Fight Study 165 – UFC 322, ONE 173, RWS

We are back! Discussing UFC 322, ONE 173, and RWS. Fight Study is essential listening for thoughtful martial arts fans.

• If you’re new to LMA, start with our table of contents

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

This is Fight Study. I am your host, Sam. Today we have a special guest that I've been trying to get on the Southpaw Network for several years now. Everybody on Discord knows her as Jessica. Jessica has a long history of combat sports, but she started later in life, inspired by... Hajime no Ippo,

she's been training Muay Thai for a long time, has competed in USMTO, has done point Muay Thai, some technical Muay Thai bouts. And it took her a minute because she was injured, but then now she represents liberation martial arts as her fighting team. So welcome, Jessica.

Hi.

How long have you been training Muay Thai?

Probably training about seven to eight years now. I took a year or two off for COVID and my ACL injury, respectively.

And your ACL injury is going to come up because in one of the fights we'll talk about, there was an athlete with a leg injury. Your injury happened while you were training Muay Thai. And it's kind of a common one, right? Where it's like you're throwing a kick and then you got teeth.

So I stumbled because I got teeth while getting kicked. And then I guess I landed on my left leg wrong.

And then the recovery didn't go as planned because you needed a second surgery, right?

Yeah, they had to clean out some extra scar tissue that was in there.

And so that's going to be very similar to a fighter we'll be talking about. Because today we're going to be talking about several different cards that happened over the weekend. It was a lot of fights. So let's start with the one that probably people know about and care about the most, UFC 322.

We're not going to cover the entire card. We'll just talk about the fights that we found interesting. And we're not going to do a play-by-play of every aspect of it, but just the points that stuck out to us. And so UFC 322 was headlined by Jack Della Maddalena versus Islam Mahachev. Now, let's just start from the top.

The main event, Jack Della Maddalena or JDM, he was the champion beating Bilal Muhammad, who had beaten Leon Edwards. Iza Mahachev was the lightweight champion moving up, giving up his title to try to become a double champ. So JDM was the favorite, the bigger guy. Everybody wanted to know what would happen,

especially because previously in the same night, we saw what happened to Wiley Zhang. And we'll talk about that too. But Islam went up, smaller fighter, and he won pretty decisively every round. There wasn't a lot coming from JDM's side.

Well, it's almost doing a lot of calf kicks early on and circling away when JD wanted to counter with punches. So it seemed kind of he wanted to hit and move and then jump in for his own takedowns.

And do you feel like that's something Mahachev's camp spotted before the fight kind of game plan for, which is that Jack likes to stand heavy on the lead leg so he could box and jab?

I think it's evident because Izan went for a lot of singles and trips. So I think a lot of JDM's, his takedown defense, it's kind of more you went for a double. He has his elbow wedges in. But with the singles, it's kind of perfect for that lead-like heavy style.

I think also being the champion and the bigger guy, it kind of worked against JDM because it's expected of you to knock the smaller guy out. So he really was like standing heavy on that lead leg to bite down on his punches, really hurt Mahachev, put him away.

But that kind of fed into Mahachev's plan of single legs, calf kicks. And it was like all calf kicks. It wasn't even like leg kicks where you're kicking the thigh, right? It was just like all exclusively the calf. And because JDM was standing southpaw, just like Mahachev, it wasn't like typical Mahachev,

like kind of skipping in for a fast calf kick. He was really throwing hard because he was now allowed to throw a rear calf kick.

I mean, definitely Izzan can throw every calf kick with power and damage. He doesn't have to dance around the outside with that outside leg kick anymore.

The thing about being the bigger fighter, it's especially an advantage if you're the better wrestler, but that wasn't the case here. So it's kind of like, well, what do you do? Now you're down. Now you really got to knock the guy out.

Now you really got to stand heavy on that lean leg to try to put him away. I think also, unlike somebody like Michael Morales, who kind of stood in a weird way to try to prevent the takedowns, JDM has fought in this kind of upright stance and been able to prevent takedowns or

get up when taken down because he'll just get to all fours and stand up. But unlike Muhammad, Mahachev is a submission threat. And especially when you're trying to get up, you have to get on your side. And when you get on your side, Mahachev is really good at those chokes.

It's kind of like one of those situations where JDM had to pick his poison. It's like, okay, if I try to get up, I'm going to get submitted. If I stay down here, I get pounded out. If I stay standing, I got to try to knock him out.

But then I'm going to eat a lot of calf kicks or I get taken down again.

And especially with JDM, he has to kind of turn to kind of stand up. So, I mean, to do that, you got to put your hands down and rebuild your base. Yeah.

But that just plays right into that modified head and arm that Mahachev does so well. So yeah, that's basically the fight. There isn't much to break down. It was like JDM had to try to knock him out. And in doing so, he had to stand heavy on that leg. And in doing so,

it allowed Mahachev to kick him with his power leg because they're both standing southpaw. And then it also afforded him the ability to just snatch that leg whenever he wanted, take him down. And then when he was taken down, JDM's best ability to get up,

how he's been able to scramble up against everybody was just give up his back and get up. But then against Mahachev, there's the choke threat, which is unique because Mahachev is so good at that. So the other fight where a smaller fighter went up in weight to challenge the champion was Wiley Zhang,

who gave up the strawweight title to try to be a double champ and make history fighting Valentina Shevchenko. Just summarize the fight for us.

Wiley was trying to feel out Shevchenko's range and get the timing and opportunity to land her one twos, maybe some kicks too. But I think they had some like collisions. And I think Wiley tried the kind of our Santa takedowns, like that inside trip or like push her against the cage.

But clearly Shevchenko was like a much stronger than she was planning on.

So this is the situation where like the bigger champion is also the better wrestler. And so that's a tough combination. And then once they tied up in round one, it became apparent who the stronger person was, who the better wrestler was. And I think also like Shevchenko being a southpaw kind of threw Zhang off.

Zhang's really good at just sliding into that one-two, but then Valentina's really good at like fading back and then countering people who slide in for that. So kind of like the previous match, it just ended up being like a bad style matchup.

Do you think there was anything Zhang was doing well that she could have built off of? Or it was just not going to happen for her with her current skill set?

I guess Wei Li need to just commit more to the exit. Like, she just had moments of, like, her instincts was to tie up and shove to the cage. And then that was kind of, like, I mean, just, like, a mistake. Like, it's kind of what she was, like, used to as, like, a smaller, shorter, stronger fighter.

That's her instincts is to tie up. But it worked against her.

I bet her team and hindsight were like, you know what? There probably was a path for her to win. We just didn't know it yet until we saw what the matchup actually looked like. Later on, Zhang started pressuring without trying to grapple. And that seemed to be a better chance for her.

But it was a little bit too late and too predictable. So maybe if she did that from the beginning where she was just accepted, like, hey, Shevchenko's the bigger person, longer person. I'm going to take some damage. Let me just eat the damage and just pressure her and just hit her hard a lot.

Without tying up, without trying to grapple her. And let's just fight like that. And maybe that was like not a guaranteed path to victory, but a path that had a better chance of victory than whatever she did in this fight.

Yeah, if it was just strikes, like just the numbers, the disparity just wasn't as big as the wrestling was.

And even if Zhang is getting touched up a lot, like she hits so hard, she always has a chance. So live and learn. Then, I already mentioned this, but Michael Morales, really big, long, welterweight fighting Sean Brady. And so he... Unlike JDM, adapted his stance where he was standing almost like halfway to a sprawl and just

striking Sean Brady that way. And then in round one, when Morales really tried to get a knockout, he got the knockout.

I think Sean Brady just got caught off guard with how long Morales was. I think also it's like confusing when someone leans forward so much. Kind of like extends your punch range.

Yeah, because he's over his feet, so he's even longer than before because of that weird stance. And then Sean Brady actually saw the punch coming, and he was kind of trying to shoulder roll away, and he thought that would be enough to make the punches with.

But then the arms got even further, and I think part of it was because of that stance. So I think... In the fight, Brady never got a sense for Morales' reach. And that was all Morales needed to put him away. The wrestling never became a factor,

even though Brady was the favorite in this fight because of his wrestling. And another tall fighter in this division was Carlos Prates, who knocked out Leon Edwards in round two, which was interesting, much more of an interesting fight than Morales and Brady because Edwards was winning, like clearly won round one, like easily won round one.

And then round two, Carlos Prates went into this fight eating, according to Iza Mahachev, a bunch of pancakes with Nutella on it, smoking. But the dude must have a dog in him because despite doing all that, when it was time to sit in the sauna, he did it, made the weight, showed up in this fight,

lost round one clearly, lopsided, and then finished Leon Edwards round two. So what the hell happened?

I mean, beginning of round two process, like introduce like a kind of like a stand switching to kind of get some new reads. I think he's kind of like trying to see what would work with Edwards. Yeah. And I think in the slow motion, you see Edwards like switch stances and then Protas like lunges forward right after

he switches. And then he's backing up in a straight line to kind of caught him out of position.

Caught him from that opposite stance, straight counter.

Yeah.

So do you think Edwards is trying to like emulate Protas and like trying to switch his stances too? Yeah.

I think he was trying to mismatch him, but that kind of made him predictable in a way. Because if I step, if I move this way, then you'll do that. And so that makes him predictable.

You're reacting to me so I can predict you because I know what I just did. Yeah.

Yeah.

Another interesting fight was Bo Nickel versus Hadolfo Vieira, where Nickel won in round three with a head kick KO. And it was only interesting for me because they're both exceptional grapplers from two different domains. And I don't think we're going to see too much of that going into the future. I think when we see grapplers,

they're going to be coming from the Caucasus or Dagestan or like Central Asia. But in the US, college wrestlers are now getting paid. So the poor pay in the UFC isn't enticing anymore. And then in grappling, a lot of grapplers are starting to get paid now. There's a lot more options to get paid.

The seminar circuit pays a lot more. There's so many people taking some form of grappling. There's so many ways now you can make money. Not just seminars, you could be teaching stuff online, make videos. So people like Bo Nickel, Adolfo Vieira, they're not young. So where's the young versions of them?

And we're not really seeing it too much. So I think it's going to be the fighters from the Caucasus, Central Asia, especially like Dagestan, that is going to have like a lock on wrestling, like Russia too. They're just going to have a lockdown on wrestling and other grapplers, especially from the US and especially coming from

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu may not be as enticed to come to the UFC. And then on the striking side, so long as one exists and so long as there's other options, even the strikers might make more money elsewhere. They could even just teach seminars to rich tourists and make a lot of money.

So that's what I thought about with this. It's just like, oh, this is kind of one of those fights where kind of an end of an era, just seeing these kind of grapplers. We used to see a lot more of these high-level grapplers have a bad striking match,

but I think we're going to see a lot less of that. Unless... The grapplers are maybe coming from somewhere in the east. As far as the fight goes, everything about Hadolfo Vieira as MMA fighter is so labored. He's just so slow and labored, just so hittable. So that head kick, was there any special setup?

I don't think so. I think Vieira was just standing in front of him, waiting for something, and then he didn't read the head kick properly.

I think whenever you fight Hadolfo Vieira, your striking accuracy, the percentage landed, is just automatically going to go up because he's just very hittable. I will say, like Bo Nicol, unlike Vieira, looked a lot more relaxed striking, like his shoulders, his demeanor. There's just a lot of tension with Vieira.

I don't know if his nerves or it's just like the way his condition, but without being able to take Nicol down, and especially because he has to worry about being taken down himself, I think that head kick KO was that much easier. Now let's talk about women's flyweight. Erin Blanchfield defeats Tracy Cortez,

gets revenge on Cortez because Blanchfield had lost to Cortez in the past, back in 2019. But round one, Blanchfield was having a hard time. So what did the fight look like in round one? Was it more of a grappling match or was it more of a striking affair?

It was primarily a striking affair. And then Tracy Cortez actually kind of took control with some of the grappling too.

You were saying to me when we were watching it that Blanchfield is a little bit more like algorithmic. So what did you mean by that?

It means that she was very well-trained. She mechanically throws straight. She'll always back up and then circle. But it's kind of repetitive. You look at it in the broad scheme. She'll always back up a certain number of steps, circle away a certain number of steps.

So you're saying almost like a computer algorithm, she has these memorized patterns that she falls into.

Yeah, it seems Tracy was way more light-footed. She was definitely able to track Blanchfield's head and direction really accurately. She was way more athletic with the way that she threw and stepped in with their punches.

So then in the first round, it wasn't even like Blanchfield just dominated the grappling. It was more like Tracy was doing good and then she initiated something.

Yeah, I think earlier on, like Cortez and Blashville get into these like accidental like clinch exchanges and Cortez will be like successful with like a little dirty boxing or grabbing her head and even like made Blashville stumble pretty badly. And then so Cortez kind of got this like trip on her from a body lock.

And then she kind of overextended and Blanche was able to get back on top of her. And I guess Blanche needed that extended tie-up or ground tie because trying to strike off the feet cleanly It's just Flashfield was just behind on the speed, the punching combinations. It was just going to fluster and confuse her.

So she needed to tie down Cortez, probably with the cage on the ground, to get her strength going. Like she held like Cortez's like arm down. She didn't let her get back access again. Cortez tried to stand back up, but Blanchard like smothered her back down on the ground.

It definitely felt like she's like not the same, like as like a young, she's not a young woman. She's like a, like matured, like flyweight now.

And that played into round two, right? Because it's like, okay, we somehow stumbled into like these grappling exchanges, maybe like I didn't initiate it, but because I felt you and now I know for sure I'm stronger than you, that was kind of the confidence she needed to go into round two, where now instead of being opportunistic,

she forced the takedowns. She even like, wasn't even like trying to set it up super well. She just like, once I grab you, I'm pretty sure my strength can overcome whatever defenses you have. And then she got to finish. And then let's talk about Malcolm Wellmaker, who was like a hot prospect on a long fight, winning streak,

getting derailed by Ethan Ewing, who was moving up to featherweight on two days notice to take this fight. And it should have been, right? Everybody thought it would be like a Wellmaker KO, especially as the bigger person, especially as like the hot prospect, but then Ewing

beat well maker and the reason why we wanted to talk about this was because a lot of it was just striking but it was like two very different strikers well maker was

definitely like used to bullying people and getting a quick finish and ewing like clearly like way more of like an experienced like fighter like manages his cardio it's tighter striking and it just has a chin to take well maker shots too

It seemed like Wellmaker, once he couldn't hurt Ewing, he started running out of ideas and just very hesitant. Whereas Ewing was just very good at staying really close to Wellmaker and just throwing these straight shots. Wellmaker, I think, was faster, but would throw these punches from further away. And they weren't like a straight line shot.

They were kind of circular. Yeah. So even though like the speed is faster, the path is longer. So Ewing's slower but straighter punches would get there first and basically Ewing won by just outstriking him and also like mixing it up. And Wellmaker really relied on those like single shots thinking, hey,

I could hurt you or I could throw the shot from a bad position because... It's not a bad position if you go to the ground or you're KO'd, right? But Ewing wasn't hurt. So he took advantage of those bad positions. He would always try to like end the exchanges, get the last word in.

And so it was just like a good example of a smaller person just fighting more economical, better management of energy and like doing more with less movements, doing more with like smaller movements. And then let's finish out this UFC card talking about women's draw weight. Fatima Klein defeating Angela Hill by unanimous decision. Won every round.

It just looked like Hill's just kind of like probably a shell of her former self or her ability to perform. Her strikes don't have power. She kind of moves around with activity, I guess, but she doesn't thrill particularly fast.

She doesn't even have the same volume as she used to, which is not good if you're not hitting hard.

I think it's an issue if Klein has a big subhistory. So the counter to a submission artist is that you can finish him on the feet, but Angela can't do that. So what can she do?

Especially when Klein is winning on the feet as well. A lot of it was speed, just faster than Hill, which used to be Hill's strength.

Also, it just seems Hale is like, like just lost a lot of composure. Yeah, I think she just lost a lot of confidence.

I think the takeaway is if you're the striker and your path to victory is striking, you don't have to necessarily knock them out, but you got to hit them hard. You got to sting them. And if you can't do that, then you got to at least hit them a lot,

like have a lot of volume and prevent the takedowns. So there's maybe not a lot of different ways that a striker can be successful, but there's several ways. And I think now Angela Hill is struggling with any of those paths. But now let's talk about the card that we really wanted to talk about.

Probably one of the rare times one championship had a better card, more interesting card, something that we wanted to talk about more than a UFC, which actually shouldn't be that hard because UFC hasn't been putting together that many good cards lately. But the reason why one is interesting is not because of their MMA.

In my opinion, their MMA is terrible. It's just that they have really good strikers. So if you enjoy striking, one, especially on this card, had a lot of good striking matchups. So this was the card that I really cared about. I'm not a fan of MMA glove Muay Thai,

but luckily this one had a lot more kickboxing where they're wearing boxing gloves. So let's talk about the main event. We had Superbon fighting Masaki Noiri, who was the interim champion for featherweight kickboxing, and Superbon was the champion who was out for a long time. Superbon won by unanimous decision. How did Superbon do it,

especially since Noiri knocked out Taoichai, who had beaten Superbon previously?

I think when you see them kind of line up next to each other, it's very apparent that Super Bon's like a big guy. Like, Masaaki's a big guy, too, but not the way, like, Super Bon is.

And the thing about Noiri, and especially the people from his camp, is they often start out slow and then they build over time. But Noiri, especially amongst his teammates, is even more slow than them, like too slow. And unlike his training partners... who like tank forward and then throw these like really powerful combinations.

Noidi is more of like tank forward and then look for opportunities for like a counter strike. And Superbomb was just really active in this fight. But Noidi tries to equalize things with his leg kicks, especially his calf kicks really hurts people with those. So how was Noidi using it in this fight?

Was it being effective or like it was effective, but it had limitations?

It seemed like for Neridi, his cap kicks or inside leg kicks were just kind of just a way to even the scorecards. But it didn't really like deter Superbond's like offense at all, really. It didn't like stop him from kicking. It didn't like put a dent in Superbond's power in any way.

Yeah, Noidi waits too long to strike. He gets close and just doesn't make a decision to strike soon enough. He'll get close and even do a bunch of feints, which allows the other person to just be more active. And they might not put Noidi away, but they're racking up points. And then it's like...

Something that's happened to him a lot in one is like then it becomes really hard for him to win a decision. He has to like really try to finish people. So this was a really good fight to watch. It's exciting. Noiri is really good. But I think the difference was Superbond doesn't hesitate. He just throws.

And Superbond, especially in this division, is a really good boxer. Whereas Noiri... just hesitated too much, took too long to think about what strikes he wanted to do. And then that was enough for Superbond to rack up the points to win and unify the title. And then a flyweight kickboxing, Takeru Segawa defeated Dennis Purich,

which is not a surprise because Purich was kind of put in there as kind of a feeder for Segawa to get a win. And so he beat somebody he was supposed to beat, but Takeru is 34. Some might argue his prime was like many years ago.

So was Takeru impressive to you in this fight against somebody he was supposed to beat?

I feel like Takaru's critical error is just his defense. It gets put away by guys he thinks he can just walk through or take shots from. And then in this one, I think... I don't think it's acceptable for him to take some of the shots he took from Pyrdek. I mean, he's done this multiple times.

He gets a loss, and then he gets a tune-up fight, and then he loses again. It just seems like Tarku just gave him confidence, but he's not going to change his style or patch his holes necessarily.

Yeah, that's a good point. Tune-up fights are good if the problem is confidence. But I don't think Takaru has a problem with confidence. I think maybe he's not as fast as he used to be. And so that makes worse his defensive vulnerabilities. And he's not as strong as he used to be.

Because in the past, his offense made up for his defense. He got a win, but he's still that very hittable veteran. And then we had a featherweight kickboxing fight with somebody you've been a fan of for a long time, Merat Gregorian, who defeated Rukia Anpo by unanimous decision. And this fight was actually very competitive.

And Gregorian is a fighter very much like Noiri, where he starts out very, very slow, almost always loses the first round, and then he picks it up. And what makes this strategy work at all is because you can't put Gregorian away in round one. He's just defensively sound and very durable.

But Ampo fought very well, very competitive to the very end. But Jessica, tell me about Gregorian. Why have you been such a fan of his

Back when I was like watching more like kickboxing, like I watched a lot of like glory fighters and I think Gregorian stood out to me. I think it just seemed like his style seemed very simple. Like his strike selection was simple. It just didn't seem like a style that was like hard to copy as like a amateur.

You didn't have to do any spinning stuff.

You didn't have to be fast.

Yeah.

And then what about Ampo?

I think he did a good job with trying to vary his like strike selection. And I think he was he had a good dog in him. He always wanted to like score back right away and hit with combinations. It's just that Gregorian was just way more of a tank than he was.

Well, that's the thing, right? It was like tank versus tank. Ampo wanted to be the tank. Gregorian wanted to be the tank. And then by round three, it became apparent Gregorian was the bigger tank. Because Ampo threw a lot and hit Gregorian a lot. I would say Gregorian didn't hit Ampo as often.

But when Gregorian hit Ampo, we could visibly see Ampo getting knocked around. But when Ampo hit Gregorian, he was rock steady. Like he didn't budge like a tank. I think that like kind of makes you more tired because if you're not moving the person, then you're going to throw even harder to try to move them.

And then your energy expenditure goes up.

I mean, definitely like even if you try to count every punch or body kick or leg kick that lands, the starting factor is if who's moving forward, who's being pushed back, who has good poise and posture.

Yeah, Gregorian just looked like he was the winner. Ampo, even when he was finding success, somehow kind of looked like he was losing. And I think it had to do with just that stability. Gregorian looked very stable, whereas Ampo was kind of flopping around a lot. But I think it's because he's running into a tank.

So instead of him moving the tank, it's like the tank moves him. Maybe it was like a bad style matchup because they both have the same style, except Gregorian, now we know, is better at it. And then let's get to the fight that I was really looking forward to, which was bantamweight kickboxing Yuki Yoza versus Superlek.

And Yoza defeated Superlek by unanimous decision. It was pretty clear. It was competitive. I wouldn't say Yoza dominated, but he clearly won. So everybody was curious about this fight because Superleg is the kicking machine. You would think he would outkick Yoza, even though they're the same height. Superleg is also longer, has longer reach, longer legs, seemingly faster,

quote unquote, more technical.

Well, I think Yose is also technical, too. His timing on the cut kicks was spectacular. Yeah.

And unlike Noidi, even though he kind of starts slow, once he gets close, he doesn't hesitate and he doesn't throw a single shot. He throws a bunch and he throws hard. And on top of that, he's really hard to hit too. Like he's really good at defense, moving out of the way of stuff.

He doesn't do any switch kicks. He doesn't load up on his kicks, but he just naturally kicks hard. So he seems to get his kicks to super like faster than super like could get it to Yoza. So Yoza knocked Superlek down with leg kicks a bunch of times.

And what was also interesting was to see Yoza out kicking Superlek and out leg kicking Superlek. And then when they got in close and they threw punches, Yoza had the power advantage as far as punches were concerned. So after a while, Yoza started styling on Superlek. just chopping his legs, punching him.

Whenever they got into an extended exchange, Yoza was the one who had the final say. Another interesting bout was featherweight kickboxing. Nabil Anand defeats Hiromi Wajima, which was also a last-minute fight. Wajima took it on short notice. And the reason why it's worth mentioning was just because of how well Wojima did.

Nabil won, but Wojima did a good job. I think especially that Japanese style of kickboxing where they're really good at undercutting you while you're kicking. He really was chewing up Anand's leg. Anand was just landing more, so he won the fight. But even if your background is Muay Thai, the Japanese are starting to show, hey,

we can still get to your leg. So he did really well. Much better than other people have done against Anand, especially with the short notice. Now let's talk about women's atom weight kickboxing, Kana Morimoto defeating Stamp Fairtex. Stamp has been out for years at this point, coming back from a knee injury,

which then she re-injured and took more time off. Very similar injury to you.

I think I'm definitely related to like how Stamp just didn't have any power anymore. And anything like, I think we tore like the same ACL, like my left knee too. And she's an orthodox fighter. So like for me, like I used to be a really heavy puncher. I can't punch the same. Kicking is also difficult.

You feel like she's mechanically compromised or it's like when you're mechanically compromised, it also affects you psychologically. It makes you like doubt yourself.

A hundred percent. Like it's scary to like push stuff in training because like your knee flares up. Like it's like it just doesn't feel the same. And you're always scared of me tearing it. I think she tore it in like a like a bad takedown. So, yeah,

like she might be like a little afraid to clench or even wrestle anymore because like she got she tore in such a benign way, like kind of like me.

That's a good point about the inability to push yourself hard in training because of the knee. Because that's the other thing that stood out in this fight is Stamp looked gassed. She looked out of shape. Maybe part of that is because she can't push herself in training the way she used to because of that knee.

And then on top of that, you're fighting Kana Morimoto, who really pushes the pace. She kind of has that Japanese style of tanking forward, lost and vicious low kicks, and combination striking. But unlike some of her counterparts, she doesn't start slow. She starts fast. She will make it a high-volume fight.

She's going to throw a lot of strikes. So... Also trying to keep up with her is also very tiring. So in a way, like maybe this wasn't like a good tune-up fight when you have somebody who starts so fast, who has such good conditioning, and then you don't have the same conditioning you used to have.

You can't get the respect. Maybe Stamp didn't know until this fight that I can't get the respect from fighters I used to because I can't kick them as hard. Which leaves her to mostly box because she can't kick the same way. But then now we see when she has to mostly punch.

She's not that great of a boxer. It looks very labored. The accuracy isn't great.

I mean, I think I've seen one of her fights with Supergirl. I think she's gotten to some messy boxing exchanges with Supergirl. Where she tried to throw a huck and then she got traded in. Got hit a lot. Also, like she wasn't really able to like push back Supergirl with her punches that landed either.

So she was stuck on the fence trading. And then this kind of happened here, but like a worse way.

So in this fight, even though it was kickboxing, Stamp fought very much like a boxer, except her boxing isn't great. And so then that's a really tough way to win this fight, which she didn't. So yeah, when you have a knee injury, there's so many other externalities that can happen from that.

Even if, let's say, you're clear to fight, can you train the same way? Can you get in the same shape? And also before she probably used to think she was invincible, whereas that is now out the window. You're never going to think that about yourself anymore. So a lot of things change after an injury.

An injury is just like very much a big life-changing event, especially an injury like that when you're a professional fighter, because it's It compromises so many things, not just you anatomically, but like how you train, your psyche, how you feel about yourself, your style, your conditioning, and so forth.

And also you're rusty because you didn't fight for a long time. Now let's talk about my favorite promotion, which is RWS, which is Rajadam Nurn, their kind of entertainment Muay Thai series. The reason why I like it is because it's free on YouTube. So if you love Muay Thai, if you just like striking,

You can find it every week on YouTube. And the main event for this weekend's RWS was Tapaokao versus Alexis Laujo, who is fighting out of Bangtao, which is famous in the UFC because so many UFC fighters train there. And I think it's one of the more expensive, fancy premier Muay Thai gyms in Thailand.

So you're like really getting the best money you can afford. And so in this fight, Alexis was KO'd in round three by knees. Alexis is the bigger fighter, but then Tapaokao seemed like the stronger fighter. So how did the fight go?

It was pretty one-sided very quickly on in round one. I think when Tepe Aokau kind of got a hand on him and clinched up, it seemed like only after a few clinch exchanges did Alexis kind of concede the strength advantage. He didn't even try to knee back to even the clinch scores.

He just tried to hold him down.

like more of a boxing strategy, right? Where you're clenching not to like damage, you're clenching to tie up to prevent more strikes and then get the ref to break it up.

Yeah.

But you pointed out like his strategy to win was try to like cut him or knock him out with an elbow.

It just seemed like Alexis didn't have a choice because he's just right there in front of you. And you might as well use their aggression against them in the kind of most straightforward ways with an elbow. But I think Tepe Ocal, you can see him like he's blocking all of them with his arms coming in.

So he didn't have any real options to win.

Yeah, there was no adaptation. It was just kind of like the Hail Mary elbow. Let me just try to elbow this guy and then grab him quickly before he beats me up, get the ref to break it up, then try to elbow him again, grab him, hope the ref breaks it up.

But then it kind of made things worse because every time he grabbed him, he got kneed so much and then just trying to hold him down. hired him out so bad and then he's breathing heavy. And then Tapaoka was able to just finish him with knees to the body,

which is especially worse when you're just taking deep breaths and you're just gassed. So that's basically all the cards from this weekend we wanted to talk about. If you're wondering why we haven't been doing a lot more UFC breakdowns is because I've been doing a lot of these for years.

But now it's like, I really like watching more of the kickboxing and Muay Thai. Part of that might be because of the evolution of the UFC, which is that it's become more of like a striking type of promotion. It's MMA, but a lot of it is now just about striking.

But then it's like, oh, there's other places that have better striking. Let me just go watch that. And then with grappling, it's like, oh, now there's like grappling that you could watch that looks like high production. Let me go watch that. So just MMA is more about like, there's some big names, so I want to watch it,

but it's not as interesting to me. Jessica, you've been a long time MMA fan, but you've also like haven't been keeping up with the product as much. So what's it been for you?

Well, I've just been busy with competition, like training with Sam. So it's kind of hard to like, you know, like when I have a hard training at the learning lab and Saturday mornings, I don't have the energy to kind of like pay attention to the cars on this Saturday evenings anymore.

I guess part of it is like MMA, you're paying attention to the storylines and the backgrounds of these fighters. What are they saying? What have they done? What are they on the news for? Rather than more about the technique. So with this one, the reason why we covered all these other events was because we wanted to introduce

MMA fans to other things you can watch. I really like watching women's MMA. I love watching the Dagestani fighters, but I'm actually not a huge fan of one. But when they have good kickboxing, when they have these kind of like style clashes of like Japanese karate versus like

Muay Thai and they're meeting in this kind of like neutral ground of kickboxing rules, what does that look like? Those style clashes have been fun. And then you have fighters like Nadeka Yoshinari, which I forgot to mention. He also fought on one and won the inaugural Adam Waite Muay Thai title against Noom Surin.

And that's another fighter that is a joy to watch because he's like a Muay Thai prodigy. He also fought at RWS. He fought in the stadium. So you can watch all of that as well. But it's like, what did you say, Jessica? It's like, that's not a style like Marat where you can emulate it.

Yeah, it's just, it seems all of his, like, physical traits for his style, like his speed, even, like, the flexibility to just, like, lean back and pull his, like, headway he can. That's just all genetically determined. Like, his muscle fibers, his central nervous system, everything.

Yeah, he's not fighting cans. He's, like, fighting the best. And he just styles on them and just, like... just seems untouchable. He's a generational fighter. So we're seeing that in kickboxing again. We're seeing these exciting fighters come up because they're getting paid better. They're getting more exposure.

And now it's not just like a Thailand show where it's just like the Thais are dominating. You also have people like... Natica, who's like doing really well and just is like so much fun to watch. So that's another fighter I recommend all of you who are fight fans, especially who are into striking. Watch him.

Look up YouTube videos. Look up his sparring videos. That's another fun thing to watch for free is a lot of the Japanese fighters, they have a lot of their sparring footage online and they go hard. Madoka doesn't go hard, but a lot of the other fighters go hard.

And then even with the TIE fighters, you can find a lot of their sparring footage online too. So that's really fun to watch. So yeah, there's these avenues that aren't MMA, but that also are rich with talent, especially if you like striking. And the striking level just has gone up so much recently, especially in the lighter divisions.

We're seeing the popularity of lighter kickboxers, Muay Thai fighters. So watch that as that's emerging. There's a lot of fun things to watch. There's alternatives to the UFC. I mean, one is also a reactionary company. It's also run by Chuds. And I don't like their MMA. And that's what they started out as.

But they accidentally, because they're in Asia, was able to sign a lot of good strikers. So even though they brand themselves as an MMA promotion, the only thing worth watching there, in my opinion, is the Muay Thai and the kickboxing. They have grappling there. I don't know why. I don't want to watch that either. So yeah,

this was an opportunity to introduce people to the high level kickboxing Muay Thai like RWS. I think that's like something very much worth watching. It's on every week. If you love striking, you get to see what Muay Thai is like, but it's like a little bit more fan friendly. Actual stadium Muay Thai is kind of slow.

Check all those things out. If you're a fight fan, check out all the different fights. Watch boxing too. There's so many other things out there. You don't just have to watch the UFC. Especially if you feel like the UFC cards have been not so great,

then go look for other stuff because there's like great fighters out there doing their own thing. So don't let it capture all of your attention. But with that said, thank you, Jessica, for finally being on the podcast with me.

And thanks for having me on, Sam.

With all that said, catch y'all next time.