#ufc324

What a nonsense ass fight. In the best way possible. Both dudes just slipping and sliding their way around the cage doing stuff. Gaethje forgoing all forms of craft in pursuit of just trying to kill Pimblett as hard as he can and falling over in the process. Just amazing stuff.

To give Pimblett his credit, he got knocked down 3x and hurt plenty more and kept getting up to continue fighting. Got the dogshit beat out of him for long stretches of this fight and never stopped trying to win. And him and his team seemed actually ready for Gaethje. All his offense was centered around attacking Gaethje's dip to his right. Uppercuts, knees, and kicks off the lead leg to the head. Lots of body work with knees and kicks, things that have troubled Gaethje in the past. And he kept throwing leg kicks til the end. Smart stuff. Good ideas. And it worked sorta! He did do a ton of damage to Gaethje and had him hurt a couple times (though never as badly as Pimblett).

The problem is Pimblett is a comically bad striker. Specifically defensively. So he spent a lot of the first two rounds fighting off the cage with his chin high in the air, reaching for Gaethje's shoulders/head trying to stop offense from coming forward and then getting absolutely fucking nuked. He'd circle out to be met with big looping punches. He'd repeatedly get put on the fence. It took til round 3 for him to remember how to circle before getting to the fence and I think that worked cause Gaethje was dead tired after going hard for the finish at the end of the 2nd. He kept doing it into the 4th round but when Gaethje upped the pressure again, Pimblett was back on the fence. Eating punches and getting put down. And try as he might, he could not get Gaethje on the mat with him. Gaethje did a great job of staying upright when they tied up. In fact, he was snapping Pimblett down into a front headlock and using the position to do small damage and rest on the mat.

It is extremely clear Gaethje is both on the downslide and thought he was going to get Pimblett out of there early. And he almost did. I think he dropped him 90 seconds into the fight. But you gotta hand it to Paddy. Fought his butt off to stay competitive.

What does this mean for the lightweight title picture? If Gaethje does get the fight (big if), Topuria is likely going to do to Gaethje what Gaethje did to Ferguson and just crack his chin permanently.

How we feeling after UFC 324?

Personally, not particularly inspired. I don't think it was a bad card or anything but parts of it were bad. If the idea is that 'new' fans are getting into the sport off that card....I doubt it did anything to inspire that. We had a couple of really embarrassing HW fights in which case both losers go so tired that they sort of just collapsed and gave up. And then in the one, the winner cut an incredibly cringe wannabe edgelord promo where he chickened out on saying the n-word.

Elsewhere, it felt like a lot of under-performing. And maybe some of that was to be expected. O'Malley is coming off two crushing losses and looked like he had lost his mojo for the first 12 minutes of his fight with Yadong. Figueiredo showed up overweight and landed 0 significant strikes in two rounds of his fight with Umar, who just cruised to a dominant win. Natália Silva struggled with Rose Namajunas' sharp boxing skills until the 3rd round while Rose struggled to get any type of volume going against a fighter who had the raw athleticism advantage. While this fight should be good for his long term success and I still think the sky is the limit for him, Ateba Gautier's performance against Pulyaev was as lackluster as a 2 knockdown win can be cause it showed his current level of skill isn't particularly high. Love Alex Perez and thought his KO was fantastic but he also just showed up overweight. Waldo Cortes-Acosta is...Waldo Cortes-Acosta. You're gonna get what you get.

Gaethje-Pimblett was fun but I don't see how anyone walks away thinking 'this is the pinnacle of sport' rather than that was a fun car crash. Gaethje looked his age despite almost finishing Pimblett 3x and Pimblett looked awful despite showing a ton of heart and that some actual thought went into attacking his opponent's weaknesses.

If we're talking a good mix of high level MMA and action, the best fight was Jean Silva vs Arnold Allen, which is going to get repeat viewing from me some time today cause god what a fight.

And with 325 looking like....a UFC Australia card, the future isn't looking too hot either.

Did Paddy go five rounds? Yeah. Did he do some damage? Yeah, for sure. It’s a 25 minute fight and he’s a big swanging boy who will just throw. You’re gonna land if you’re that willing to throw and can survive. Did he get fouled? For sure, but he’d also been knocked down before that. And it’s not the reason he lost.

He lost because he’s a terrible technical striker. He’s an ideas guy with some ok range kicking skills. He came into this fight hunting Gaethje’s dip for uppercuts, knees, and headkicks and he had some success with it but ultimately fell apart because unlike guys like Holloway or Poirier, he wasn’t able to dictate when Gaethje would dip. That’s the big thing. Defense aside, good offensive striking is based around your ability to control your opponent and where the fight takes place. Pimblett does not have that. He’s purely reactive. He got pushed on to the fence with pressure and absolutely battered as he tried to escape.

Fantastic fight. Easily the best fight we've seen tonight. Two incredibly high level fighters. Allen is such a great foil for everyone cause he's so damn crafty and knows when he's got to plant his feet to throw back. Was lighting Silva up at range with straight shots and kicks early before Silva got started late in the first round. Started by attacking the body with that hook and everything kind of opened up for him as he found Allen's head at the end of the 1st and hurt him badly in the closing seconds. Silva came alive in the 2nd round. Attacking the body underneath Allen's elbow guard more. Trying to bait Allen into moving to the outside and then beating him there. Tried getting him down and getting his back. Allen fought back hard as he was still having success tagging Silva when they were just in open space at range but Silva was finding more success of his own. Third was a lot of push and pull until the last 90 seconds when it felt like SIlva kind of just swaggered his way to the round. like come on

He rode Allen like a surfboard.