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Every fight matters, but some matter just a little more.
In some ways, a win is a win and a loss is a loss. The difference between one fight and the next lies in what’s at stake. Picture the fighter on a losing streak who knows he or she is likely fighting for their job; or conversely, any title fight in a top regional organization, where the combatants know they are almost certainly being scouted by the big boys. At other times, a fight feels especially important for reasons that are harder to quantify, but no less real. Whether it’s the symbolic heft of being a pioneer in MMA from one’s country, or the simple added spice of two fighters who really hate each other’s guts, that fight means just a little more.
This Saturday, the Ultimate Fighting Championship serves up its first pay-per-view offering of 2022, as UFC 270 takes place at Honda Center in Anaheim, California. In some ways, the promotion itself is under the gun to stand and deliver as much as any individual fighter on the card, as UFC 270 is also the first event since the UFC’s broadcast partner in the U.S., ESPN, hiked the price of pay-per-views from $69.99 to $74.99, after a similar $5 increase just a year ago. Considering that ESPN has levied these price increases during a global pandemic, when catching a UFC at your local wings n’ boobs — or hosting a watch party at home and splitting the bill with a couple of friends — may not be advisable or even possible, fans might be forgiven for asking, “Is this card worth it?”
However, that’s between the UFC, ESPN and the fans. The 24 men and women who make up the lineup of UFC 270 have the same brief as ever: Win the fight, entertain the fans — preferably both. From the grip of debuting Dana White's Contender Series graduates on the early prelims all the way to the monstrous title doubleheader at the top of the card, some of those fighters need a win more urgently than others, for a variety of reasons. Here are three fighters under just a little extra pressure to stand and deliver at UFC 270.
Make History or Else, Deiveson Figueiredo
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that this column almost never features title fight participants. That is because the stakes are usually so obvious as to not be worth going over; everyone’s ultimate goal is to win — or keep — a belt. However, sometimes the stakes are high, but not equally so for both participants. Such is the case in Saturday’s co-main event, as Brandon Moreno, Figueiredo’s opponent at UFC 270, is risking far less, even though he is the one putting the belt on the line. If Moreno loses, their series will stand at 1-1-1. It is a near-certainty that we would get the first quadrilogy in UFC history, and we would probably get it immediately. Add in the fact that the Mexican is six years younger, and no matter what happens in Anaheim, you get the feeling that he will have many more chances to win and defend titles.
The same is not true of Figueiredo. If he loses, the series will stand at 0-2-1. Never say never, considering that we were about to see Alexander Volkanovski vs. Max Holloway 3, but he will have a hard road back to a title shot for as long as Moreno is around. At 34, with a history of difficult, draining weight cuts, “Deus da Guerra” will have a tough choice: hang around as an ultra-elite gatekeeper and hope that Moreno loses or the stars somehow align to necessitate a late replacement or interim title, or move up and try his luck at bantamweight. That’s some kind of pressure.
Trevin Giles: Smaller “Problem,” Bigger Gamble
Speaking of forced and unforced weight shifts, if anyone had been screaming that Giles needed to drop to welterweight in order to salvage his career, I sure missed the outcry. He was not a particularly small middleweight, and in fact made his UFC debut at light heavyweight — and won. His undefeated pre-UFC run included wins over big n’ tall future co-workers Brendan Allen, Isaac Villanueva and Ryan Spann. While he had a rough night at the office in his last outing, getting knocked out by Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 264 last July, he rode into that fight on a three-bout win streak that saw the Houston cop reach the fringes of the Top 10. Ironically, the last of those three wins was against Roman Dolidze, whose own drop from light heavyweight to middleweight had similarly come out of the blue.
Yet here we are, with “The Problem” set to make his 170-pound debut, and the risk that if he loses, the move will look unnecessary at best, actively harmful at worst — especially if he misses weight or seems obviously compromised by the cut. The margin of error is made even narrower by the matchup: undefeated Contender Series alumnus Michael Morales, who has every appearance of being the real deal and is actually the slight betting favorite as of the beginning of fight week.
There is upside to Giles’ decision. Whereas some fighters try dropping in weight as desperation move to turn around a career in its final chapter, in competitive free-fall or both, Giles is just 29 and as noted, is 3-1 over the last two years. If he wins on Saturday, as a fringe contender in his previous division, he will get to jump the line just a bit at welterweight, which is otherwise probably the hardest division in the UFC for a fighter to work his way up from the bottom. Think of Gilbert Burns or Michael Chiesa, who received similar benefit of the doubt after coming to 170 from the opposite direction. The risk and reward are both crystal clear — and prodigious.
Ilia Topuria: Short Notice + Long Odds = Zero Margin for Error
It seems as though just about every week, this column ends up highlighting a fighter who is a massive betting favorite, or a fighter facing an opponent who accepted the booking on short notice. Topuria is both, and now shoulders a double load of unfair expectations, as he takes on late replacement Charles Jourdain. Even though both fighters in a short-notice matchup are cramming for the same pop quiz, the already-booked fighter has been training for the date in question, and is expected to be at their best, at least physically. Meanwhile, stepping up on short notice is in as close to a no-lose scenario as there is in the UFC. The short-notice fighter is perceived to be doing a favor for the promotion as well as their opponent, picking up a surprise paycheck for themselves, and is at no real risk of losing their job, win or lose, even if they miss weight.
Similarly, fair or not — it’s usually not — when a fighter is a huge favorite, there is an expectation of lopsidedness. The difference between a -150 money line and -1500 is in how likely the bookmakers think one fighter is to win, not how badly they think the fighter is going to beat the other up. Yet when Jennifer Maia made it to the final horn against Valentina Shevchenko, just to name one example, there were plenty of observers declaring the mostly one-sided drubbing a moral victory for the challenger or, worse yet, a sign that “Bullet” was slipping.
In light of those two narratives, consider the situation in which Topuria now finds himself. Previously set to face Movsar Evloev in a matchup of undefeated featherweight blue-chippers, Topuria must now reckon with “Air” Jourdain. After a camp spent preparing for a relentless wrestler and grappler, he now gets to turn on a dime and get ready for a high-flying, quick-strike knockout artist. It’s also worth noting that if Jourdain follows the short-notice fighter gameplan of, “throw the kitchen sink at him until one of you goes down,” he is far, far more dangerous in that setting than Evloev would have been if the roles were reversed. Oh, and with the opponent change Topuria goes from being the slightest of underdogs in a near pick ‘em fight, to being the biggest favorite on the card at a ludicrous -600. He gets to choose his poison: Try to put on a highlight-reel performance, running the risk that he ends up the object rather than the subject of the highlights, or go out to survive, advance — and weather the inevitable cries that he underperformed.