UFC on ESPN 17—UFC Vegas 13, if you like—rolled into the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s hometown HQ with a 10-fight card, truncated by the last-minute loss of Ian Heinisch vs. Brendan Allen due to COVID-19. Even without that likely “Fight of the Night” candidate, however, we were treated to Top 10 contenders staking out their place in their respective divisions, prospects showing out, and Octagon newcomers showing us the right and wrong ways to make a first impression. Amid it all, some fighters' stocks rose while others fell.
STOCK UP
Glover Teixeira: Five fights into one of the more improbable win streaks in recent memory, Teixeira’s detractors are all out of “yeah, buts.” Yeah, but Karl Roberson was a middleweight stepping up on short notice. Yeah, Ion Cutelaba is a dangerous knockout artist, but his liabilities on the ground are well established. Yeah, Nikita Krylov is a Top 15 contender, but he’s always been prone to lapses in fight IQ that let him lose to anyone on any given night. Yeah, Anthony Smith was a Cinderella story and recent title challenger, but now it looks as though Teixeira might have caught him at the beginning of his slide.
There is no “yeah, but” about Teixeira’s performance in Saturday’s main event. In strangling No. 1 contender Thiago Santos—as a 2-to-1 underdog—the 41-year-old removed any doubt that he is the most deserving challenger for newly minted light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz. Twice, Teixeira had to weather the expected blitzes from “Marreta,” showing a solid chin, a veteran’s poise and frankly astonishing recovery for a fighter of his age and mileage. While Teixeira’s lethally heavy top game has been one of the worst-kept secrets in MMA for over a decade, his nimbleness on the ground and in transition was similarly eye-opening, from managing to land in full mount while badly rocked in the first round, to the sweep and lightning back-take that set up the finishing sequence in the third. The title picture will continue to sort itself out between now and the end of the year, with middleweight champ Israel Adesanya apparently balking at waiting until March for Blachowicz and Jon Jones always hovering over the proceedings, but Teixeira is the man who is winning fights, right now, in the division in question. No ifs, ands or buts.
Raoni Barcelos: When he’s firing on all cylinders, as he most certainly was Saturday night, Barcelos looks like a man who could give any bantamweight on the planet a run for his money. With a rollicking “Fight of the Night” performance against a very tough, very game Khalid Taha that was energetic enough to be fun despite Barcelos clearly winning all three rounds, the 33-year-old Brazilian reminded us what he brings to the table: athleticism, power and one of the most complete skill sets in the division. Now on a nine-fight winning streak, the last five in the UFC, the only possible knock on Barcelos is his schedule. The waters of the bantamweight division are as fast-moving as they are deep, and fighting just once in 2020—and just five times in the last four years—won’t be enough to propel him up the rankings to the extent he probably deserves. Here’s hoping he fights three or four times in 2021 and gets his shot at the division’s elite.
Giga Chikadze: Stock up…barely. As a preposterous -1000 favorite against short-notice newcomer James Krause-Simmons, Chikadze needed to do something spectacular just to hold position; a dull or competitive fight would have been a “stock down” moment for one of the UFC’s favorite prospects. Fortunately for everyone except Simmons, Chikadze delivered. A left body kick—horrifyingly loud in the empty venue—marked the beginning of the end, setting up the unblocked left head kick that finished the fight seconds later. While the fight was almost meaningless on paper, at least until Simmons proves he’s even UFC material, in an era in which Khamzat Chimaev wrangled a date with a Top 3 fighter without having beaten anyone in the Top 25, style points absolutely count. Chikadze earned some on Saturday.
STOCK DOWN
Claudia Gadelha: At first glance, “Claudinha” wouldn’t seem to be in dire straits; she lost a competitive decision to rising star Xiaonan Yan on Saturday, but had won two straight before that, and is 5-3 in the strawweight division since her last title shot against then-champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk. However, in an inversion of Teixeira’s situation, the “yeah, buts” get more glaring the harder—and the more recently—you look. Her previous win over Angela Hill was a questionable one, and that iffy decision is the only thing standing between Gadelha and the first losing streak of her career.
More disturbingly, in her recent fights Gadelha has looked less and less like the woman who once earned two UFC title shots. The elements that once defined her game—an aggressive and fairly diverse takedown attack set up by power punching—have given way to a more one-dimensional grind with little or no setup. It is telling that Gadelha landed two of her first three takedown attempts against Yan in the first round, then went 0-for-a-lot for the rest of the fight. That highlights the other issue: Where Gadelha was once as relentless a bruiser as the division had to offer, she has been the more tired fighter in her last several fights, win or lose. Perhaps a move up to flyweight, where her onetime opponent Jessica Andrade made a very successful debut last month, is in order.
Tanner Boser: “The Bulldozer” never got out of first gear, losing a lackluster unanimous decision to the ageless Andrei Arlovski. While losing to Arlovski is no shame in itself—the Belarusian’s continued relevance in the heavyweight division at age 41 is stunning—the optics of the fight were, to put it bluntly, awful. And they were more damaging for Boser than for Arlovski, who has maintained the aforementioned divisional relevance by becoming an ultra-cautious counter striker and is a known quantity in that regard. Boser, on the other hand, came into Saturday’s co-main event on a two-fight winning streak, both of which came by punches but had been made possible by Boser’s movement and low kicks. Combined with his relative youth and ongoing physical transformation—Boser lost nearly 30 pounds between fights this year—they made him a sudden person of interest in a division where literally anyone is four wins away from a title shot.
Unfortunately, that movement and especially those kicks were largely absent against Arlovski. Instead, the two combined to put on a dull, low-volume boxing match that did neither man’s stock much good. Worst of all, in the third round, a round Boser had to know he needed in order to win, he still couldn’t seem to find that other gear, even after hurting the chinny Arlovski early. This is by no means the end for the mulleted Canadian—it’s still heavyweight, after all—but it’s definitely a step back.