The Calm before the Storm: Not much talk of anything UFC in the news
To me and I think a lot of other people, this is definitely a good thing. I kind of like when I go to my sport site and see that the "combat" section is filled with articles about AEW and WWE instead of 20 crap articles about UFC matches that nobody cares about and their attempts at pushing someone through to the top that totally doesn't deserve to be there.
I think that UFC is staying quiet because they have that White House event coming up soon so maybe we'll get lucky and get to take a breath while UFC stays quiet until then.
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It's just a month away and I guess I am excited. Mostly this is because I do think that both Justin Gaethje and Alex Pereira put on good shows in any fight they are in, win or lose. The problem in those two fights is going to be their opponents. While Topuria isn't a full on slouch, he does tend to go for wrestling as soon as he is facing a good striker (and Gaethje is one of the best) and Ciryl Gane backs up so much in all of his fights that he may as well have one of those audible warning sounds like they put on giant trucks when they reverse.
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Seriously, I can't stand this guy. UFC basically installed him at the top when they needed a "buff looking dude" in heavyweight and this just happened to coincide with France finally making MMA legal - if you can believe that this only recently happened.
I have seen snippets of this guy's fights but mostly he will be forever remembered by me as the guy that is always backing up and circling, always looking for a counter-attack but never looking for an attack. Well, that and poking Tom Aspinall in the eyes in what was perhaps the only HW fight worth looking forward to in the past 3-4 years.
Him vs. Pereira has the change to be really good but in my mind this is only because I was Gane to get so badly embarrassed that perhaps he goes away and doesn't come back.
The rest of the card is, not surprisingly, UFC playing favorites. They really want Bo Nickal to be in the limelight and this has been evident for a long time. Sean O'Malley is looking for a comeback run and he really needs to turn it up lest the MMA world and UFC turn their back on him.
Chandler is kind of in the same boat. He banked so much on getting a money-fight with Conor McGregor that he turned down other fights to the point where people kind of forgot he is an active fighter. He will need to seriously impress at this fight lest we also forget that he was once considered a dominant force in the UFC.
There is a UFC "pay-per-view" in 328 that takes place between now and then, but I am not going to bother watching it. They are banking on Sean Strickland's mouth being enough to get us to watch but the rest of the card are names I barely even recognize. The fact that Stricland is a nearly +500 underdog doesn't bode well for the match because even though I don't work in a Vegas casino this likely means that everyone is expecting Chimaev to immediately take the fight to the ground and keep it there for a 25-minute hugging contest.
So I am perfectly happy to just ignore UFC for a month and even once it does take place on White House grounds I will probably only tune in to see what sort of other crap they have planned for the evening and what sort of crazy level of security is going to be present there. Personally, I would like to see some aerial shots of how much of a perimeter they set up at the joint. There's a reason why events like this aren't held in super-secure areas after all.
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This is what it is meant to look like and that's cool. I would imagine that Netflix pulls down some serious numbers for this event... maybe even as big as Jake Paul fighting senior citizens.