#gustafsson

a mood 💮🌸💫🌊

Joey

May 27th, 2019

Did you enjoy yourself a little break from the MMA death march? Well fuckers we're BACK on at it! The UFC returns to ESPN+ with a little early afternoon action from Sweden on Saturday and it's a pretty interesting card! If you're the kind of guy who likes European lightweights and fights at LHW then this card is your deal. If you're looking for some serious big time relevancy outside of 205 lbs then there may not be much for ya. There's some eh fights on here, some meaningless fights and a few WMMA fights but all in all this card has some dumb fun vibes. Let's not wait too long and let's get right on into it.

Fights: 13

Debuts: Bea Malecki, Eduarda Santana, Sung Bing Jo, Danilo Belluardo,Rostem Akman, Sergey Khandozhko

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 2 (Luigi Vendramini OUT, Frank Camacho IN vs Nick Hein/Bartosz Fabinski OUT, Rostem Akman IN vs Sergey Khandozhko)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 8 (Anthony Smith, Alexander Gustafsson, Jimi Manuwa, Ilir Latifi, Volkan Oezdemir, Lina Lansberg, Stevie Ray)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 5 ( Tanya Evinger, Daniel Teymur, Jimi Manuwa, Nick Hein, Frank Camacho)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 3 (Aleksandar Rakic, Damir Hadzovic, Leonardo Santos)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 23-15

Alexander Gustafsson- 1-1 Anthony Smith- 5-2 Volkan Oezdemir-3-3 Ilir Latifi- 2-1 Jimi Manuwa- 1-3 Aleksandar Rakic- 3-0 Makwan Amirkhani- 1-1 Chris Fishgold- 1-1 Damir Hadzovic- 3-1 Christos Giagos- 1-1 Sung Bin Jo- 0-0 Daniel Teymur- 0-3

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Light Heavyweight- 4 (22) Lightweight-  4 (37) Featherweight-  2 (25) Women’s Bantamweight- 1 (7) Women’s Featherweight- 1 (2)

Welterweight- 1 (33)

Middleweight- (17)

Women’s Strawweight- (12) Women’s Flyweight-  (14) Bantamweight-  (24) Heavyweight- (15) Flyweight- (7)

Debuting Fighters (15-34)- Bea Malecki, Eduarda Santana, Sung Bing Jo, Danilo Belluardo,Rostem Akman, Sergey Khandozhko

Short Notice Fighters (14-18)- Rostem Akman, Frank Camacho

Second Fight (35-7)- Darko Stosic, Joel Alvarez

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (10-22)- LEonardo Santos, Makwan Amirkhani

Undefeated Fighters (19-24)- Bea Malecki, Rostem Akman

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (7-7): Frank Camacho, Stevie Ray

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (14-13)- Frank Camacho

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- Is Jon Jones "back" yet? By that I mean are we comfortable enough that he's going to be here on a yearly basis that a fight like Gus vs Smith is completely irrelevant? In years prior, you could argue that both Gustafsson and Anthony Smith would be one fight away from getting back into the mix. If Smith beats Gustafsson then he could realistically argue it's he vs Glover Tex for a potential #1 fight while Jones/Santos face Dominick Reyes. Gustafsson may be a little further out due to being 0-3 vs Jones AND Cormier but even he has a fanbase that would allow him in theory to be in the mix with one more win. Now though with Jones back, I can't imagine we're going to see many rematches if any. So is Gus vs Smith just a really fun action fight with no meaning?

2- So why did Anthony Smith accept this fight?  He wanted to take a long break after fighting in June, August, October and then March but alas! Dude's back and took this fight in Sweden vs Gus. Either he just can't say no or he's realizing that Gustafsson might be broken and is trying to steal a quickie return fight.

3- One of the lost-ish factors going into Gus vs Jones 2 was that Alexander Gustafsson isn't quite the same guy who gave Jones all that trouble in the first fight. Gustafsson's had some well known issues with his back and he doesn't look like the same guy he was outside of brief glimpses vs Glover Teixeira. Against Cormier he looked like a somewhat toned down version of the guy who fought Jones, he was blown out vs Rumble so you can't take much from that but vs Jones and Jan Blachowicz, he looked like a stiff rigid somewhat pudgy version of the dude who blasted through most of the 205 lb division in that 2011 to 2014 range. Anthony Smith is an interesting test for a few reasons, primarily because Gus is a slow starter normally and Smith is early offense (on most occasions). This could be Gustafsson's last chance at 205 lbs.

4- Two hard luck 205ers are on the top of this card who could use a big win. Volkan Oezdemir has fought Daniel Cormier followed by Anthony Smith followed by Dominick Reyes and comes into this fight with Ilir Latifi sporting a three fight losing streak. Oezdemir talent wise has found himself out of his element although his performance vs Dominick Reyes was impressive before repetitive body shots broke him down. Oezdemir has about 8-10 good minutes in him before he tires out but he's a tough out for most guys. He's facing the complete opposite of what he's good at with Ilir Latifi who hits hard, wrestles well and has JUST enough cardio to win those slopfests when they're in tight. Jimi Manuwa comes into this fight having lost three in a row as well against Jan Blachowicz, Volkan Oezedemir and current #1 contender Thiago Santos. He's going to be tasked with welcoming in Aleksandar Rakic into the potential top 10 ranks.

5- So how do you feel about these almost "themed" cards? We cool with the amount of light heavyweight fights on this deal as a theme of sorts?

6- When do you think will be the next time we get back to back cards with women's featherweight fights on them?

7- Nick Hein might be next on the Elias Theodorou Midnight Train Goin' Anywhere if he doesn't emerge with a win.

8- In 2015, the UFC thought they had something with "Mr. Finland" Makwan Amirkhani. He started out 2-0 and had all sorts of savvy and social media presence going for him. A guy who looked like he had a world of promise has seen the last three fights of fighting just really suck the life out of him. A win over Mike Wilkinson was followed up by a year off, a loss to Arnold Allen in a very blegh split decision, followed up by a year off and then a split decision win over bare knuckle fighting savant Jason Knight. Amirkhani is not progressing much in his career and he looks like a dude who has stagnated. He's also bounced between a ton of name gyms and at this point I think the hype has officially fizzled out on him as a potential name of note in Europe. The Chris Fishgold fight should be a good barometer for what remains of Amirkhani as he's officially on the wrong side of 30 now.

9- Why is Daniel Teymur on the main card?

10- Leonardo Santos is back! Let's see how many fights it takes before people are tired of him.

11- Aleksandar Rakic provides a fresh face at 205 lbs and if there's one main card guy to get excited about, it's him. Rakic has been given some tough outs in the UFC; his debut was vs notorious slogger Francimar Barroso and his follow up was undefeated HW Justin Ledet dropping down to 205 lbs. His last fight he battled through some big time early offense from Devin Clark before rallying to score a big finish. Manuwa does nothing but hit hard so this could be scary early on.