BTG 179 - Measured Chaos

Hello and welcome to Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, we'll talk about UFC Fight Night 267 with Strickland versus Hernandez. We'll start from the main card bottom, working the way up. In the opener, there was Michelle Pereira versus Zachary Reese. These two actually trained together at Extreme Couture. So, it was interesting to see how that would play out. These are people who've already experienced each other's styles. I think Michelle said that he had 10 rounds of sparring with uh Zach or maybe Zach said that. I'm not sure which one. It's not a ton, but enough to get an idea of what to expect. Now, this was a I would say pretty back and forth fight. I felt that Mitchell might have edged out round one. Definitely won round two. Round three probably. I mean, not probably, I think he lost round three. So, I had a two to one. This ended up going to a split decision uh towards Mitchell's favor. Uh I felt it was justified. Pretty good action though. They both these guys were kind of wild and I felt Mitchell pressed the advantage early as he was able to outland Zachary and he busted up his nose pretty bad early in round one and then in round two it got really exaggerated the damage and he was bleeding all over the place. Ree looked like at some point he wanted to get this fight to the ground, but he couldn't control for he had a hard time getting Mitchell down and when he did get him down, couldn't hold him down. And Mitchell trains a lot in the same group that I am with uh Strickland and there's a lot of standing up work. So, it's good to see that that paid off for him. I'm not sure if not everyone's doing the same type of emphasis. In my opinion, senses were working it a bit too much, but it played out very well in this case for Mitchell as he was able to get up with relative ease. Even scored a couple takedowns, although he didn't want to really work from top position. He just wanted to work on his feet. What I found interesting was the commentators were really hating on Mitchell, saying how he has no gas tank. Oh, he's already tired. And I'm like, are we looking at the same guy? He looks fine. He was light on his feet. Uh, of course he's a bit of a wild man. Like he stands in there, he starts throwing bombs, but that's his style, but I felt he was much better composed in this fight. I'm not sure what they were talking about. Oh, he's exhausted. He wasn't breathing with a mouth open or anything, you know. He looked very good in my opinion. Now, I will say there were some files that were done by Ree that people found questionable and rightly so. It was hard to see from the outside point of view. There were two low kicks that were like inside leg kicks. One of them like the toes landed on the outside of the hip here. It was like on the shorts, but it wasn't in the groin area as we would typically expect it. And the other one was like high in the thigh and still not quite in the groin. That's what we're seeing. And they hit there. Very low chance that it somehow pulled the jock strap and like pinched him, you know, but we can't see everything. And maybe it did clip him and we were just not seeing it. It didn't seem in those cases it would have benefited him to take the foul. as one of them was just after he wobbled Zach which he would want to press the advantage. So yeah, it's weird. There was also an eye gouge and this was in Texas. So Ree is from Texas. He had a big hometown crowd. They were booing the the hell out of uh Mitchell and acting like all these fouls were unjustified. The eye gouge is clearly an eye gouge. And I felt that's on Ree not being careful with his weapons. You know, I always say that if you're the fighter and you're fouling people, you're the one that should be upset at yourself. You have to control your weapons. Even when they're accidental, it's still on you. And to me, damage is a criteria, not as much as intention. Any case, we'll move on from that fight. Then this next one, Jacobe Smith and Josiah Harold. Harold was a newcomer into the UFC. Uh he has he was 11 and0 as was Jacobe Smith who was also 11 and0. Two undefeated guys, two guys who looked at the top of their game. Jacobe is built like a monster. I mean, just Vag muscles popping out of everywhere. You know, he's probably walking around. Less than 8% body bag, guys. Just absolutely shredded and explosive. Powerful. I didn't recognize the name when I was doing the the preview on Friday. If I did, I would have picked him because he is dangerous. very good wrestling and explosive striking. The I end up picking Harrow because I like them. The nickname muscle hamster. I thought that was hilarious. Unfortunately for the muscle hamster, he got squashed. He had a few takedown entries. He scored takedowns, but uh Jacobe was able to pop up to his feet seemingly like Derek Lewis. It just looked like he just decided to will himself up and he got up. He was landing better on his feet and clearly had the the speed advantage. He had a a good a little not sure how much taller, but he was taller than him and you could tell that reach was an issue as was the speed. And I think wrestling wise, Harold looked solid, but he couldn't hold down Jacobe. And the last sequence of the fight, Harold scores a nice takedown. And as he's putting Jacobe down, Jacobe somehow times a backward roll the moment his top of his shoulders hit the mat and boom, reverses immediately up. I've never seen anything quite like that. And it looked like a type of move you would do if you were fighting a white belt and you just wanted to have fun and you knew you could get away with them because their balance is off. Harold is not a white belt to pull that type of roll like he if and again I'm pretty sure that's how I remember it. It was kind of because he took him down straight to side control and he just backward rolled but like the timing was perfect like a millisecond off and he won't be able to hit that momentum but his hips he somehow was able to backward over him so they reversed side controls and Jacobe wasted no time hammer fist elbow elbow hammer fist knocked him out cold that's not an easy thing to do on side control side control is usually pretty hard to control for MMA purposes, especially when you start striking and for short strikes. Elbows for sure, but man, it was fast. He knocked him out very quickly and he was knocked out bad. Uh Harold when he took a while to come to his senses, he was trying to grapple the referee and his coaches. It was a not a great thing to see, you know, as far as a recovery, but fortunately, he was able to walk out of there. But impressive performance by Jacobe. A dangerous guy for sure. Then we had Sergey Spivbec with Ant Delia. This was a more technical heavyweight battle. What was interesting was that uh Delia is more the striker of the two whereas Spivac is known more as a grappler. But initially it was all striking and SPC's jab was landing pretty good and he was it looked like picking apart Dia a little bit. I think it was in round two Dia started finding his range and really started ripping into Spivac landing combinations looking pretty bad for Spivac. He was eating some damage. He was ultimately able to get some takedowns in and that changed the tide and it looked like he switched strategies because I know in initially the main concern when anybody fights pitback is the grappling and he didn't touch the grappling at all. So it's a good change up when you're able to adjust like that on the fly and have that variability in your game plan. And that's why it's good when you have multiple weapons that you can lean on whichever weapon you want. When you only have one thing to do and someone counters it, you're in a lot of trouble. So Spive ended up winning that decision. We have a few more fights. We have uh Costa with Dan Eay. I was rooting for Dan Eay because he's out of extreme. Uh he had a rough time though. Costa was really landing the kicks. He's just so fast with the kicks. EA was able to score a quick taked down but not able to stay on top. And then Costa was able to keep range really well. And the thing with Costa, man, he kicks so fast and it's like every kick you can hear it. It's just like a baseball bat. And Eay wasn't able to close distance well. He kept himself somewhat in kicking range, which is not a great range to be at with Costa. And he just kept getting caught with kicks kicks kick kicks. Ultimately, one of those kicks uh dropped him and Costa was able to follow up and bit of an early stoppage in my opinion. He was rocked obviously. So, Eay had his hands up, had a guard up and all the punches were coming from the front. So to me, the guard was an intelligent defense. Costa hadn't switched to like angling, you know, throwing hooks or hammer fists. So if you ask me what's an intelligent defense when you're rocked and all the strikes are coming from this direction, obviously put your guard up and block them. And it wasn't as if he was there for like 30 seconds. It was like 3 seconds and the ref stopped it. The heartbreaking part was the bell was 5 seconds away. To me, it appeared that Eay was going to survive the round. Now, would it have made that much difference in the fight the fight outcome? Probably not, to be honest. But, man, these guys train so hard. Let them finish the round. Especially when they are intelligently defending themselves. Like I said, it's one thing when you're getting swarmed and strikes and coming from all different angles and you're just staying put, but when everything's coming frontal and you're blocking frontal, that's smart. Uh, and it wasn't I know sometimes you might say, "Well, he's getting bludgeoned and even when your guard is up, you're getting hurt." That could be true, but that clearly wasn't the case because the moment the ref stepped in, he was already on the, you know, he was very well aware. So, I I felt that was a bad stop, but like I said, probably wouldn't have made too much difference on the outcome of the fight, unfortunately for for Dan, but still a bummer. Then we had the co-main event, Urus Medic with Gio Neil and man, Urus dangerous guy as the nickname, the doctor. His striking was, as they put it, surgical, right? He was landing shots repeatedly and throwing lots of different angles, too. And the knockout sequence was beautiful. He caught him with a couple hooks and he had thrown one downward. I think it was a lead left hook over the top that just caught Joff right on the temple and slept him out cold. He's a nasty dude. So, like I said, Medic, he's got a good streak going. He's got some good names under his belt. It's going to be time for him to start challenging some of the upper echelon, that welterweight division, which is already really stacked. And finally, the main event, Sean Strickland, Anthony Hernandez. This is the one that I was waiting for. Uh, like I said, I felt this was a good matchup stylistically. These are the two guys that can go the distance, that are very good at drowning people in the deep waters, that have high paces. I think Anthony has shown he can push a higher pace for a longer time, particularly on a grappling style fight. So, it was going to be a question who's going to impose the pace. Is Shawn gonna be able to stay on the outside, jab and tep, and break down Anthony, or is Anthony going to be able to clinch and wrestle him and wear him out on those wrestling exchanges? Round one showed that Strickland was going to be more in charge of pacing as he was able to dictate using his jab and the tep that some people hate or maybe a lot of people hate when it becomes too standish. But Strickland was showing more finishing initiative. He did land some right hands. He had one that rocked Fluffy, but uh Fluffy was able to fight back and he would wing some loopy punches that dropped Strickland twice in that first round. Although I don't think they were drops in the sense like he got knocked unconscious and you know like a flash KO. It was more footing lost and especially because Strickland has such a weird stance. He's like extending almost upright and you'll see he crosses his feet quite a bit as he's moving around. So if I'm not 100% of this, but I'm pretty sure on some of these he was like midstep, got hit, dropped to a knee, and popped back up. Still didn't look great optically. I gave that round to Anthony, but I wasn't looking at the punch stat. I know Sean landed a lot of jabs on him. I have felt just the bigger shots and obviously the easier ones to see optically were those drops and Fluffy had two of them versus Strickland's one where he did rock uh Hernandez. Round two came in and that one was all Strickland. He was able to control distance much better. Didn't get touched, didn't get dropped. Uh started landing some right hands. He was letting the one twos come out and those were connecting. Fluffy tried to take him down a couple times, never got close. Strickland clinched with him a few times. I I felt just to step away and land some body shots and uh I think he was starting to work some knees as well. Round three, that's when this fight would come to an end. He changed strategy or not maybe not strategy but he changed the pace of the fight and the distance of the fight rather than fighting so much from the outside. In round three, Strickland started crashing with Fluffy and getting into clinches. This to me genius when you know that your opponent's not going to take you down because you're ruining now their distance management and calculating how they're going to engage with you. And he did this several times as he's jabbing deep. Then he would crash in. Boom. And every time he would clinch, he would throw some strikes on the way out. So, it it throws off somebody when they think they got your distance figured out and your pacing and then you suddenly switch it. And you've heard me talk about this a lot. One thing that Sean does really well is that he's a very smart tactical fighter. He talks a lot of trash. He says things that get under people's skin. So, you think he's going to go out there and fight very emotionally, but those are all shows because you could see in this fight something that I don't particularly care for, he's touching gloves every round, being very respectful. I think there were a few like close fouls that like you mentioned. So, he's very much a sportsman. Personally, I wouldn't be that way. I never was. I didn't touch gloves ever in a fight. We just fighting, you know. I'll give you respect before and after, not Wilder fighting. So, I say that to highlight that he is not a wild man, right? He's very measured. So, this strategic shaking up was a measured call. And I'm sure this was something that was worked in camp to change the pace, change the distance, and it paid off big because of one of these clinches, he landed a crushing knee to the body and instantly you can see Fluffy put his hand on his body. I don't know if it was a liver shot. Um, I'm guessing it had to be a liver shot cuz it it looked like it landed center mass, but remember your liver is on your right side just under that floating rib. So, if a knee scoops in, whether it's solar plexus or or liver, you're going to be in a world of hurt because your liver actually extends quite uh across the mid-range. In any case, Fluffy was hurt bad and started backing up. And once Strickland smelt the blood in the water, he just went finishing mode, pushed him into the cage, and just unloaded. Fluffy threw a few hands. I think one of them did clip Strickland that got his attention, but he just pushed through it and was able to get Fluffy to drop and finish with a TKO. Impressive win, great finish against a very tough guy. As I said, uh, Hernandez was on a eight fight win streak and then this was, as the promo puts it, the boogeyman of that middleweight division. Boogeyman is down and Strickland now puts himself in great position because he's beat all the other guys. I think the number two was Imabuff and he's already beat Immab. So, the fight that makes sense now is going to be with Kamza. It's the one guy that he hasn't fought who's the champion. And it's a great matchup. I know some people are feel like uh Drius should get a shot since he's the number two, but I don't know. I I think promotion wise is not the greatest matchup to put. Sean's lost to him twice. So if he was able to beat Shawn, let's say, then he goes for this rematch with Kamza. It's it's weird because it doesn't prove that he's evolved or become better if he beats the guy that he's already beat two times in a row to fight a guy that completely dominated him. I feel for Draus. It would make more sense for him to fight someone else like Imav or some other top rank guy that he hasn't fought yet than to fight Strickland. But that's just me. I think it's more interesting if Strickland is able to fight Kamzat. First of all, it's a better promotional fight. because he's already done all the name calling. He's done all the setups. So, it's going to be a much easier fight to promote. There seems to be some genuine animosity between these two. They've trained together before as well. Comes out, says, "Oh, I, you know, destroyed him and draining." Uh, so there's going to be some animosity there that's going to be real. That's going to make the marketing for this fight a lot better, especially since Strickland's really leaning on the America heavy angle, Kamza being a foreigner, that should play well as far as getting people riled up. Uh, a third match of Dry Kiss and Kamzap really doesn't do anything. I don't I mean second match rather I don't think that promotes as well in my opinion. Now if Strickland was able to beat Kamzat then a trilogy match with Drius would be interesting and also a chance for redemption for Stricklin. That's what I think and obviously I'm a little biased. I train with a guy. So, I would like to see that match with with Kamza because it's an interesting style match up. I think it would expose M maybe expose it would show people more of Strickland's game. A lot of people seem to think that he was going to get uh wrestled and held down, which it's very possible, but he trains that area of the game a lot. So, I don't think he would be held down. Could he be taken down? Sure. I don't think you're going to be able to capitalize off of it. And you because by the time if you were able to take them down, you're not going to hold them down while doing damage. It might be possible that you go hold them, but you won't be doing a lot. kind of like what happened with Kamsat with Reichus. He held him down but really didn't do any serious damage, right? He just held him. Um, I don't think that would happen with Shawn. I think Shawn's a lot better at getting up to his feet. First of all, hard uh to take down and uh he's going to be hard to hold down. And he's not a dummy. He's not going to get caught in like a silly submission. Um, he's a jiu-jitsu black belt. Like I said, I've trained with him. He He's very sound. He doesn't make silly mistakes to get caught in in submission. So, I don't think he would be caught um in a submission. I don't think he'll be held down. I think he has the type of skill set to frustrate someone that comes out. Now, that's to say comes out is not without danger on his feet either. He can bang and throw. I just think he's not as comfortable there. And we've seen him go to decisions with a Camaro Usman, a guy who could stay on his feet longer and not get taken down very easily. He did. I think he did get taken down in that fight, but he wasn't able to get finished. He was able to get on his feet. So, I think Strickland would pose a similar challenge. Now whether Strickland would able would be able to win this fight by outscoring him or potentially finishing him is another question, but I don't think it's going to be the type of blowout that the Draus fight was, right? I think it's going to be a much more closely contested match. And you would find out pretty early if the strategy is going to work because the way Camset seems to fight is he goes right off the gate tries to dominate immediately, which is not a bad idea because if you can establish domination early, it sets the pace for the rest of the fight because now the opponent's feeling your domination. And a lot of people have a hard time being able to go from being dominated to not being dominated. It's like now you've played this submissive role and you start just working for survival or desperation, you know, finishes or, you know, strikes or whatever. But Strickland is a guy who is tactical, who controls pace very well, someone who's trained with this guy, he's got some inside knowledge, and he's got the brains to be able to pull off a win there. So, I would like to see that fight. And right now, the one of the bigger problems which Sean's also I'll tell you he's gotten into a more trouble outside the cage and inside the cage. Even in this fight, he was very respectful and paid a good amount of uh lip service to Anthony Hernandez post fight. even having him with him as he was giving the speech, commending his toughness, his character, just uh to the point where if I remember correctly, he said that Fluffy is a better man than he would ever be. He aspires to be like him. Those are big words, man. Uh so that was very nice. However, once he got into the press room, he knows what makes him uh get headlines. He started attacking just about everybody that they questioned him about. Which is funny because Dana and the presser prior to this was telling the the reporters, if you ask him dumb questions, he's going to give you dumb answers. Because one of them asked him about the Super Bowl halftime show and he started, you know, saying, "Oh, this guy is a quoteunquote faggot." and uh the the Bad Bunny guy and he started attacking, you know, oh, women belong in the kitchen and he was saying all these different controversial things which are clearly jabs at everybody to get people riled up about him. Now, he did the same type of thing here, but I think it's important to note that he responds to the questions given to him. So I guess at some point they asked him about uh his fight with Kamzat. He started calling him uh Cheschnian [ __ ] How he's delaying the UFC by only fighting one time a year. So he's holding up the division. He's fighting boring. We need a real American in there. He's the last real American that can knock this guy out, beat him however way he wants. Paraphrasing more or less. But they cut his mic out before he could finish that. Which is crazy because Dana said that they would never limit free speech and a couple days later they did because he was mid-con conversation trying to answer a question and they killed his mic. I don't know if that was a UFC move or that was a Paramount move. Either way, pretty lousy. I think that if they wanted to beep him out, that's one thing, but just totally killing the mic, uh, it's pretty lame. Now we're censoring these guys, which I guess in other leagues and other promotions, not a big deal. But in the UFC, Dana goes lots of channels to say how he doesn't censor anybody. And he just said that about Strickland and he was blaming it on the press saying that oh you know don't ask him dumb questions he's not going to give you these dumb answers right like you know how he is he is going to answer the dumb questions the way you want them to which is kind of the point he's a marketing machine people he will generate lots of clicks opens and a lot of people will hate it a lot of people will love it he's very u antagonistic So polarizing, I guess that would be the better word. I'm not sure if cutting the mic off is just an engineered aspect of making this a more viral moment than just beeping him off or if they're actually panicking and like, "Oh, we got to get him off the mic." And I you could tell during the conversation he keeps saying, "Hey, you know, [ __ ] you, Yosi guy. Let me finish." So somebody on the outside was like, stop, right? So they must have been getting a signal, hey, stop this wild stuff that you're talking about. And he just kept going. And I guess they thought the only recourse was to kill the mic. To me, it would appear like a panic moment based off of that. Unless they were being, like I said, really ingenious in making this rehearsed and giving it their appearance to create a more viral moment of controversy. Oh, look. Did you hear they they cut his mic? Because that's going to make more people want to hear what he has to say because that's the result of censoring somebody is now people are more interested in trying to figure out what they were actually trying to say. What is the forbidden speech, right? I don't think it was a the I'm not sure if it was the Kamzat thing because that didn't seem too controversial. He said those type of things before perhaps on Paramount, but he has said them. Uh I before that part, I'm not exactly sure the order of events. He did make a serious allegation which I think may have been the beginning of the end for his postfight presser. the coach of Anthony Hernandez, I can't remember the name now, but he alleged that Aspen Lad when she was 14 and the this coach was 35 was being groomed by this coach. This is not a new allegation. Somebody dug up a post from 2022 where He is talking about it strickling. He also recently called out I believe Tikki Gozen for a similar allegation and when Tikki had a drama with some YouTuber got getting his face saying that he's going to slap the hell out of him and then Tikki dropped him with a really short tight elbow. Was actually a well done elbow and some people were calling it a cheap shot. In my opinion it wasn't a cheap shot. uh if someone's threatening to hit you and it wasn't like oh you know I'm better than I know he's like I'm going to I'm going to he said something about slapping him or hitting him and I'm going to make a clip like a video clip and then Tikki looked at him are you serious and this guy was looking at him like okay I'm not going to wait for somebody who makes a threat bodily violence on me who is right in my face to get the first shot if you're telling me you're going going to hit me. I'll take your word for it and I'll hit you first. So, fair play to Tikki on that in my opinion. But Strickling looked like he had more of a bone to pick with him about I guess an allegation he had made about Tikki, which is also has a video about previously as well. So, it seems like Strickland has like figured people out who or has singled people out who have quote unquote groomed allegedly young women. So, this wasn't something that he came up with on the spot. What I believe the context was that he didn't know that guy was Fluffy's coach. And when he saw him, that's what sparked up this thing. Like he's like, "Oh, that's the guy that was a well that he alleges groomed a young lady." And Aspen Lad is a UFC fighter now. So creepy uh alleged behavior for sure, especially with in light of all this Epstein stuff. The last thing I want to see is women or any of them rather being exploited. But he had said that and I guess to me I don't know if I would have to relisten. I don't think he alleged it. I think he said he did it. And this could be a legal concern now because if UFC and Paramount are airing this now, they might get some blowback from allowing someone to make these accusations on their network or, you know, through their platform. So, I imagine that might have been the reason, which would be more understandable. I would have to relisten because I don't recall if Sean Strickland was being as diplomatic as saying alleged versus he's saying, "Oh, no, he groomed this woman." Right. Uh, so hard to say, but can't really say you have free speech if you're going to cut someone's mic. Like I said, they could have beeped them off if they wanted to, which would have been, I mean, it would have probably not been that much better, but cutting the mic is essentially making zero attempt uh at trying to allow someone to speak. Is he saying offensive stuff? Oh, 100% he is. uh when he goes into those pressers, it's to get clicks and to get engagement. And unfortunately, what does that is being very controversial. It's funny because I did see a lot of people were very happy with what he said postfight because he was being very complimentary. He was being very humble. But once they put him in the the post-fight presser, he turned heel and started saying lots of controversial things. As I told you, he is measured. He's tactical. These are not accidents. He is not being emotional there, right? I I think people think that, but I can judge him based on his fights. And he fights very tactically. He doesn't fight emotionally. I would expect when he goes into that postfight presser, it's the same thing. It's being measured. And these are ways of improving his headline capability, which he's going to take all of them now because now everybody's talking about this free speech, yours, myself included. So, you know, good on him for capitalizing on the opportunity. But all the BS drama aside, I would want to see that fight with Kamzap and Vas. I think of the fighters in that division, he has the best chance of giving Kamzat a run for his money. And the question is going to be does come out have enough wrestling capability and ground control to hold down or first of all to take down Strickland and then second to hold him down. That would be the the question we want to see because if he's not it's not going to look good for him. The one thing we haven't seen from KZA is great cardio which is one of Strickland's best weapons. He went five rounds with Drias but he also did very little and the moment he started exerting himself he almost got submitted at the end. So I feel his gas tank is his biggest weakness versus somebody like Strickland whose gas tank is amazing. It is a big problem. He b he has to drown strickling early and either finish him or wear him out sufficiently where he won't be a threat in the later rounds. But that relies on being able to score takedowns and also being able to hold him down because the takedown itself is not the end of the game. Like I said, he can get up to his feet. And if you're able to come up quickly, then it's like the person who has better cardio will win that exchange, right? And I feel like Strickland has better cardio. So even if he does get taken down and works his way back up, the energy loss is going to be on calms side. As I said, because I this is what we work a lot on standing up um from bad spots, from not getting pinned and from fighting takedowns. So, he is very comfortable doing all that. And you could see even in this fight with Fluffy, he barely had to do it. Maybe a couple times, no near takedown attempts, no real like dominant clinches, Strickland was able to control that really well. Now, obviously, Fluffy is not on the level that Kzad is. And that's why we need to see the fight. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys.