BTG 107 - UFC 307 Review

[Music] hello and welcome to Breaking the guard on today's episode I'm going to review UFC 307 uh first time I've tuned into a card since my my trips around the world so uh I'll give you my thoughts on it I also did a preview on Friday and and if you saw that spoiler alert here I was four out of five out of my main card picks not bad although honestly I probably should have been like one out of five because some of the judging criteria was pretty bad right uh I'll start from the bottom of the car which was uh Kayla Harrison versus uh klyn Vieira this was the one that I got wrong and not surprisingly cuz I was this was like kind of like my upset BET right I I had uh put more stock into Caitlyn because or Katlyn uh just because I've seen that she could you know sprawl and brawl before but I overestimated her ability to capitalize on this opportunity cuz uh she really didn't strike as much as she she needed to and she allowed Harrison to actually get a striking game off of her of her own which is a big mistake if you're going to be the spraw and brawler and and enforcing a striking game plan you have to strike fear into the grappler right or the wrestler you have to make sure that they know that whenever they try to clinch there's a huge price to pay even just trying to close that distance you're going to get hit and it's going to hurt and it might end the fight Caitlyn was like trying to outpoint her and uh at least that's like what it looked like the strikes didn't have bad intent it was just like oh I touched you and that's not going to be enough to DET to deter somebody who really wants to wrestle you into the ground and although in the first part of the round she did a good job she did get taken down and some pretty vicious Grand aound from Kayla that we've seen in previous fights but she was able to survive the distance in the second round she was able to negate all the takedowns but not really do any significant damage and then the third round she was taken down again pretty easy decision for for Kayla uh that was obviously why the smart money was there right uh but that was my one bet that I was more risky on all the other ones I got right the next one you had Kevin Holland with um Deli and uh I had picked thei and he did win this was kind of a weird fight but it's exactly why I thought D was going to win this it's is that Kevin fights silly right he doesn't fight with he's not a smart fighter and I don't mean like intellectually smart I mean that he picks bad strategies and decisions right um in this case Deli was able to take him to the ground and you know Kevin's had a slouch on the ground but but then he's playing like a figure four guard for most of the round and figure four closed guard is a stalling guard essentially right like you have to and I mean he does have the mobility to try to take advantage of it and actually attack there but he really didn't and you know um DOI wasn't really trying to pass guard I think he was playing a very conservative MMA style uh which was I'm just going to gr andan you from within your close guard which I would be fine with as well honestly when you have somebody who's content being in close guard off their back in MMA it's a free punching session right it's very easy to hit it's pretty hard to get caught in the submission you have to be really silly as a top guy to get caught in something uh as long as you're keeping your hips High you know over there so they can't really get any triangles or arm bars or you're doing what Roman was doing which is head on top of his head also Al is going to negate most of your submission game it's pretty easy to score shots now I would critique Roman a little bit in the sense that he wasn't really doing any real damage he was just smothering more but enough to win a score card yes and towards the end of the round Kevin I I imagine was feeling a little desperate as far as going to lose his round without doing anything and he opened up tried to force an armar that missed and then Roman was was going to pass and to defend the pass Kevin kind of Twisted hard and when he twisted popped the rib right and you could see right away like something went wrong as his all his defense went out the window uh he was able to survive the round but took some brutal punishment but in between rounds it was very obvious he had popped the rib he told his Corner that they were trying to tell him he could fight through it uh he's like I'm not sure and then I think the coach made the right decision was you you do you cut the fight off there right don't make your fighter uh mentally Weak by giving into an injury you do it for them right and uh one of the things that pissed me off about this Conor McGregor chimps in and he's like oh you should have let him keep fighting you know uh you don't stop because of a pot rib and it's like of all people to be talking right now you didn't go into a fight because of a pinky toe injury right or something like that it's like you lost all your footing to be able to talk about injuries that said there is a point to be made about that which is yeah you know if I dislocated a finger before a fight and maybe it was bad enough for I would say hey you know what this is not going to allow me to fight well I could fight with this but I'm not going to be showing my best self and if I lose they could perhaps ruin my career so I'm going to not fight but if that's injury occurred in the fight you might say you know what we're already in here suck it up let's keep going right especially if the fight's going really well in our favor right I'm like you know can I work around this I had a fighter for example Jason who dislocated his shoulder in the fourth round of a title fight winning all four rounds now would I let Jason go into a fight with a dislocated shoulder absolutely not did we let him continue yes he want his fight right and a dislocated shoulder is a far more serious injury than the rib right for sure I haven't trained in a couple days now because I just tweaked my ribs again I could train it's just not a great idea it's going to hurt me more so Conor had a point but I don't feel like he had the moral High Ground after his big toe or little toe I don't I heard someone say big toe someone said pinky toe there's a huge huge difference if it's a big toe injury you can't walk if it's a pinky toe injury it's nothing right I've had pinky toe injuries a couple times you could fight with him I did fight with a broken pinky toe before it's not even an issue but the in Holland's case fight wasn't going well uh he took some good damage although I think he defended most of the shots he did get some punishment and he himself wasn't feeling great about it so I've had for example my nose broken after taking a good left hand in my fight in Costa Rica and they wanted to stop the fight as far as the referee did and I said keep going now would I let a fighter start a fight with a broken fight no but would I let them continue yes obviously I let myself continue so but I wanted to right I was locked in like to me it's like I already took this much pain I'm going to get mine and some more back Kevin wasn't in that head space so I think the coach made a good call Coach tried to get him to fight and it looked like Kevin was going to go along with it but he wasn't sold so as a coach you got to protect your fighter right so sometimes protecting them means pushing them to go beyond their boundaries but I feel like in this case it probably good call like no call it back especially since Kevin's taking all these weird fights like this is out of his way class um he should be fighting 170 right so uh and again why I called for Roman to win this fight just not the greatest decision maker right uh moving Ong the card um we had Mario Batista going against Jose Aldo I had picked Batista Batista did win perhaps a decision nobody like this fight right Batista at first looked very sharp very fast Twitchy uh landed some good strikes but uh as Jose was getting his rhythm it looked like Mario realized he needed to start throwing in a lot of takedown attempts uh 16 zero takedowns but what he was able to do successfully is hold uh Aldo against the fence and it seems like he won the fight simply by being able to hold Aldo against the fence nobody likes this right because it's boring nobody wants to see someone hug the fence and my critique to this would be don't let yourself get held against the fence they're acting like Aldo is incapable of removing himself from the fence if so what if he's in a street fight and I put him against the fence he's just going to stay there helpless he's got to work his way out of it now it's not easy right you expose yourself to certain Risk by trying to escape the fence but if there's somebody who's just constantly pinning you against the fence you got to be able to to get out of it turn them on the fence and you know all sorts of things so it's easy to dump on Mario because yes very boring game plan right very not entertaining but at the same time it takes two to tangle and if you're just allowing yourself to be held against the fence and mind you they 16 times you failed to read the Tak down and allow the guy to rush you into the fence 16 times I feel the failure goes on both ends it's easier to to get mad at you know Mario because he was initiating the motion but at the same time I feel like Aldo was allowing it to happen and in a fight where not a lot of damage was done on either end although I think Mario got a little bloody towards the end of it um if damage wasn't the criteria to win which it was so there's an argument there that Aldo at least landed more face damage than um than Mario but control wise it definitely seems that Mario was able to control Aldo much better I've always favored damage more but a cut isn't really significant damage in my opinion especially if it's not in an area that's going to blind or disable your opponent right like if I got a cut under my cheek like who cares right now if I have a cut going across my eyelid yeah that's a big factor now right uh I'm going to get blinded uh so that I would score more in Mario's case it seems like it was just a cosmetic you know B bleeder cut nothing that I would really U be concerned about but still pretty lame fight right but I did call it just thought the new blood had more tools and he did just didn't make him as exciting as we would have hoped the next fight we had Raquel Penington versus Juliana Peña I had picked Pena and once again I feel like I should have been wrong here but Pena did win the decision although on a live viewing for me I thought that Raquel painton pulled it off uh first round was probably the round that everyone has to watch again because that was the telling round that's the one that I thought Pennington had did more but who knows uh I have to watch it again to see what the punch stats were and how it really went down uh but rounds two and three went to Pena uh scored a taked down got some good uh ground on pound almost got a submission finish but Rocky was able to get out but uh rounds four four and five Pennington took over on round four she scored a knockdown which again I thought we were scoring 108s you know she dropped her you know uh made the mistake of trying to follow up with a guil team but didn't get taken down as a result but definitely lost some momentum there that allowed pan to recover and then round five looked like Rocky did more to uh land her Jabs but I my critique off these women bout as a title fight so ugly as far as the style of fighting you know Pennington must have been drilled in on just doing hands she barely threw any kicks and Pena had a really turned over stance that every like I think Pennington maybe threw like five kicks to the leg and each Kick landed hard it's like why wasn't it part of your game plan to chew up that leg you know like she could have destroyed paa with leg kicks uh and I'm talking about like Cal kicks very low right so low risk for for takedowns and she could have definitely peppered them in there but didn't she would land like one or two like stting leg kicks to the calf and then just forget about it she also had this annoying thing where she would do this crossover uh shift uh right hand and just about every time she did it she got countered with a right hand and it was like her go-to little like Blitz and I thought like P got the read on this like very early in and you're still doing this it's just like bad strategy you know I don't know on the ground uh Pennington looked pretty helpless as well she did enough not to get submitted but that's just about it it's just the level of talent and then division right now as a title fight was pretty appalling for me right uh I think uh Harrison would run through either of them seeing what I've saw which is she's competent enough on her feet to pose a threat at the same time be able to engage her takedown game and on the ground she looks to be a level above uh either of those ladies and the other thing that was kind of annoying pan wins and rather than calling out the rising star of Kayla Harrison who obviously wants this title fight she called out Amanda Nunes who's been retired the person that she last beat for the title what a weird call out it it just landed very flat it's she's retired dude like what are you doing you know you're ignoring the obvious Challenger and you're trying to take on somebody who's quit the game just very weak you know not a good look in my opinions so not only did she get a decision that a lot of people felt was unjust then she's trying to Double Down On scumbaggery by going after a retired fighter it just seems like H so like I said I got that pick right but not happy about it and then the final one Alex Pereira versus KH rry once again both these gentlemen delivered and thank God this was like the the fight that really stood out as being exceptional khil and Alex perhaps had the longest star down I can recall in recent UFC history the moment Alex entered the cage while khil locked eyes with him Alex lock dies with him and they never stopped looking at each other until the fight started it's a long time it's like a 10-minute star down basically and it's interesting Alex looks like didn't even blink and he was like very still for most of it and just looking him you see khil had a little Jitters moving around and then towards the end Alex started getting pumped up and bouncing around and I was wondering how this would have an effect on them but no they were both locked in very good uh execution of both of their game plans it was clear that khil wanted to be able to score and land shots early very fast twitch very in andout and was successful in winning the first two rounds in my opinion very easily Alex much more patient trying to dominate and force khil back into the cage but khil would constantly Circle in and then reestablish himself in the center but he wasn't able to land any big shots uh initially because every time he would try to step in and throw punches Alex would just back up and since he was in the middle of the the cage he was able to back up without consequence and just able just for blows some of them would connect but when you have a straight shot coming at you and you're moving with it doesn't really do anything you know not to the level that you would wanted to uh that's not to say that there wasn't any bigger moments it might have been the second round or maybe beginning of third round where Alex tried to throw a high kick and then got caught with a clothline of a right hand by khil that looked like like it stunned him he he dropped to his knees and then or he like popped a deep Squat and then came back up uh so he definitely got clipped by a few shots by khil and I think uh definitely got his respect as far as power but the only problem was khalil's game plan required a lot of energy he was constantly moving in and out and he since he was being pressured backwards the whole time he had to move against that pressure and try to reestablish himself in the center Dean Thomas had some good advice which was that he needed to pressure Alex and take over the center of the cage so that when he did stalk him and when he did like pressure forward he would get hit to the back of the fence and not be able to evade all the strikes but uh didn't really get to execute that the way that Thomas described now in the third round it looked like the wheel started to fall off on khil as far as gas he started to slow down a little bit and I believe Alex started to open up a little bit more and it was revealed at the post fight that was the game plan which was to wait for him to kind of wear himself out a little bit and then start picking him apart and he was doing just that he started opening them up the landing Jabs and right hands and breing punches and slipping them very smoothly and uh third round started looking pretty ugly at the end and in my opinion Alex won that round pretty pretty handedly and then the fourth round it just got much much worse he split them open with a big gash over and under the eye and this is where I wish khil didn't make any pledges or was very honorable and now doing any takedowns because Alex said no takedown attempts or you have to give to charity and then khil said I'm not going to do any takedown attempts because he has that stat that I showed you guys before zero takedowns in his UFC career and I'll give to charity anyways which is nice and honorable and but we want to win a fight by the most efficient means possible and when you haven't done a single takedown in three rounds there's a time to do takedowns is when your opponent is almost upright and he's starting to try to pick you apart because now the leg kicks from khil he only started throwing them I think in the third round but the wheels were like I said he was already starting to to fade a bit so there wasn't any real leg threat there was no takedown threat that allows a guy like Alex who's already tall to fight very tall which allows all the weapons to be at full display you have to have that takeown threat in there so that they lower their stance a little bit it removes some of the weapons and it gives them another threat to think about and if they try to close distance on you you can rush in for a taked down Alex has somehow managed to get guys who don't want to take him down which blows my mind because he's the most dangerous striker in the UFC right now and he hasn't had anybody that really wants to take him down yet it's just it's just insane right um I feel like I had the same feeling when V not vanis I'm sorry uh God Anderson Sila was starting to dominate and like nobody would try to take him down you know uh the one guy that did Travis lutter was very successful but unfortunately he gassed and then he got triangle choked by erson zva right who has more of a ground game but uh most people just try to out strike him and I'm not sure what the level of Alex pera's ground game is or how good is taked down def game is because it hasn't really been tested so it's just bizarre to me and there was one guy who could have pulled off takedowns it would have been Khalil because uh he had enough respect in the Striking that he could have mixed it in if you're just a pure Grappler trying to run into Alex yeah you're probably going to have a rough time you know but that wasn't the case here but then again since khil has never done a taked down I guess I'm speaking out of turn maybe he has zero takedown abilities I don't think that that's true but just one of those times it would have been useful to fight MMA versus fight kickboxing right but fourth round anyways Alex just picks him apart almost looking like he was trying to be somewhat merciful in not doing too much damage to him it looked like at one point that he just was trying to figure out the easiest way to put him out without just bludging him to death because khalil's chin was holding up pretty solid he was clearly hurt and he was like backed up into the the fence but he was still swinging wild every so often trying to connect with a Haymaker ultimately it became I think it was a right hook left liver shot right uppercut that put him down and I think the liver shot did the damage because khil crumbled into a ball which is typical from a body shot right and the fight was over there uh great display by KH which honestly um he performed very well I think that was towards the best of his ability just not enough against Alex I think you needed a better game plan as far as actually incorporating takedowns in my opinion that would have been the difference uh that could have made a big factor maybe also getting those leg kicks in earlier although you never know because if he's throwing more kicks you know the cat kicks and whatnot then that's allowing Alex range to attack but I think uh khalil's kicks have shown to be pretty ferocious so mixing those in a little bit more combining with the takedowns would really give Alex a lot more to think about he also needs a gas tank to be able to support that type of fight like he could have won a three rounder with that game plan he would have but not a five rounder right uh and I'm not sure if it's just the way they conditioned or just the way he's built as far as or the the strategy that was employed but he needed to think for a five round fight now to be fair I did not see him this going that far I thought this was going to be round one or two ending fight right and I think khil thought the same at least in his post fight interview he thought he was gonna land more shots right which I imagine meant that he thought he was going to finish in an early round fight for him to be victorious or you know to lose he was probably going to get caught with an early Round Shot so the fact that I went to the fourth round is deep Waters already so uh good fights uh well maybe not good fights but the round tree fight was a good fight for me very entertaining just goes to show how dangerous you know potin is like he's very measured and calculated he didn't look fatigued at all like zero like when the fourth round came in there was like a shark that caught the scent of blood and just punished kilio uh so his level of pacing and conditioning and Poise is obviously Championship level so I'm not sure what's in for him I know I think anoff wants a piece of him and to me I'm like okay let's let's get that fight in let's get somebody who wants to wrestle him CU clearly uh ankle off wants to wrestle him because I feel that would be a better test right somebody who has some you know striking ability but really wants to work this fight to the ground because that's my only critique as far as and the the strength of opposition it's been I could be wrong here but from my recollection it's all people striking so let's get somebody who actually wants to Grapple and see if Alex can stay on his feet you know or put the guy down before he gets the chance or see what type of ground game he does have if he gets put in his back cuz what I mean to me what I always admire are Fighters that are fully rounded right like they can fight on the ground they can fight in the feet that's why a guy like Mighty Mouse is a fan favorite he's good everywhere he's dangerous all over the place right uh GSP is similar can fight everywhere right so uh right now we know that Alex very dangerous on his feet striking wise we don't really know anything about his wrestling ability too much we don't he's got one taken out of ATT I believe and uh we don't really know anything about his ground game either so it would be interesting to see that if it could be exposed uh as a Grappler I hope it could be because I want to see more facets of the game being used because uh if somebody's basically able to successfully have a striking only game plan that works on everybody that kind of sucks in the gates what we're doing as being important right uh and I just think it's possible to clinch and take people down right I I just think that the a that that poan has has been very effective at deterring people from wanning to score takedowns which is wild to me because he's moving forward the whole time which as a Grappler is what you want you want to draw people in moving into you to take him down so to me it's like I see a lot of O and he fights very tall so I see a lot of opportunities to score takedowns here um now the thing is you can't just shoot blind on a guy like him right cuz he does seem to walk in a lot in bait an initial reaction much like a gunslinger waiting for someone to reach for their their sidearm first right like I feel like if you wanted to be effective there you would have to wait for him to strike and then use that as your entry to slip in which of course scarier because that means you have to have good reaction time to be able to read his strike and then slip enter inside and find your takedown but I mean I mean if you're a worldclass fighter that's what you have to expect to be able to score it's much easier than when you're trying to walk that guy down hard to score takedowns because now he's backing away from you and you're trying to get closer to a guy that's already moving back but when the guy's moving into you it's very easy to set up collisions right um so anyhow that's my take on UFC 307 overall judging pretty terrible one referee was absolutely awful like that he was breaking up fights within like I think it might have been the Batista Aldo fight which uh or maybe it wasn't them because people were booing there too but there was a fight where the ref was breaking up the clinch within like five six seconds Against the Cage which to me seemed outrageous all right uh no I don't think it was Aldo it definitely wasn't uh it was a one of the undercar fights I believe but just ridiculous and the Utah crowd wasn't great as far as there was so much booing like just about every fighter got boo I think except Alex uh they were not happy fans and I there was a lot to be upset about I guess with the decisions like the the P fight you know a lot of people felt was a bad decision people didn't like Aldo losing that decision uh people were upset about Kevin Holland's rib popping out they didn't understand what was going on on you know so uh yeah that the main card I felt had a lot more uh potential as far as making great fights at least that's what I was hoping for but in reality not as entertaining to watch besides the main event uh Alex and Round Tree I feel like saved that card uh the rest of it was pretty forgettable you know so yeah I came in with High Hopes left a little satisfied but again price tagwise 80 bucks for that I don't feel like I got a good deal out of it right but whatever it is what it is anyhow this week coming up on Thursday we have the UFC five pass Invitational number eight that I think I previewed uh earlier in the week so I'm going to be there live to check it out I'll give a review of it afterwards also I think that should be a very entertaining card if you're local in Vegas you should definitely check it out uh it's always underfilled it's in the UFC Apex you're going to be sitting pretty much as close I am to this camera which is like 10 feet out so great uh spectator experience probably the only grappling show that my wife actually likes to watch because you're really up close to the action and the matches have always proven to be really exciting so if you don't you're not here in Vegas check it out on UFC 5 bypass uh you can watch it there otherwise I'll see you guys next week