(“I’ll see you there, NOBODY!” Photo via Sherdog.)
The baseless cheap shot I just took in that caption aside, I’m actually pretty excited about the UFC’s decision to book a flyweight title fight between Demetrious Johnson and Ali Bagautinov as the main event of UFC 174. As Ariel Helwani noted when breaking the news earlier today, the fight will serve as Johnson’s first time headlining a pay-per-view and should make for another highly-technical, entertaining fight on his resume. Plus, with a maybesortaprobably #1 contender bout between Rory MacDonald and Tyron Woodley serving as the evening’s co-main event, UFC 174 is quickly becoming the most stacked card of the summer, amiright guyz?!!
(Sadly, there is no MMA equivalent of this reaction gif. Yet.)
After leaving his first seven UFC contests in the hands of the judges, “Mighty Mouse” has scored back-back-finishes of John Moraga and Joseph Benavidez via fifth round submission and first round KO, respectively. Bagautinov, on the other hand, has notched three straight victories over someone, someone else, and John Lineker since entering the UFC back in September of 2013.
As for the rest of UFC 174, well, we’ll just let these random Twitter users break it down…
“If u don’t liek it dont by it dummy!” — Anonymous
Actually, now that I look over the Twitters and Youtubes, it would appear that many people aren’t even sharing my enthusiasm for the main event:
Jeez, a bunch of size-ists in here (although I will agree with Mr. Bowker that UFC 174 will draw shit numbers, you know, because of the main card being garbage-ass and all).
Considering the last two events to take place in Vancouver (UFC 115 and 131) didn’t even feature a title fight, Canadian fans should be more than satisfied with at least one of the (likely) twelve fights transpiring on June 14th. And that’s what the modern era of MMA is about, right? Stringing together just enough mildly intriguing fights to warrant charging less and less fans $50 to watch it?
One more time.