Thursday, February 16, 2023

The Great UFC 284 Heist

I forgot to post this on Sunday. Whoops.


Now look, Volkanovski may not have won that fight last night, but he made Islam make this face.

That's an unmistakable look of sheer terror.

Islam is supposedly Khabib Nurmagomedov's star pupil and best protege. And honestly watching Khabib's highlights is what sparked my initial interest in MMA. The dude never ever got tired during a fight and he beat the dogshit out of everyone. Khabib was so skilled, he was like a videogame character with all the cheat codes enabled. He didn't even get cut or bleed once.





And unfortunately, Islam is not Khabib. Islam did not maul Volkanovski. Islam got his shit rocked. And furthermore, Islam got absolutely exhausted. 

Dagestanis have notoriously superhuman endurance. I've seen Dagestanis get choked out, knocked out in the first round, and all kinds of submitted, but I don't think I've ever seen a single one of them look even remotely tired. EVER. They don't get tired. 

And Islam was absolutely exhausted. 

Which is just a testament to how much of a badass Volk is. I haven't been watching MMA that long, but he did some shit I've never seen before. He tired out a Dagestani. 

And honestly, that's more than enough for me to take what I saw last night as sufficient revenge for what Islam did to Charles Oliveira in October. 

I feel like I'm too emotionally invested in this, so I won't go on any further.




Saturday, February 4, 2023

A Casual MMA Fan's UFC 283 Roundup

You read the title. Let's get into it. Also I missed the first fight. 


Josiane Nunes vs. Zarah Fairn

There was a tiny bitch fighting a tall bitch. I don't have any problem with WMMA. But UFC's WMMA sucks dick. One FC's WMMA is stellar. Bellator has Cyborg. Hell, even Combate Global has decent WMMA. The UFC has like five bitches steamrolling everyone else and trading wins with each other. Apart from that, there are only like two or three other female fighters that aren't absolute snoozefests to watch. These two are not among the five exciting WMMA fighters worth watching. 


Nicolas Dalby vs. Warlley Alves


The welterweight fight was fucking boring. The dudes kept cracking the fuck outta each other and no one went down. There's nothing worse than a prelim fight that gets drug out to a bloodless decision. 


Brunno Ferreira vs. Gregory Rodrigues


I've never paid attention to this  Gregory Rodrigues guy. I've seen him fight, but I never gave a shit. Chat was blowing up about Buff Obama / Robocop and I had no clue who the fuck they were talking about. I do know one thing for sure, and it's that Buff Robomacop got knocked the fuck out. 

Cody Stamann vs. Luan Lacerda


Apparently, there was a bantamweight fight. The guy looked like a knockoff of Cody Garbrandt. The fight chat dubbed him Cody "Some Love." That is all. 

Ismael Bonfim vs. Terrance McKinney


Firstly, Terence McKinney looks like the fish from Shark Tale. Secondly,  I thought it was weird, rude and disrespectful that his American ass went out there with a Brazilian fight kit. So I was rooting against his stupid ass from the get-go. If you want home team support, then support the home team. You wouldn't go to the Olympics and wrestle for Germany or some random ass country. And you definitely wouldn't wrestle for the USA and then run around with a Japanese flag after you win. It's nonsensical.  If you want to wear another country's colors for no reason, then I'm certainly not rooting for you. And his mouthpiece got knocked out and then he got knocked the fuck out right afterward. Despite commentary saying it was his debut, I could tell that this Bonfim guy was a veteran from the way he was trading.  I look forward to watching more of his scraps.

Jailton Almeida vs. Shamil Abdurakhimov


The Dagestani got wrestle-fucked and it looked like he wasn't even trying. Every time a round started, homie got effortlessly taken to the ground. A disadvantage of not having watched MMA that long is that I'm not always familiar with all the fighters. Maybe the black dude is just a phenomenal grappler. But honestly, it just looked like the Russian guy was gassing out every round and giving up his back. It definitely wasn't entertaining.


Gabriel Bonfim vs. Mounir Lazzez

The second Bonfim tapped out his opponent in the first round. I didn't know of these guys before this card, but now I gotta go back and watch their shit because they're definitely finishers. This shit didn't even look competitive.

Thiago Moisés vs. Melquizael Costa


Uh, I'm aware of the fact that Thiago Moises can scrap. I've actually seen it. And I think Mr. Colorful was a late replacement because Moises' opponent pulled out. When things hit the ground it honestly looked like Rainbow Hair gave up and tapped quick as hell. I'm not a grappler and I don't know jujitsu. Maybe he was about to lose a fucking limb; I wouldn't be able to tell. But to me, it looked like homeboy knew he wasn't getting out of the choke and tapped immediately. 

Which is respectable, I guess. Everyone doesn't have to do it the Dagestani way and refuse to tap. This sport consists of half-naked men hitting each other in the face, and I'm okay with that. The only times I've genuinely winced while watching MMA were when someone was refusing to tap. I have the image of Magomed Magomedov squirming and going limp between Patrick Mix's legs burned into my memory. Which is quite traumatizing. 

If you can't get out of the sub, you should probably save yourself some brain damage. So hats off to Rainbow Hair.

Shogun Rua vs. Ihor Potieria


I only knew two things about Shogun prior to this fight. I knew Shogun Rua was that guy who won the Pride Light Heavyweight Grand Prix. 

Pride FC hasn't existed since 2007. 

And I knew Jon Jones submitted him early on in his career. 

UFC 285 will be my first time watching Jon Jones fight live, and I've been watching MMA for a year.

So when everyone in the chat said Shogun Rua would be fighting, I said "Huh? Isn't that guy like 47?"

Nonetheless, he lost this retirement fight spectacularly. Like Cowboy, and Frankie, and Joanna, and Rockhold, and Aldo all did during their retirement fights. 

Johnny Walker vs. Paul Craig 

Anyways, I don't have anything to say about Johnny Walker finishing Paul Craig. I thought that Walker was going to lose a limb, for sure, but the fight didn't even make it to the ground. 

Jéssica Andrade vs. Lauren Murphy


Again, the UFC's WMMA is god-awful. Digression, but someone decided to spam in our chat, that everyone should stay the hell away from Jessica Andrade's Onlyfans. So of course, I went and checked it out. 

Don't look at Jessica Andrade's Onlyfans....

I don't know if any of you have also had the misfortune of being flashed by someone who's mentally ill, but Andrade's Onlyfans has those vibes. The only thing I could think was that she should put her clothes on and never, ever, ever take them off in front of a camera again. 

But anyways, the fight sucked. I think it should've been stopped because it was fucking boring. Murphy decided to block half of the punches with her face. And despite that, Murphy never even so much as wobbled. And she barely landed anything herself. It was like watching a bear get repeatedly stung by a bunch of bees. No matter how many times he gets stung the bear isn't going to actually get hurt, and he also isn't going to kill any of the bees. At first, it was exciting, but then it was boring and predictable, and I couldn't wait for the fight to be over. 

Brandon Moreno vs. Deiveson Figueiredo


The first card that I watched live was UFC 270. I had no idea who the two Hispanic midgets rolling all over the octagon were at the time. I just wanted to see N'Gannou and Gane slug it out. I called Figgy vs Brandon 3 "gay and too long." 

Fast forward one year and four months of a Fight Pass subscription later, and I still don't give a fuck about Brandon Moreno or Deiveson Figueiredo. I thought it was badass when Figgy hopped into the cage after Brandon won at 277. But I feel like the UFC's flyweight division is lacking. So until Brandon or Figgy go over to a promotion that actually has a stacked 125-pound division (read a country where the average height isn't 5'10), I don't give a shit.

All that said, I was rooting for Figgy because he has that drip. 


And he lost by a fucking doctor's stoppage, and I was unexpectedly upset. 

Jamahal Hill vs. Glover Texeira


Yeah, this was a helluva fight. When Glover went down in the second round, I was sure the fight was over. But that motherfucker refused to go out. And there's a certain point, where a fight turns into a savage beating. And I think at about the 347th unchecked head kick from Jamahal, this one became a beating. It was kind of abundantly clear by the third round, that Glover wasn't going to manhandle Jamahal. But it also was abundantly clear that Jamahal wasn't going to knock Glover out. And slowly the "fight" turned into an "insanely tough old man getting his ass beat by a professional fighter." 

I'll admit that seeing Jamahal break down and cry when he realized that he'd won was heartwarming. 

I fell asleep when Glover fought Jiri (it was my second or third card, and I hadn't started drinking coffee to stay up yet) so I missed out on the "insane war "that happened.

The Brazilian crowd was pretty tame. At least, for a Brazilian crowd. I'm used to reading reports about Brazilian football76ft hooligans burning down stadiums and starting riots, so the fact that some folks threw some beer cans was kinda underwhelming. I fully expected that some crazed Brazilians were going to try to bumrush the cage and attack Jamahal. But alas, the fucking stadium was empty during the last fight.