Lightweights
Anthony Pettis (22-9) vs. Diego Ferreira (16-2)Advertisement
Meet the new Pettis, same as the old Pettis. Heading into 2015, Pettis looked to be a pillar of the UFC going forward. He was coming off a successful lightweight title defense against Gilbert Melendez, and his combination of good looks and an exciting fighting style made him an obvious choice to be a breakthrough fighter in the coming years. The promotion put its weight behind Pettis accordingly, somewhat infamously getting him a spot on Wheaties boxes, along with launching a “Welcome to the Show” campaign that echoed Pettis’ “Showtime” moniker. It took a matter of months for that all to look like a mistake. By that March, Rafael dos Anjos had used his pressure style to bully Pettis for five rounds, lay down a beating and then eventually take the lightweight championship. Even worse, he mapped out a blueprint for other fighters to follow. Eddie Alvarez managed to pressure and control Pettis on route to an ugly win, and from there, the former lightweight champ just seemed broken. Pettis tried a bunch of different things, attempting to adapt his style into something more technically sound and even going the last resort route of cutting down to 145 pounds, but nothing really clicked. As a result, Pettis just decided to go back to what brought him to the dance, essentially abandoning all the changes and adjustments he had made over the years in favor of hunting for dynamic finishes. So far, that has been as successful an approach as any. Pettis blew the doors off of Michael Chiesa in 2018 and scored one of the biggest upsets of 2019, obliterating Stephen Thompson with a sudden Superman punch in March. After losing to Nate Diaz in the latter’s return bout over the summer, Pettis surprisingly finds himself on gatekeeper duty, taking on one of last year’s breakout fighters in Ferreira.
Ferreira, a Brazilian who has been fighting out of Texas, was chugging along as a perfectly fine prospect until 2016, when he got flagged for an anti-doping violation that resulted in his being put on the shelf for two years. That looked to derail his career, but instead, Ferreira seemed to make the most of the time off, as he has been a much-improved fighter ever since. Ferreira has always been a bit of an offensively focused and defensively lax madman, but he has doubled down on that even more lately. His 2018 return saw him run through Jared Gordon, while 2019 saw him outlast underratedly tough Russians Rustam Khabilov and Mairbek Taisumov. Ferreira is an interesting puzzle for opponents, as the Khabilov fight in particular showed. The typical way to neutralize an aggressive striker is to take him down, but Ferreira has a strong grappling background on which to fall back, which either allows him to keep things standing or disincentivizes opponents from even taking the action to the mat. At some point, Ferreira’s lack of defense figures to cost him, which makes this fight against Pettis an interesting but tough chance at a breakout win.
In a macro sense, this is a fairly easy fight to break down. Pettis is as reliant as ever on scoring a finish, so it comes down to whether or not Ferreira is defensively open enough for the former lightweight champ to nail him with something big. It is possible, but this looks like the Brazilian’s fight to lose. With Pettis’ return to his old style comes a return to his old weaknesses, and while Ferreira is not your typical control artist, he should be able to pressure Pettis and make him uncomfortable with striking volume and constant activity. Pettis can still uncork some beautiful violence, but opponents like Thompson have typically given him the oxygen and the slow pace to do so. That should not be the case here. The pick is Ferreira via clear decision.
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