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Hello, kids. Resident curmudgeon Uncle Victor here, with more answers to questions that probably don’t really need them. But they got asked, so we’re gonna cook something with them.
Wanna see your questions answered here? Don’t be shy. Shoot us an e-mail at [email protected], and we’ll try to scratch that itch. We’ll leave the light on for you, just keep your shoes at the entrance.
Recommended listening? Got you.
Paulo Costa legacy? Oh, baby…
If Paulo Costa is not long for the UFC (or MMA), how do you think his tenure is remembered?
Burned bright, faded quick. That’s it. Lest you think I’m being too harsh on the guy, let’s look at how Paulo shook out. He got a submission win and a tough split loss on Ultimate Fighter Brazil way back in 2014. Undeterred, he rattled off five straight wins until the UFC just had to sign the guy. I should note that run had some quality wins on the Brazilian circuit against Bruno Assis, Adriano Balby and Eduardo Ramon. He made the most of his start with back to back finishes over Gareth McLellan and Oluwale Bamgbose with thunderous finishes.
Here’s where it gets weird. Much hay was made of the way that he dispatched former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks, but Johny was both fat and shot at that point. That’s not to disparage either guy, but this was a fight that that particular version of Johny was never going to win, and almost everyone knew that. Costa got a name on his resume, but was it really that impressive? It led to Hendricks leaving MMA altogether and Costa had beaten a shell of a former champ.
Then Costa beat the perennially gunshy Uriah Hall with an impressive finish, and earned a respectable and hard-fought unanimous decision against crafty veteran Yoel Romero. That earned him a shot against Israel Adesanya that laid all of his flaws bare for the world to see. The man only has a few weapons, and relies so heavily on his athleticism that there’s barely a Plan B when things go south.
But then things got really weird when he missed weight badly for his fight with Marvin Vettori for reasons that didn’t make much sense. He looked terrible despite the accommodations of fighting up a weight class for that one. Vettori made damn sure to let him know he felt about that fight, and most fans watching agreed. Sure, that was followed by a win over Luke Rockhold, but that was a Rockhold that was already faded and was on the shelf for three years. To make things worse, neither party looked impressive.
He’s up against Robert Whittaker, and win or lose, that’s his legacy already. A talented and gifted athlete with a ton of power, serviceable grappling, but not much depth or layers to the rest of his game. He thrashed the lower end of the division, crushed a blown up former welterweight champ that was struggle to keep it together at middleweight, then got the height of his career against a longtime top 3-5 guy in Romero.
On paper and in practice, a guy like Costa should have beat the brakes off Rockhold. Currently only 32 years old, he’s been fighting since 2012. That’s 12 years of wear and tear, plus his development appears to have stagnated. At least guys like Mousasi and Romero could be looked at as guys that could have very well been champ if one or two things swung in a different direction. Costa appears to have already peaked and made his way to the downhill part of his career.
Even with a win against Whittaker (which will not happen, I’m sure of it), look at the rest of the field ahead of him. Whittaker’s ranked number 3, and Adesanya is ranked #2. Do you have any faith that he’d beat Izzy in a rematch? Strickland is #1, maybe Costa can squeak one by in a three-rounder. Dricus is champ, and there’s no way the current version of Costa beats present-day Dricus.
But zoom out and look back — does Costa beat Cannonier, currently ranked fourth? I doubt it. Vettori’s ranked fifth, and no. I don’t see Costa beating him in a rematch, either. Hell, Nassourdine Imavov, Brendan Allen and Roman Dolidze are just outside the top five. You really find it unrealistic for either or all of those guys to dispose of Costa? It was a fun run at first, but the wheels fell off a while ago. Good luck marketing that Secret Juice thing, hope he makes bank off that.
Just go nuts, it’s whatever
You have the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia backing you, so money is no object, what’s the fight you make?
Buddy, lemme tell you something. See how big the current slate of events is in Saudi? I’m gonna go bigger. And the only way to do that is freakshow fights. Have a guy fight a bunch of defanged cobras. Have two men wrestle a toothless bear. Just do the kind of thing that Man vs Beast show was doing like 20 years ago, but in a confined space and with a ton of fireworks. Or better yet, just give Fight Circus a ton of money to go even bigger.
It’s not like the Saudis are above doing any of this. In fact, they probably already have something like this in private, away from the unwashed eyes of plebs like us. The actual honest-to-god competitive fights are either already made or currently in the works, because they’ve got a lot of pure and unbridled evil to launder. With very little leg work and/or elbow grease, you can even sneak in some more insidious items for good measure.
Just take any fight in any sport that’s backed up due to finances and throw all the money at them. Get Mike Tyson in there against another old guy. Give Idris Elba another kickboxing bout. Bring Edmond Tarverdyan in to have another MMA bout with Ronda cornering him. Look, you want to go purely after the purity of sport, or do you wanna have fun? Because we can have both when we have all the money and none of the morals.
Look, man… these people have infinite money. The stakes are just gonna get higher because nobody can compete with them. So they’ll give you real-life Tekken at some point down the road, and I might help make that happen if I play my cards right.
I don’t want to make it seem like a big “who care” thing, it just seems like a natural evolution of things to come. Ngannou already cemented himself as one-man, must-watch spectacle, so they’ll book him against anyone and succeed.
Only thing they don’t have is their own in-house MMA league, but that’s fine. PFL seems to be going above and beyond when it comes to being a good partner, as evidenced by their debut after the Bellator merger over in Riyadh for their champ vs champ card. You can flex your imagination muscles as hard as you want, but them wheels are already in motion.
Who gains what?
UFC 298 is a make or break weekend for a few fighters, who has the most to gain (outside of Topuria)?
Got a few for this one. First up, Merab winning over a former champ in Cejudo? That’s a big feather in his cap, a cap he can wear with that amazing Michael Jackson jacket he stole off O’Malley. It probably gets him the next title shot, too.
Fluffy Hernandez vs Roman Kopilov has far lesser stakes, but it’s a battle between two very good middleweight prospects in a division where everyone desperately needs to find ways of separating themselves from the rest of the pack.
Finally, Josh Quinlan has a chance to add to his highlight reel, rebound from his lone professional loss, and maybe start to gain real momentum in the welterweight division.
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