UFC San Antonio: Vera vs Sandhagen - Mar 25 🇺🇸

[Panhead]

NATE THE TRAIN, BABY!!! FUCK YEAH!!! 

[wandshogun09]

Bollocks. What were we saying before? Alex Perez vs Manel Kape is off. How does this keep happening mid show now? 

 

[Bruce85]

Just logged into the BT sports app to watch the replay and it’s got the results on the front page so that’s ruined the main results….. never seen the app display info like that, seems pretty stupid to me and hope it’s not a permanent change! 

[wandshogun09]

Sandhagen vs Chito was a good fight but never quite caught fire like I, and I think most, expected. Looking at this on paper, it felt like a fight that had genuine FOTY contender potential but it just never reached that level. And that’s a testament to Sandhagen’s ability to make it a fairly one sided fight.

Thought this was a quality performance from him and he definitely won the decision. The scoring was weird all night but how the one judge had this for Vera I’ll never know. Thankfully the other two judges got it right. Good stuff overall but, I don’t wanna be an “I told you so” prick but I did say it could go like this. I actually wish I was wrong and they had a mad back and forth war. But Chito’s confidence in his own ability to inflict damage and steal rounds or find a late finish is a curse as much as a blessing. His habit of being willing to concede 3 or 4 minutes of a round while waiting for that one opening to wreak havoc came back to bite him here. And it was always going to at some point. You just can’t get away with that at the top level in a division as strong as Bantamweight. And Sandhagen’s not Cruz or Edgar. He’s in his prime and he’s been in with the best and gone 5 rounds a few times. He knows all about round management and he’s confident in his cardio to go 25 minutes with anyone. Chito just couldn’t get going and Sandhagen’s never really put a foot wrong and didn’t allow him to get in it.

Sandhagen calling out Merab just showed how ballsy he is. That’s a fight that not many are gonna fancy. Especially if they’re in the position Sandhagen’s in where he’s rebuilding nicely and could lose all that against a beast like Merab. The fact he wants that fight is admirable. But I’m not in love with it myself. For one, it probably won’t be that exciting to watch but I can live with that. What I’m really not keen on though, and it’s gonna be an issue with Merab whoever he fights, is a loss there just eliminates Sandhagen from the title race and for fuck all because Merab’s not gonna be fighting Aljo. If I could choose, I’d do Sandhagen vs O’Malley next. It still eliminates a contender but I think that would be a fantastic fight and the winner would be the nailed on next contender for me. At least the winner there would actually fight Aljo. 

As for Chito, I wanna see some combination of him Petr Yan and Figgy. However you mix and match those 3, you can’t go wrong. Chito vs Yan would be ace. As would either of them welcoming Figgy to 135. But if they did Yan vs Figgy, I wouldn’t be mad at Chito vs Davey Grant 3. They’re 1-1 and both were cracking fights. Why not? There’s no shortage of tremendous matchups in that division. Easiest weight class to matchmake ever.

Holly Holm can get straight in the bin. She won easily but it’s never any fun to watch. Ever. Not even surprised to see her go with a wrestling approach. She’ll do that now and then. That’s not the problem. It’s that, these days, anything she does it’s in the most boring way possible. Just dull as dishwater performances year upon year upon year. She’s been living off that Ronda Rousey win far too long. And now with the UFC signing her to that new contract, the thought of seeing 6 more fights of her just holding women against the fence and kneeing the thighs, or getting takedowns that lead to nothing, fills me with dread.

Don’t know what the post-fight interview was about either. Going on about the sexualisation of children. Seen comments that it’s some anti-trans thing but I don’t know. From someone nicknamed ‘The Preacher‘s Daughter’, maybe she should look closer to home. If she wants to take a stand against child abuse, maybe she should start with churches. Best thing I saw come out of the whole Holm experience was someone on Twitter naming her “Holly Holmophobe” 😂

Nate The Train!

Mad bastard. He won’t go much further but that’s 3 wins in a row now and never a dull moment. Lingo’s actually not a bad fighter, has some decent boxing but also doesn’t mind a rough scrap. He was having some success with his jab early on and Nate looked a little bit flummoxed by it but in the end he was able to draw and drag Lingo into the madness and that’s where Nate thrives.

“I got a highlight reel like Evel Knievel. I got swagger like Elvis Presley. And I’ll be damned if I ain’t handsome!” - Nate Landwehr

😂 Promos Colby Covington wishes he could cut. I know Nate’s talking a big game, as always, but I just wanna see that Alex Caceres fight rebooked now. That’s all I want. I was gutted when it got scrapped from this card. We need to see it. The fact he called for it in his post-fight interview gives me hope we’ll get that fight rescheduled soon.

Maycee Barber vs Andrea Lee was a so-so fight. Was a little bit better than I expected but still not great. The bar for my expectations was low. Barber getting the decision seemed proper off to me though. Especially the one judge scoring it 30-27 for her.

I don’t get it. Wasn’t like I was scoring it with a pen and pad on my lap. It’s Maycee Barber vs Andrea Lee. We’ve all got lives to lead. But I did feel like Lee had won when it was over. Not the worst decision ever or anything but it just felt a bit wonky. All that said though, Lee was married to some nazi prick and is currently with Tony Kelley who’s a massive bellend who was caught saying racist shite between rounds while cornering her once. Seems she has a ‘type’, so I don’t feel too sorry for her getting robbed. Go on Maycee!

Officially not a fan of Albert Duraev after that shite. I know it takes two to tango to make a good or bad fight but Duraev somehow having a boring fight with Chidi Njokuani is some achievement. It’s as much Chidi’s fault in fairness. He just became too timid and didn’t throw enough. But aside from a few spells where he was actually going for it, Duraev legit nearly sent me to sleep. Don’t even know who should’ve won. I completely lost interest and started doing other stuff. I heard the booing when Duraev got the nod but I think that was as much because Chidi’s from Texas as anything. Not gonna be in a rush to watch Duraev’s next fight after this though.

Lucas Alexander did a bit of a job on Steven Peterson en route to a clear decision win. He looked pretty good but Peterson was obviously on the way out so not a win you’re gonna rate too highly. Happy to see Peterson get his little moment to announce his retirement after the fight. He was never that good but he was always tough as fuck and had a few moments. The Julian Erosa fight last year was one of the better under the radar prelim fights of the year. He’s only 32 but it was probably the right time to stop. He just didn’t look sharp or on the ball here, he’s 30 fights into his career but he’s not really improving. The one thing he still has is his durability but that’s not what you wanna rely on and try to make a career off. Hopefully things work out for him with the post-fighting career and he doesn’t end up needing to come back.

CJ Vergara vs Daniel Lacerda down on Fight Pass stole the show with an utterly mad round and a half of chaos. I had a feeling it’d be at least decent because Lacerda (don’t know why he’s changed from Da Silva) is usually always in entertaining fights despite going winless so far in the UFC. Wasn’t sure about Vergara but this turned out to be an absolute corker. How Vergara got through that first round in one piece I’ll never know.

From this…

To this…

Amazing. Rightly got FOTN. Crazy back and forth fight and comeback from Vergara. The fact he’s from Texas added to this, the crowd came unglued when he won. But he really showed something here and I’ll definitely be checking for his next fight after this. Lacerda now drops to 0-4 in the UFC and been stopped all 4 times but I honestly hope they keep him around. I’ve seen similar sentiments on social media as well. He’s never dull and the roster needs more fighters like him. Fuck it. I’d say feed him a complete bum to get him a win so he can stick around but it’s gonna be hard to find a scrub at Flyweight these days. I hope they give him one more shot though. If he goes 0-5 then fair enough. But in a promotion that gave Bethe Correia paycheques for close to a decade, surely they can sort a fighter like Lacerda out.

The Victor Altamirano vs Vinicius Salvador early prelim opener was decent as well. Had its moments. Although Salvador taunting and acting like a discount Anderson Silva was a bit much in a fight he was losing. Made me glad he lost in the end. Acting like Anderson and rocking the Ronaldo haircut, you better have something about you. He didn’t.

Pretty good show all in all. Despite Holly Holm. Main event was decent albeit more one sided than I expected, Nate The Train did his thing and that Vergara vs Lacerda fight will be somewhere on my FOTY list by December. 

Edited March 26, 2023 by wandshogun09

[Panhead]

Holly Holm went full-on Helen Lovejoy. 

[Egg Shen]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:16 PM, Bruce85 said:

Just logged into the BT sports app to watch the replay and it’s got the results on the front page so that’s ruined the main results….. never seen the app display info like that, seems pretty stupid to me and hope it’s not a permanent change! 

yeah, official youtube replays usually do the same thing, just completely counter-productive.

 

[wandshogun09]

Sandhagen summing up Chito’s style perfectly here.

“He kept saying the whole week, ‘Whoever wants it more is gonna win’ and it’s like, at some point you run into other people that want it the same amount as you. And then you have to be better than them. At some point you start fighting people that want it as much as you, that work as hard as you and at that point you have to be a better learner, a better fighter and just better overall technically and I really believed that I was that over Chito.” 

 

I’ve become a fan of Chito. It took some time but he won me around in the end. But although I totally get why he’s popular, over the course of his last few fights and in the lead up to this one, I’d been seeing some talk of him as a title threat/future champ and I just don’t think that was ever on the cards for him. I could be wrong. Worse fighters that Marlon Vera have held UFC gold, but not in a division as strong as Bantamweight. He’s good. He’ll win more than he loses and he’ll probably stick around in that Top 5 for a bit. But there’s an extra level at 135 that he’s just not quite on. We saw it when Aldo outclassed him and now again here with Sandhagen. I wasn’t sure about this one going in. Although I ended up picking Sandhagen, I didn’t think it would be such a clear win. But I do think Sandhagen was being overlooked big time.

Still, plenty of fun fights to make for Chito. And he’s already got his eye on Petr Yan.

I’d be well up for that. Or Chito vs Figgy. Or Chito vs Davey Grant 3. Or Chito vs Song Yadong 2. Or Chito vs Yanez if Yanez beats Font at 287. There’s still a lot of fun to be had.