Caceres looked outstanding for two rounds against Cole Miller before almost losing the fight a few times in the third, and his main event fight against Yair Rodriguez over the summer was a strange one, as both guys just sort of did stuff without much of an overall plan, with Rodriguez mostly getting the better of things. And that's sort of still Caceres's game - he just kinda does stuff, even if you can see him mixing things up and picking his shots a bit more than he used to. On the other side of things, we have Mississippi's Jason Knight, who's quickly making a name for himself as a featherweight prospect to watch. After a completely nothing UFC debut where Tatsuya Kawajiri just kept taking him down, Knight showed out in his sophomore effort against Jim Alers, showing a propensity for trash talking, volume striking, and basically just not giving a fuck that led to him getting the moniker "Hick Diaz" in some circles. And he pretty much followed that up against Daniel Hooker in Australia this past November - Knight just throws a lot of volume and doesn't particularly care what you do to him, showing some Southern machismo the whole while. And I think that's going to throw Caceres off - while his performances are inconsistent from fight to fight, or hell, even round to round, they're still mostly predicated on dynamic bursts of offense, and I figure Knight is just going to get in Caceres's face, overwhelm him with punches, and just sort of prevent Caceres from gathering his bearings about what he's going to do next. I doubt Knight finishes him, since he hasn't shown much knockout power in the UFC to date, but I still think it'll be a fairly one-sided, but still pretty fun, decision win. Sam Alvey (29-8 [1] overall, 6-3 UFC, 1-1 Bellator) vs. Nate Marquardt (35-16-2 overall, 13-9 UFC, 1-1 Strikeforce): A solid enough fight here between veteran middleweights that could wind up in a pretty brutal knockout. It's nice that Nate Marquardt settled into a late-career niche and UFC figured out what to do with him; after a long stint as a middleweight contender and lower-tier card main eventer in UFC, then a brief run in Strikeforce, Marquardt's second UFC run was just sort of getting depressing. Marquardt lost four of five fights upon his comeback, and save a win over a similarly shot James Te Huna, it looked like Marquardt had just suddenly finally gotten old, as knockout artists like Jake Ellenberger and Hector Lombard destroyed him rather quickly, and younger, more athletic guys like Brad Tavares and Kelvin Gastelum made him look old and completely done as a fighter. But Marquardt was able to knock out C.B. Dollaway in a fight that seemed set up to be an easy win for Dollaway, and after being run through by another young athlete in Thiago Santos, UFC seems to have finally gotten the hint, realizing that Marquardt is a greatly diminished athlete, but still a dangerous veteran with knockout power, and putting him against fellow veterans in fights he can actually win. God knows there's enough non-athletes at middleweight. So anyway, after a brutal knockout of Tamdan McCrory, Marquardt returns to try and make it two straight against "Smilin'" Sam Alvey, who had a bit of a breakout in 2016. Alvey's always sort of been a weird cult favorite on the UFC roster, a giant, goofy ginger with a permanent grin that walks out to Train and gives these weirdly enthusiastic post-fight interviews, where he just sort of rants and raves about how great things are, including [insert city here] and calls out his next opponent. Alvey looked like he might be on the cut line after coming back from a broken jaw and losing to Elias Theodorou in June, but instead Alvey wound up fighting three times in under four months - his wife, always in his corner, and seemingly always pregnant (and a former America's Next Top Model winner - live the life, Sam), had another child, so he's gotta pay the bills - and has racked up three straight wins over Eric Spicely, Kevin Casey and Alex Nicholson. Alvey still doesn't have a ton of upside, but at least he seems to be carving out a niche, particularly since UFC seems to be putting him in more prominent situations on cards recently. This is a super-weird fight to call - Marquardt is still dangerous and has veteran savvy in spades, but sometimes he looks just awful out there, although that may just depend on his level of competition. And Alvey just has a ridiculously weird counter-striking style that's extremely low-percentage, but still works for him - Alvey just basically refuses to engage first, and just sort of hangs back and waits for an opening where he can blast his opponent with a power punch down the middle. When it works, it's an awesome knockout, but when it doesn't, things can turn into sort of a slog, as Alvey just kind of neutralizes his opponent while doing nothing himself. So this could go any number of ways. I sort of discount the possibility of Alvey winning via knockout, since I think Marquardt has enough experience to not give him the opening, but if this is one of those fights where Marquardt looks shot, that's entirely possible. So I could see this turning into a war of attrition where Marquardt isn't really able to do much, Alvey chooses not to, and this goes to the cards; but, I'll actually say that Marquardt is able to find an opening at some point and nail Alvey with a knockout shot, plus there's always the possibility that Marquardt just takes things to the ground, which he hasn't done in a while and doesn't really seem to be Alvey's strong suit. But as far as an official prediction, I'll take Marquardt via second-round KO. Raphael Assuncao (23-5 overall, 7-2 UFC, 3-2 WEC) vs. Aljamain Sterling (12-1 overall, 4-1 UFC): A really well-made and interesting fight here, pitting two fringe bantamweight contenders badly in need of a win against each other, as well as continuing the streak of Aljamain Sterling's fights being a little bit lower on the card than they probably should be. UFC's never really seemingly made him a priority, but Sterling's been a blue-chip prospect pretty much since he came onto the scene - Jon Jones comparisons were inevitable, given that Sterling's also a lanky black athlete who wrestled in upstate New York before starting in the same gym as Jones, but while it's not really an apt comparison in terms of style, it was looking pretty suitable in terms of results for a while. Sterling was pretty much using his wrestling at will to just keep running through opponents as he moved up the ladder, and after tapping out Johnny Eduardo to finish out his UFC contract, it seemed like the world was Sterling's oyster. But for whatever reason, MMA promotions just don't really seem to see much in Sterling, who's a charismatic and talented guy - Bellator reportedly didn't even make an offer, and while he got a pay raise from UFC, it still seemed low for a future marketable contender. And then things hit a further snag last May - in a bout against Bryan Caraway that seemed set to build Sterling towards a title shot, Sterling just sort of fell apart after a dominant first round, getting tired and showing a whole bunch of holes in both his striking and his takedown defense. Thankfully, Sterling's still at the point where he can fix some of those mistakes, but it was a concerningly poor performance late in that fight, and "The Funk Master" badly needs a rebound win against Raphael Assuncao, the dark horse of the bantamweight title picture. At the end of 2014, Assuncao seemed pretty much set for a title shot - he's sort of bland and won't get anyone excited, but he's damned good, and was riding a 7-0 record, all in the UFC, after cutting to bantamweight, including a win over then-champ T.J. Dillashaw. But an injury forced him out of a slated fight with Urijah Faber, and a long layoff pretty much killed all the momentum of Assuncao's career - he didn't return until UFC 200 after twenty-one months on the shelf, and even then there were rumors he fought injured while losing a rematch to Dillashaw in a fight where Assuncao still looked sort of good, but clearly lost all three rounds. Losing a fight to Dillashaw is no shame, but given where his career is and the fact that, frankly, he's not the kind of guy who'll get fans clamoring to see him in a big fight, Assuncao badly needs all the wins he can get, including one here. It's a really well-matched fight, but at the end of the day, I think it really just comes down to if Sterling can get Assuncao to the ground and keep him there, and sadly, I'm not really all that optimistic. Caraway just seemed to blow Sterling's game wide open, showing that at least as of last May, if you pressure Sterling and can counter his single strikes from a distance fairly effectively, he doesn't really do a whole hell of a lot while playing defense. And while Assuncao may not have the type of footwork to pressure Sterling quite like Caraway did, Assuncao's main strength is his ability to counter on the feet, so unless Sterling's patched those holes in his game (which is in fact completely possible for a talent like Sterling), the striking game figures to be all Assuncao. And Assuncao's takedown defense has pretty much been on point - Caraway and even Dillashaw, two talented wrestlers, weren't able to do much with him, and even when they got Assuncao to the ground, he pretty much popped right back up. Admittedly, Sterling might wind up being at another level, but again, it's somewhere else where I'm not optimistic. Despite my pessimism, I still give Sterling a shot here - mainly banking on his solid coaching at Serra-Longo and the fact that he's a top-flight kind of talent - but everything on paper favors Assuncao, so I'll say the Brazilian takes a clear decision. Jingliang Li (11-4 overall, 3-2 UFC) vs. Bobby Nash (8-1 overall): This could be a pretty fun fight, but I say this as someone who's a big fan of Jingliang Li, the one decent fighter to come out of UFC's now-abandoned efforts in China. And Li's not just decent by the low standard of Chinese fighters, he's pretty solid overall, as he could easily be 5-0 in the UFC - his loss to Nordine Taleb was a close split decision, and he was winning a fight against Keita Nakamura before getting caught in a last-ditch submission attempt. At first, Li lived up to his "The Leech" nickname, mostly being a one-dimensional wrestler, but he's developed a pretty solid boxing game over his UFC career, flashing some good technique and knockout power. After a few opponents fell out of fights on a few different cards, Li winds up here in Denver to fight Michigan-based newcomer Bobby Nash. Nash seems fine - he looks like an alright-enough athlete and has some solid striking himself, but honestly not a ton stood out, at least at the moment. That's alright enough for now, since Nash is just a little over two years into his pro career, and he seems like he could at least stick around if he's matched up against lower-level UFC opponents often enough, but I don't think Li is that. This should be a fight where Li is controlling most of it, since Li should be the better striker and the better wrestler, but the saving grace for Nash is that Li's defense is still quite poor in pretty much every area, and Nash has shown fight-ending ability both in terms of knockout power and submissions. But I expect Li to just do what he wants unless he gets stopped, and given that another negative for Nash is that I really didn't like the way he reacted to getting hit, sort of backing up to collect his thoughts, I'll call for Li to stun him early and move in for the kill for a first-round knockout. Henrique da Silva (12-1 overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Jordan Johnson (6-0 overall): A perfectly fine light heavyweight bout here. Henrique "Frankenstein" da Silva has kept busy, with this being his third UFC fight in under four months, but it's hard to tell if he's actually any good - he didn't come into UFC with much in the way of expectations, and while he's had an alright amount of success mostly through sheer aggressiveness, all save one of his UFC fights have come against debuting opponents, and the level of competition doesn't seem to be all that high. So da Silva looks to rebound from the lone loss of his career, a submission to Paul Craig, against yet another debuting fighter, top light heavyweight prospect Jordan Johnson. A former wrestler at both Iowa and Grand Canyon University, Johnson's pretty much a raw grinder at this point, though he has some submission skills, and seems to have taken to striking well enough that he's been on a lot of top prospect lists at 205. And Johnson's done about as well as could be expected, getting six wins without a ton of trouble, and doing so in RFA, one of the top regional promotions you can go to in the US. This isn't quite a gimme - since Johnson's still just under three years into his pro career, I do have some questions about how he can react if da Silva decides to go into Frankenstein mode and just charges forward with little regard for defense - but Johnson does have enough wrestling skill, and da Silva has enough defensive liabilities, that I can just see Johnson grinding out a fairly one-sided decision by winning round after round, with a possibility of him getting a submission at some point. Alessio Di Chirico (10-1 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Eric Spicely (9-1 overall, 1-1 UFC): A neat fight here at middleweight. It's hard not to root for Eric Spicely - he came across as an easy fan favorite on season 23 of TUF, since he's overcome a pretty horrible amount of adversity, leaving a broken home as a teenager, pulling himself together after the death of his girlfriend in a freak canoeing accident, and just eventually got his life on track. But despite being a pretty solid fighter and making the final four of the season, there was some concern he wouldn't get a contract - Spicely's sort of a pudgy, physically unimpressive guy, and his grappling-heavy style seemed like something Dana White would really hate. But Spicely did wind up getting a shot, losing in what was honestly pretty embarrassing fashion via quick submission to Sam Alvey, and that seemed to be that for Spicely's career in the UFC. And, well, it was supposed to be, but a funny thing happened - in the whole purchase of UFC by WME-IMG, apparently the paperwork to terminate Spicely got lost in the shuffle. So, come August, Spicely apparently got a call explaining just that and offered him one of two options - to get cut, or to fight Thiago Santos, a top-fifteen fighter with destructive power, on about a month's notice in Santos's home country of Brazil. Spicely took the latter choice, and, wouldn't you know it, wound up out-wrestling Santos and scoring a first-round submission, getting one of the biggest upsets in UFC history, and the biggest one (at least per betting lines) of 2016. Good on him. So after that, Spicely returns a few months later to fight Alessio Di Chirico, one of UFC's recent signings out of Italy, a country that's increasingly starting to build a MMA scene. Di Chirico's solid - he seems to be a strong athlete, and has some solid boxing, though his grappling game is still a little bit of a question mark (at least at a UFC level) and he still seems rather raw overall. So this pretty much boils down to a striker-versus-grappler fight; Spicely obviously wants to get things to the ground, since that's the only place he's had any real high-level success, and Di Chirico should be able to take this if it remains standing. Di Chirico seems to have some decent takedown defense, with the caveat that Spicely might be the best wrestler he's faced to date, so I'll call for the Italian to mostly keep this on the feet and win a decision, though this is really a coin flip of a fight. Marcos Rogerio de Lima (14-4-1 overall, 3-2 UFC, 0-1 Strikeforce) vs. Jeremy Kimball (14-5 overall, 1-1 Bellator): This is one of those fights that doesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot, but pretty much exists to be a fun brawl, and I'm okay with that. Not a ton was expected of Marcos Rogerio de Lima off of TUF Brazil 3, but "Pezao" has done well enough for himself, getting over .500 in UFC by pretty much just being aggressive as hell and always searching for the finish, which has wound up with all five of his UFC fights ending in the first round one way or another. He was slated to face John Phillips, yet another Conor McGregor teammate being signed by the UFC, but with Phillips having visa issues, the late-notice call went to local Colorado fighter Jeremy Kimball. Not a ton of recent footage is out there on Kimball, but his M.O. seems to be the same as de Lima's - to just hit the other dude in the face really hard, and worry about the rest later. So these two guys are probably going to swing bombs at each other, and since de Lima's been doing it at a higher level, I'll say the Brazilian takes it by first-round knockout. But this is really just a fight wherever who hits the first big bomb wins it. Alexandre Pantoja (16-2 overall) vs. Eric Shelton (10-2 overall): This most recent season of TUF - built around flyweight champions from promotions all over the world competing in a tournament for a title shot against UFC kingpin Demetrious Johnson - was the best in years in terms of talent, but for whatever reason, UFC didn't really sign a lot of guys off the show, I guess figuring that since a lot of other top promotions don't have flyweight divisions, they could afford to be patient. But these two guys, both standouts on the show that made it to the final four, got the call and square off here. Brazil's Alexandre Pantoja, then the champion of top American promotion RFA, was the top seed on the season (even if most people beforehand did favor the eventual winner, Tim Elliott) and didn't really do a ton to dissuade that - while the Nova Uniao product wasn't all that dynamic on the show, he showed he could hold his own pretty much anywhere and do well against whatever opponent came his way. On the other side of things, Eric Shelton, an Illinois native who was the champion of Midwestern promotion Caged Aggression, pretty much came out of nowhere to go on a run through the show - Shelton was relatively unknown and seeded at number fifteen, and then just used his athleticism and a high-level wrestling and grappling game to impress time in and time out, even going close enough with Elliott that the decision easily could've gone the other way and sent Elliott to the finals. It's a hard one to call, but as a general rule, it's better to go off of pre-TUF resumes rather than the results during the season, which can be a bit fluky, so for that reason I favor Pantoja to get a decision, since he has more experience and a better camp behind him. But Shelton's gotten here by outdoing expectations time after time, so him doing so once more is entirely possible. J.C. Cottrell (17-4 overall, 0-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator) vs. Jason Gonzalez (10-3 overall, 0-1 UFC): Somewhat surprisingly, this is the one clear fight on the card that's between two guys that are definitely on the cut line, as both lost their UFC debuts in rather one-sided fashion after coming in as injury replacements. Oklahoma's J.C. Cottrell stepped in on short notice and lost to Michel Prazeres via decision on the Holm/Shevchenko card this past summer; Cottrell's game is typically built around using his wrestling to set up spots where he can jump onto a submission, but I'm not really sure it'll work at a UFC level, and Cottrell looks like the sort of "quadruple-A" fighter who can take care of a lot of guys in smaller promotions but will struggle on a major stage. On the other side of things, we have California's Jason Gonzalez, who came in with a little bit of hype after a decent stint on TUF 22 and a career as a finishing machine on smaller shows - Gonzalez is a gigantic lightweight with knockout power, and has a pretty dangerous submission game to boot. But he got shockingly knocked out in the first round by Drew Dober at UFC 203, casting into doubt exactly how much success Gonzalez will have, since Dober isn't exactly a knockout artist. Still, he's impressed me more than Cottrell, so I'll say Gonzalez gets the second-round knockout, though it's hard to have a ton of confidence in either guy at the moment.