Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports
Phil and David breakdown everything you need to know about Dominick Reyes vs. Chris Weidman for UFC Boston, and everything you don’t about the light heavyweight hex.
Dominick Reyes vs. Chris Weidman headlines UFC on ESPN 6 this October 18, 2019 at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
One sentence summary
David: Deck Support: the IT versus Long Island version
Phil: A clash of weird MMA curses, as “only bad middleweights make good LHWs” goes head to head with “all LHW prospects will disappoint you,” and only one can survive
Stats
Record: Dominick Reyes 11-0 | Chris Weidman 14-4
Odds: Dominick Reyes -145 | Chris Weidman +145
History / Introduction to the fighters
David: Reyes is a great story. His story is so good, in fact, that the UFC continues its tone deaf run of “isn’t that crazy? One of our premiere contenders still works technical support to make ends meet!” soundbites. Dana White is how I imagine Elon Musk would sound if you took Musk off the spectrum, and bought him a portable beer pong table at age 15. Granted, for Reyes, this is all part of his evolution as a human. For Dana, Reyes is just another commodity he hopes can replace the cache Chris Weidman once had.
Phil: Reyes is that most rare and threatened breed of unicorn: the LHW prospect who looks like he might just be legit. He looks like he has cardio, composure, power, durability, a decent technical game… so the question is what’s going to be the thing that causes him to suddenly and horrifically crash and burn? Is he going to completely implode from the bottom? Will his gas tank suddenly disintegrate? Shooting into a guillotine? I’m excited to find out!
David: Chris Weidman did the unthinkable in what feels like ages ago. Now he routinely makes the wrong side of the highlight reel. In theory, he has a great template to work with for a fighter: lowkey technical striking, and brilliant grappling. In practice, his lack of athleticism becomes more emphasized, and middleweight is filled to the brim with heavyweight punchers. Unfortunately for him, Reyes is one of the those guys. Only now it’s at light heavyweight. Fingers crossed?
Phil: It’s hard to think of a more heartbreaking run than Weidman’s recent career. With the sole exception of the win over Gastelum (one which has, in fairness, aged startlingly well) every one of his recent fights has followed the same approximate pattern: he starts off strong, looks like he’s figured something out, and then gets finished in incredibly brutal fashion. He looks well-coached, like he has a gameplan for every opponent, but the unbreakable confidence of the man who took the last fight on his contract against Anderson Silva without renegotiating because he was so confident that he would win seems to be long gone.
What’s at stake?
David: I don’t know. Either Weidman is being sacrificed to the light heavyweight fight gods. Or light heavyweight will highlight his unique strengths.
Phil: What’s LHW doing at the moment? Jones and Adesanya seem to be sniping at each other, other than that it’s kind of a wasteland. Blachowicz vs Jacare? Johnny Walker? Cripes. I guess the winner of this one might be one or two away from a title shot.
Where do they want it?
David: Reyes is a fun, rangy striker who exudes technical skill inside of a brawler’s demeanor. From the outside, he punches with heavy kicks to the body, and up high, and he’s good at shifting from a straight left to violent combinations in close. His stance switches are something else to watch for, which keeps his main attack from being easily anticipated. In general, he has a good fight GPS; showing a keen sense of awareness for when where to attack, and doing so in dynamic, interesting ways. This overall approach allows him limit and avoid damage. It’s not that he’s great defensively, so much as his offense limits the amount of defense he’s required to employ. He’s not a pushover on the ground, where again his instincts serve him well. He’s willing to attack with submissions and doesn’t Melvin Guillard his way back to his fight (which is to say, ‘panic out’ of pressure).
Phil: Reyes is a fairly standard southpaw outfighter: he moves around on the outside and sets up the rear hand straight, body kick or head kick. However, he’s shown some impressive craft in his time in the UFC: dismantling Jared Cannonier with a shoulder roll into uppercut, and outlasting the resurgent Volkan Oezdemir. The main question mark has to be his wrestling: if there is something that we haven’t seen much of, it’s his ability to consistently stop takedowns. Jeremy Kimball and (briefly) OSP were able to take him down, but in those situations he showed a good sense of priority: attacking, sweeping or fighting hands and moving back to the cage to get up as soon as possible. How well this stands up to a grappler of the quality of Weidman remains something of an open question.
David: I mentioned lowkey technical striking to describe Weidman, and I think even in his losses, he’s shown that. He develops a good rhythm, sticking to basic fundamentals that work with one goal (pressure), and within that he’s able to sequence further offense to the body and head. He does it all with pretty decent power as well. His wrestling is a little archaic in some ways. Because his boxing is somewhat plodding, his inability to close the gap with speed makes him extra vulnerable when he’s sprawled out for a double leg. Part of the issue with his grappling in recent years is that as his style has shifted, he’s been more invested in refining elements of his striking than selling out on the scramble. Granted, even at his most successful, his grappling wasn’t what won him fights, but it’s a part of his game that can’t wane if he wants to be successful. Especially in a fight like this.
Phil: Weidman started off as a fearless, indestructible pressure fighter. He came forward with measured steps, and looked to herd opponents into the left hook, the right hand or the body kick. Then something changed. Perhaps it was just the sheer damage that this style tended to absorb, as he often seemed to rely on his opponents taking a backward step, and started to soak up hits if they just met him head on. Perhaps it was all the injuries. Perhaps it was just that his confidence started to wane. Whatever the reason, we’ve seen Weidman become more of an outfighter in recent fights- using lateral movement, fighting behind a quick jab, and he’s actually become quite good at it. He’s always been a big middleweight with notably long arms, and he has decent accuracy and discipline. He still has no real defense, though, which means that this style has unfortunately disintegrated in the same way that his old one started to. He remains a good wrestler, but the same flaws have persisted: a tendency to stick doggedly to one technique, to destruction: in this case, the single leg.
Insight from past fights
David: One of the recent developments in Weidman’s game is his movement. His forward movement in the Jacare fight was quicker, but awkward. He would stutter forward, feinting a big right hand, but would mostly just move back, waiting to counter. It’s not bad, all things considered. It looks like he has good instincts, unleashing left hooks and resetting with the overhand right with modest speed and good power. But man. Jacare just ate that shit, and windmilled through his attack like an eight year old attacking a pinata and it worked. Particularly inside the clinch, until Weidman took the mother of all forehead shots. This bodes well for Reyes, since his attack is extremely dangerous in this random collar tie fests, and projects to take advantage of Weidman’s often-lethargic defense.
Phil: That Cannonier fight was surprisingly instructive, partially because Cannonier has proven to be something of a force at Weidman’s weight class. He’s been so physically overwhelming that genuinely good middleweights like Branch and Hermansson have simply bounced off him, and Reyes dealt with him easily. That uppercut is also worth considering, should Weidman go back to the single leg well a few to many times again.
X-Factors
David: I don’t remember any weight cut drama, so probably just the usual: fight curses, and chaos theory.
Phil: The curse that all promising LHWs have to disappoint us? That’s gotta be it right?
Prognostication
David: If Weidman showed a concerted interest in playing to his true strengths, I could see him winning a scramble with near-certain ease. He’s extremely good at identifying choke opportunities, and a generally fluid, top-heavy grappler. But his wrestling isn’t good, his defense is bad, and those are both things Reyes should exploit with relative ease. Weidman has looked faster in recent fights, so that’s something to consider. But it’s not enough. Dominick Reyes by TKO, round 1.
Phil: As much as it would be a little sad to see another 205lb prospect get derailed, I have to admit I wouldn’t mind seeing Weidman pick up the win here. This isn’t a BJ Penn type decline where Weidman was the author of his own destruction. It seems closer to a Jake Ellenberger situation, where you can tell that Weidman is trying his damnedest but something is just not clicking for him any more. That being said, he’s going to have to outwrestle and outmuscle a bigger, fresher man, and he just hasn’t been looking powerful or physical lately. Dominick Reyes by TKO, round 2.