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Showing posts from April, 2023

UFC Holloway vs Arnold preview

UFC Fight Night:  Holloway vs. Allen  By Michael Jones - @keepingitrealmma &  Dave Manley - @mmabobblehead A love letter to [exponential] chaos...          1. Max Holloway (23-7) vs. Arnold Allen (19-1)               In a tremendous clash of styles, the Ironman is set to face the chess master, but who is who? There are at least 3 major factors to consider in this matchup: volume, damage, and grappling. First, we will look at volume. Max Holloway's victims have come to expect an avalanche of strikes anywhere between 212-746. The former was his interim-title-winning TKO of Anthony Pettis, the latter being his criminal beatdown of Calvin Kattar. To be fair, those are strikes thrown, not landed. Still, that is staggering to deal with, when you can barely mount your offense because you're so busy defending. Then there is the damage. Max's strategy has limits, he takes a ton of punishment in order to deliver it. He has absorbed about 491 combined "significant" strik

UFC 287 Pereira vs Adesanya 2 Preview

UFC 287 Preview: Pereira vs. Adesanya 2  By Michael Jones - @keepingitrealmma &  Dave Manley - @mmabobblehead          1. Alex Pereira (7-1) vs. Israel Adesanya (23-2)                Here we go again... again, again. It feels like this fight went down yesterday. In fact, it was November, which is a very quick turnaround for a guy who was TKO'd. Has he had enough time to make adjustments and build back his confidence? Can anyone right the ship in just 4 months, when you have to get over the hump of losing to one guy 3 damn times in martial arts competition? One way to look at that question is to consider the number of UFC champions who lost their belt and won it back in immediate rematches. As of January 2022, Deiveson Figueiredo was the first guy in over 17 years to do it. Since then, 2 fighters have attempted it and only 1 was successful, Amanda Nunes. All told that's only 3 successful redemptions in 12 tries. History doesn't exactly favor Izzy's ambition, but he c