Phil Mackenzie takes an idle look back at the snake-bitten UFC 223 card, featuring the crowning of yet another lightweight king.
UFC 223 saw the new undisputed(?) lightweight champion of the UFC crowned, and Rose Namajunas cement herself as the queen of the strawweight division. Aside from the madness that went down outside the event, what else was there to pick up from what we saw?
Overall thoughts:
The three-body problem: there’s a physics problem which involves mapping three different bodies which orbit one another, and it is essentially impossible to solve exactly where they’ll end up. The UFC now has its own three-body problem, where Khabib Nurmagomedov, Tony Ferguson and Conor McGregor all have their a claim to the belt and/or the title of “best” lightweight. None has a particularly dominant claim, and all are now likely to be shelved for one reason or another:
- Khabib is going to take Ramadan off as usual
- Conor has whatever legal and financial issues with the UFC to sort out
- Tony has to recover from surgery
This is likely a bit less insoluble than the physics problem, because instead of gravity we only have to solve for money, and that has a tendency to distort these things in more predictable ways. “Draw” is a well-chosen word. The smallest draw is Ferguson, and so he’s the most likely to get sidelined. He’s also the oldest and is quite badly injured.
A secondary issue, though, is that while these three revolve around each other, it will be difficult for anyone else to interrupt them. Barboza vs Lee will serve as a referendum on Nurmagomedov rather than a chance to crown a new contender. Gaethje-Poirier will be hellaciously fun, but similarly unlikely to break the title orbit. Eddie Alvarez thinks that he can still get another shot, and he’s probably wrong.
These five fighters will likely be forced to cannibalize one another or sit on the shelf for the foreseeable future. It is also in their collective interest to deny fights against up-and-comers (say, James Vick) who could further muddy the water.
Nurmagomedov vs Iaquinta
Khabib is able to turn incredibly small openings into takedowns. Watching him convert low singles into ankle picks into takedown chains is unreal. This was the takedown which Randy Couture used to get down wrestling novice James Toney, and is something which just doesn’t happen with pretty much anyone else. Against almost any other wrestler, the opponent would limp-leg and be out of there. Incredible.
Khabib kind of has to convert incredibly small openings into takedowns? It is very hard to hit takedowns in modern MMA without setting it up with hands. I think there’s merit to the idea that Khabib was taking some time to work his striking later in the fight, but the low single to ankle pick became harder to hit as the fight went longer, because both fighters became increasingly slippery. Even with Khabib’s freak speed and power, there are some physical limits on how effectively you can throw your entire body at someone who pivots and sprawls as quickly as possible. It is rad that he can grab a tiny part of an opponent’s body and convert, but that he even went for it multiple times shows how thin the margin is.
I don’t know how much Khabib’s lack of preparation affected his approach but I suspect a good deal His basic gameplan (“smesh”) seems unsubtle from the outside, but both Khabib and his father Abdulmanap are tape junkies, and Khabib has always been a tremendously underrated analytical fighter. He’s shown the ability to fight in both counter-based (RDA, Healy) and pressure-based (most of his other fights) gameplans.
Khabib’s backs up and leans away in response to strikes, and that is not great. I’ve said it before, but his overall defensive posture is reminiscent of Daniel Cormier’s. Like Cormier, this leaves him vulnerable to extended combinations, and most specifically body shots: one of Iaquinta’s most successful sequences was a one-two to the gut as Nurmagomedov backed up. However, another theme of the event was No-One Punches Dagestanis In The Body (ref. Bochniak,K vs Magomedsharipov, Z.) so this is a theory for another day.
Khabib’s jab is very good. His handspeed in particular is absurd. The bits around it are less so, but like Junior dos Santos, this is a weapon which a lot of people will just be unable to get around to exploit issues with defense or footwork. The guess between getting dinged in the face and stepping forward and getting clinched will be tough for most.
The jab doesn’t blend that well into the rest of his game. I’m still not really sure how effective Khabib is as a phase-shifter. He’s not like GSP, where A looks like B looks like C. The jab worked spatially, because Iaquinta kept his head low and his hips back in fear of the takedown, but aside from Khabib’s beloved step-in uppercut, or running bicycle knee, I don’t really know how much his striking and grappling interlocks. I have facetiously said on multiple occasions that I think Tony remains a hard matchup for Khabib because his arms are disproportionately long, so that the spatial factor is diminished, but I’m also sort of not kidding.
Al is a good fighter, but still not a tremendously straight or quick puncher. Watching him get marked up by the Nurmagomedov jab was reminiscent of the Masvidal fight, where he was a step behind in terms of pure speed.
Al is a better mat grappler than I gave him credit for, given a historic tendency to get submitted by people with beards. He survived some perilous situations much better than Edson Barboza (and also Michael Johnson, for what that’s worth). This may simply be an artefact of fighting a different type of grappler- if he’s focused on getting out of bad positions, then that’s a basic priority which favours him versus control rather than submissions. If he fought RNC specialists like Kevin Lee or Chiesa and they got the back as Khabib did, there’s a solid chance that he’d be out of there. An alternative hypothesis may be that it is the moustache rather than the beard itself which troubles Iaquinta. This is worth exploring, given that Khabib was rocking the Caucasus chin strap.
It’s OK to talk about Khabib like he is a good fighter. Some of the weird dissatisfaction with Khabib’s win comes from an expectation that he was just going to truck opponents the moment he laid a finger on them and relentlessly brutalize everyone with no pushback. No. He’s a great fighter, not a magician, and it was a great performance which showed some unexpected strengths in some areas and some weaknesses in others, like fights normally tend to. He tired a little, but clearly has a higher gear which he can switch to if necessary. The primary takeaway is that he won a short-notice blow-out over a well-regarded opponent, and took minimal damage.
Rose vs Joanna
Questions answered. Not only did Rose show that she could win a competitive decision, but even more impressively she turned the tide back of one of the most determined and ferocious round winners in the sport. The fun thing about this one was that two common traits of the fighters dictated the shape of the fight, but in a pleasingly fractal way. The historic knock on Rose was that she starts off hot, but then slips steadily into a lower gear as the fight goes on. On the other hand, Jedrzejczyk tends to start slow but steadily take over. The match played out in broadly this way, but with the same story in microcosm in every round. Rose would start out landing hard shots, and then Joanna would chip her way back inside with leg kicks or short flurries. Rose’s late takedown was so well done not because it did anything significant, but because it cut off Joanna’s “time” for winning. It showed how flaws can be recontextualized. Rose was able to surge, fade, and recover within the bounds of a round and rest period, rather across the fight as a whole. That is awesome.
Rose punches better than Joanna does. In a competitive fight where Jedrzejczyk outlanded Rose, the main difference was just that Rose puts more weight effectively behind her shots. From Marquardt to Carwin to Gaethje to Namajunas, Trevor Wittman really does teach tremendous punching mechanics.
Jedrzejczyk’s dreaded weigh-in excuse did seem to have been a factor, as JJ was less visibly sluggish and frail than she was in their first fight, and seemed less blind to Rose’s punches.
JJ stuck with what brought her to the dance: Some of Rose’s issues with the clinch were still present, and Joanna was far more effective there, but the fight was mostly range kickboxing. It’s difficult to criticize this much: in many ways the game of a specialist fighter is a core part of who they are and they don’t abandon it because of misplaced pride but because the faith in it is faith in themselves. Could Maia have just outstruck Covington on the feet without gassing himself out by going for takedowns? Could Jedrzejczyk have bumrushed Namajunas into the clinch? It’s a possibility, but then they probably wouldn’t be the fighters that they are.
Other fights:
Maybe featherweight is better than lightweight now. I don’t know. But sometimes I look at fights like Moicano-Kattar, relatively unheralded fighters who have, in Kattar’s case, come up relatively quickly in the division, and they are just tremendously… subtle fighters. We’ve seen Kattar overcome Burgos’ bodywork and attrition with his jab, Moicano crush Kattar’s jab with counter leg kicks, and Ortega gradually wear down Moicano with body work. It’s such a good division.
Kyle Bochniak, Action Fighter. Where the blue hell did that version of Kyle Bochniak come from? His last bout against Brandon Davis was a massive step up, but he largely used backwards movement, baiting the plodding Davis to run into counter double legs and overhands. Who was the fearless banger who took Zabit flying kicks and step-knees to the chin and asked for more? Bochniak has now shown that he’s outrageously tough both physically and mentally, and can fight moving backwards and forwards. That’s enough to be interesting, especially if he can add a bit more breadth to his game. He probably won’t be able to dent the top 15 in a division as strong at featherweight, but I’m looking forward to seeing him fight again, and that’s a pleasant surprise.
Welcome to the sadness zone, Joe Lauzon At some point a fighter moves beyond generating happiness (“Great, Fighter X is on this card!”) to an uneasy worry, to just plain sadness; the knowledge that even if they win a given fight that it’ll just set them up for another depressing beating down the line. That’s where Joe is likely to stay for the foreseeable future. Bummer.
OAM the overperformer I even said it in my run-down of the fight (where I picked against him), but Olivier Aubin-Mercier continues to surprise. He’s quietly building the kind of coherent, generalist skillset which is difficult for almost anyone to deal with- an improving takedown threat from both the bodylock and shots, an avid back-taker, and a solid fundamental striker who works behind the jab. Add a potent offensive clinch game to that. While it does seem like Evan Dunham might have a pronounced weakness to body shots, it’s still a big feather in Aubin-Mercier’s cap that he was able to finish the veteran.