This should be a fun exercise. Of course, that is true of most
Marquez fights, even if his career feels a bit aimless at the
moment. “The Cuban Missile Crisis” earned a UFC contract in 2017
via a win over Phil Hawes
on Dana White’s Contender Series. That, plus his UFC debut win over
Darren
Stewart, mostly told the story for Marquez. He may not be the
technically deepest fighter, but he is willing to leverage his
durability to win a war of attrition. Marquez did not get much done
in a subsequent decision loss to Alessio
Di Chirico in 2018, after which his career got derailed for two
and a half years due to injury. Marquez was successful upon his
return. He picked his spots a bit more in wins over Maki Pitolo
and Sam
Alvey, clamping on a late submission for the win in each. Then
came his knockout loss to Gregory
Rodrigues in June, which places the effectiveness of that new
approach under scrutiny. It figured to be a fight where Marquez
could once again leverage his chin to absorb Rodrigues’ power and
eventually find a finish, but instead, “Robocop” simply marched him
down and scored a quick win. Perhaps it was just some growing pains
of Marquez trying to add more thought to his approach, However, it
is a more worrying sign if Marquez’s durability is starting to
fade, particularly heading into this fight against Barriault.
Barriault was not too dissimilar to Marquez in his rise through the
ranks in his native Quebec. “Power Bar” was mostly content to use
his own durability and bruising physicality to lean on and outlast
his opposition. Barriault lost some margin for error in his move to
the UFC, with his Octagon campaign getting off to a rough start
with three straight losses. However, he has added enough craft to
his game to find wins at the UFC level, even it is still not via a
particularly pretty approach. If nothing else, it has been good to
see him rebound from his own worrying knockout loss against
Chidi
Njokuani over a year ago. These two are likely just going to
wind up mashing into each other, and the result probably banks on
Marquez’s current level of durability. If Barriault cannot score a
knockout, he will probably wind up leaving an opening for Marquez’s
potent grappling game. The pick is Marquez via second-round
submission.
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