Four Takeaways from UFC 218

UFC 218 was UFC’s second consecutive great pay-per-view, although it had a much lower profile than last month’s lucrative UFC 217.

The show drew $2 million at the gate, which is roughly on par with the house the last UFC pay-per-view in the Detroit area, UFC 123 in 2010, drew. It’s notable that for a year UFC has claimed has been its best ever (in terms of profit, it probably is), only one show this year (UFC 217) has drawn more than $2.5 million at the gate. UFC 219, held in Las Vegas this month, doesn’t appear to have the card to change that.

Search trends for the show, which are typically a good indicator of pay-per-view success, were good, totaling more than 500,000 Google searches in the United States as of Sunday. I’d think this show wouldn’t do more than 250,000 buys or so, but perhaps there was some buzz that it figured to be a good action show that helped it.

Even if the show didn’t do huge business, it was very notable for what happened inside the cage. The show was highlighted by a good title fight with a great performance, a thunderous knockout meme’d ‘round the world, a fight of the year contender, and then a second fight of the year contender on the preliminary card.

Here are four takeaways from the noteworthy night:

Miocic vs. Ngannou is the best heavyweight fight in five years.

Francis Ngannou has officially freshened up a UFC heavyweight title picture that has revolved around the same five cast of characters for the past five years.

The 262-pounder, who walked into an MMA gym for the first time four years ago, sent seventy-four-fight veteran Alistair Overeem on a temporary trip to the spirit world with the most vicious knockout of the year.

Before that, Overeem had tried to tie up and grapple with Ngannou. Overeem is typically able to bully opponents with his strength, but Ngannou appeared to be the significantly bigger and stronger fighter as he controlled Overeem against the cage with relative ease.

Ngannou’s string of emphatic victories have created a buzz around him that carries him into a heavyweight title shot against Stipe Miocic. The title fight, which could come as soon as January 20 in Boston, is the best UFC heavyweight title fight since the Junior dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez rematch in 2012.

In the past three years, only Miocic, Overeem, dos Santos, Velasquez, and Fabricio Werdum have competed for the heavyweight championship. Ngannou is not yet as skilled as any of those fighters at their best (which should be expected at this stage of his career), but he has the raw physical tools to take out any of them in short fashion.

Ngannou has a longer reach than everyone else in the elite heavyweight group (his is the third-longest reach in the UFC, measuring 83.5 inches). He is also taller than everyone in the group, weighs more than everyone in the group, and is the strongest of the six. In a division packed with large men that hit hard, Ngannou stands high above the rest in terms of stopping power.

Still young for a top heavyweight at 31 years old, Ngannou represents the hope of an exciting future for a division that has gotten a bit stale. If he continues to develop and run through opponents, he could be the dominant heavyweight star that every combat sports promoter dreams of. First, he’ll have to break through Stipe Miocic.

Miocic is on the cusp of heavyweight history in his own right. No UFC heavyweight has ever defended the title more than twice. (During his reign of terror, Fedor Emelianenko defended Pride’s heavyweight championship four times.) After first round knockouts of Overeem and dos Santos, Miocic stands at two title defenses leading into his fight with Ngannou.

To beat Ngannou and set a new bar for UFC heavyweights, Miocic, who typically prefers to stand and strike, will probably be best off falling back to his wrestling. Although Ngannou has defensive liabilities in his striking and his punches aren’t the crispest, anybody standing opposite him is in the danger zone.

Frankie Edgar is Max Holloway’s only significant threat left at featherweight.

Jose Aldo fought Max Holloway with great heart, but he was overwhelmed by the Hawaiian’s attack in the third round.

Holloway showed remarkable skill, confidence, and physical abilities in battering the former featherweight champion for the second time in a row. He encouraged dangerous exchanges with Aldo, in which the Brazilian threw all the power he could muster in each shot, until Aldo so depleted his gas tank that he could do nothing but absorb the incessant punches coming from Holloway.

Holloway has competed twelve times since his last loss, when he was a completely different fighter and dropped a decision to Conor McGregor. During that streak, he defeated four of the current top-ten-ranked contenders. None of the fights were close.

How do you beat a fighter that doesn’t get hurt, doesn’t get tired, and never mentally folds?

The only fighter of the current crop of top featherweights that has a good shot at it is Frankie Edgar, who was supposed to be the fighter in the cage opposite Holloway at UFC 218.

The 36-year-old Edgar has never been stopped, never quits, and possesses the tools to test Holloway. On the feet, Edgar will feel the sting of Holloway’s speed and have a hard time with his length. But if he can consistently take the 26-year-old champion to the ground, he can win the fight. Holloway hasn’t been taken down in the past few years, but he also hasn’t faced a wrestler as crafty as Edgar in that time.

If he defeats Edgar, Holloway will hold wins over every strong threat in his division. To find a new challenge, he may have to move up in weight.

Eddie Alvarez is one of the best lightweights ever.

My impression from watching Eddie Alvarez fight Dustin Poirier in May was that Alvarez’s career may have entered an irreversible downswing. Alvarez has fought a physically taxing style for years that created some of the most memorable fights in recent memory. When a fighter like that slows, becomes hittable, and can’t take the same punch he used to, only bad results follow.

After nearly a decade of battling some of the best lightweights in the sport, Alvarez suffered four knockdowns in eight minutes against Conor McGregor. Seven months later, Poirier hit Alvarez with ease, and hurt him badly. Alvarez survived the drama, and the fight ended soon after due to an illegal knee.

Matched next with Justin Gaethje, a care-free brawler with an iron head, I thought there was a real chance Alvarez’s famous recuperative ability would fail him. It turned out that he didn’t need to rely on them much at all, as he skillfully dodged most of Gaethje’s dangerous hooks and pounded him to the head and body. Alvarez fought through Gaethje’s bruising punches that found their home, and somehow withstood thirty-seven hard leg kicks. It was a grueling, brutal bout that saw both fighters leave a piece of themselves to forever rest in the cage. It also may have been Alvarez’s strongest performance of his seven fight UFC run.
https://youtu.be/1VSJX6YvFYo
The fight served as a reminder of Alvarez’s toughness and skill, and also forces an examination of Alvarez’s career as a whole. The Philadelphian has been fighting the best lightweights in the world since 2008, when he bashed his way to the finals of the DREAM lightweight tournament (although he was unable to compete in the finals due to injury). As MMA Fighting’s Luke Thomas observed, Alvarez has defeated lightweight champions from Shooto (Joachim Hansen and Tatsuya Kawajiri), DREAM (Shinya Aoki, who also held the short-lived WAMMA lightweight championship), Bellator (Michael Chandler), Strikeforce (Gilbert Melendez), WEC (Anthony Pettis), UFC (Pettis and Rafael dos Anjos), and World Series of Fighting (Gaethje).

That is a stellar resume that speaks to both Alvarez’s talent and his longevity.

There is no consensus best lightweight of all-time, but of those on the shortlist, Alvarez’s longevity exceeds all of them.

BJ Penn began defeating the best lightweights in the world within the first few months of his career in 2001, and he was considered the best in the division as late as 2010. However, of that nine-year span, he only actively competed at lightweight for about five-and-a-half years.

Takanori Gomi’s run at or near the top of the division lasted seven years, from 2001 to 2008. After that, he never defeated a top lightweight again.

Frankie Edgar’s run lasted three or four years. He could have remained near the top longer, but he opted to chase more immediate title hopes in the featherweight division.

In his eighth year fighting elite lightweights, Alvarez captured the UFC title. He was not able to successfully defend it, which illustrates the only thing keeping him from gaining significant support as the best lightweight of all time. Although Alvarez won the Bellator title on two occasions and the UFC title on one, he never had a run in which he firmly established himself as the single best fighter in the division.

During his two-year run as Bellator champion, he was typically ranked as one of the top three or five fighters in the division. As UFC champion, he took the top spot by nature of beating the previous top guy, but there was little separation between him and the next five or six lightweights in the rankings. He would only hold that top spot for four months.

Considering Alvarez’s age (at 33, he is the second-oldest fighter in the UFC’s lightweight rankings) and the crowd at the top of the lightweight division, it’s unlikely Alvarez will regain the title and have a significant run on top. However, in beating Gaethje he showed that he can still add top names to his resume.

Henry Cejudo is not ready for a rematch with Demetrious Johnson, and that’s fine.

I expected to see more from Henry Cejudo than the easy, controlling performance we saw from him on Saturday. Cejudo looked excellent in his last bout, in which he took Wilson Reis apart and stopped him early in the second round. Before that, Cejudo had a strong performance against Joseph Benavidez that showed he could hang with the very best in the division.

Before that fight with Benavidez, Cejudo got a crack at flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson. The opportunity came too soon, just three years into his career. Johnson demolished him, finishing the fight with strikes minutes into the first round. Despite the loss, Cejudo still had the background (an Olympic gold medal in wrestling and good boxing) to perhaps eventually give Johnson a real challenge.

Saturday night against Pettis, Cejudo showed only the skills we knew he had. He took Pettis down with ease and controlled him. He landed some punches on the feet. Perhaps he did just what he needed to do to win the fight, since Pettis didn’t present any need for him to do anything else. Regardless, Cejudo showed no evolution to his game, nor any indication that he could threaten Johnson. But that’s okay.

Cejudo isn’t racing against father time. He’s 30 years old compared to Johnson’s 31. If he’s developed more skills that he didn’t want to and didn’t need to show against Pettis, that’s fine. It was not a performance that will allow him to leapfrog over TJ Dillashaw for a shot at Demetrious Johnson, so he can continue to develop his tools until he’s better equipped to face Johnson again.

It’s fine to accept a title shot too soon the first time, but if you take the shot too soon a second time, there may not be a third opportunity.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.