Every fight matters, but some matter just a little more.
A win is a win and a loss is a loss, of course, but some of them feel bigger than others for various reasons. In some cases, the elevated stakes are easy to define. 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 the big leagues are almost certainly scouting them. At other times, a fight feels especially important for reasons that are harder to quantify but no less real. Whether it’s the unspoken weight of being a pioneer in MMA from one’s native country or the simple added spice of two fighters who genuinely hate each other’s guts, that fight means just a little more.
This Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Ultimate Fighting Championship will deliver a 12-fight lineup topped by two title bouts, with intriguing matchups all up and down the card. From aging greats like Jose Aldo and Stephen Thompson looking to prove they can hang with the new breed, to anointed contenders Kayla Harrison and Cesar Almeida endeavoring to stay on the path to gold, to talented mid-card fighters like Alexander Hernandez and Austin Hubbard just hoping to prove they still belong, UFC 307 features fighters in just about every career phase. Here are three competitors who are under just a little extra pressure to stand and deliver on Saturday.
You Won’t Get a Third Strike, Cesar Almeida
That “Cesinha” is fighting on the same card as his former kickboxing rival Alex Pereira, against as blatant a bounce-back opponent as the UFC could have found in Ihor Potieria, is an indication that the promotion has not given up entirely on Almeida despite his decision loss to Roman Kopylov in June. Apparently, the gameplan remains the same: Win several fights in a row, say a few things on the mic, get a shot at Pereira, whether at 185 or 205 pounds.
Having said that, it is unlikely that the Almeida express would survive a second loss. At 36, with a lengthy kickboxing career behind him and relatively little time to develop into a well-rounded mixed martial artist, the time is now for the Brazilian, and the margin of error is zero. The path is still clear, and it begins with getting past Potieria in Salt Lake City – preferably in spectacular fashion.
Remind Them Who You Are, Ketlen Vieira
At risk of sounding unkind, Vieira might be the most forgettable Top 10 fighter in the entire UFC. Thanks to a fairly low-key persona and an grinding but effective fighting style, it’s too easy to lose sight of the fact that she is 8-3 in the promotion and that last January, she took current bantamweight champ Raquel Pennington to the wire in a title eliminator bout that one official judge and a large majority of professional observers thought she should have won. As heartwarming a story as Pennington’s championship win has been, it arguably should never have happened.
So, on the one hand, Vieira has a reasonable claim to call herself the best women’s bantamweight in the UFC, yet on the other hand she is a 5-to-1 underdog in Saturday’s matchup against Kayla Harrison, the woman most observers seem to regard as the queen-in-waiting, regardless of Vieira, Pennington and her challenger at UFC 307, former champ Julianna Pena. The 17-1 Harrison put together a historically dominant run as a lightweight in Professional Fighters League, dominance which transitioned seamlessly to her UFC debut against Holly Holm at 135 pounds earlier this year, but of the three other 135-pound women fighting on Saturday, Vieira might be the one best equipped to deal with the former Olympic judoka’s skill and brute power. In effect, Vieira is getting her shot at Harrison right now, pre-coronation. She needs to take advantage of it, because the same factors that make her an easy contender to forget – fair or not – will make her easy for UFC matchmakers to bury if she loses. It would be a long, long road back to the title picture.
Keep Your Cool but Don’t Freeze, Mario Bautista
In May, Jose Aldo added one more line item to his legendary résumé with a one-sided decision win over rising contender Jonathan Martinez, who was at the time riding a six-fight win streak. “The Dragon” appeared to be a stern matchup for Aldo: nearly a decade younger, with far less wear and tear; a big, fast 2020s bantamweight with a brutal kicking game. What appeared to be a setup for a passing of the torch instead became a harsh reminder of Aldo’s greatness, tangible as well as intangible. Aldo looked surprisingly spry and resilient, but Martinez also turned in a strangely flat, gun-shy performance, and admitted afterward that he had been dazzled by the opponent and the moment.
Five months later, enter Bautista, about whom most of the same things could be said as Martinez, right down to the extremely impressive six straight wins. Again, the younger, fresher, bigger up-and-comer has a chance to claim a truly elite scalp, the kind of win that could propel him into the title picture. It’s simply a matter of going out there and performing, which Martinez might be able to tell Bautista can be tougher than it looks. At least Bautista will be fighting within a reasonable day drive from his Arizona training haunts, unlike poor Martinez, who faced the “King of Rio” in Rio. If legacy matters… Bautista might be UFC champ one day regardless of how things go at UFC 307, but he’ll never get another shot at the king.