Chepe Mariscal def. Jack Jenkins via Technical Submission (Arm Injury, Round 2)

• Jenkins does a great job at using leg kicks to not only destroy Mariscal’s lead leg, but also drop Mariscal’s guard to set up counter head strikes.
• Mariscal stands up to adversity well. He becomes a more aggressive fighter when he’s hit hard.
• Don’t love the ending considering Jenkin’s injury though Mariscal was flipping the script with clinch work before the fight ended it seemed.

Carlos Ulberg def. Da Woon Jung via Submission (Rear Naked Choke, Round 3)

• Ulberg looked very patient and controlled range well.
• Ulberg’s jab and left hook are god tier.
• Ulberg’s wrestling is underrated and he used it well to keep the fight in his control in the third round.
• Jung popped up superhumanly fast after that nasty 4 punch combo that dropped him in the first round, good lord.

Tyson Pedro def. Anton Turkalj via Round 1 TKO

• Very nice KO for Pedro.

Justin Tafa def. Austin Lane via KO (Round 1)

• Very nice counter striking from Justin Tafa. His power is clearly no joke.

Manel Kape def. Felipe Dos Santos (30-27, 29-28 x2)

• Dos Santos put the pace on Kape and demanded respect early with a lot of straight punches and leg kicks, like the other Chute Boxe Academy fighters do so well.
• Dos Santos had Kape in volume but the power advantage Kape had was clear.
• Dos Santos’ strength is definitely not his head movement. His striking defense is a it of a liability, but covers it up a bit with his striking activity.
• I wouldn’t call this a dominant win, as Dos Santos definitely had his moments. But judging primarily off of the amount of damage inflicted, Kape left no argument that he didn’t win that fight.

Alexander Volkov def. Tai Tuivasa via Submission (Ezekiel Choke, Round 2)

• Volkov’s jab and kicks can clearly cause problems for fighters who don’t have comparable range, such as Tuivasa.
• Volkov’s offensive strikinb is all-around impressive. He is aggressive and utilizes his range well with his jab, can open up easily with combos when he senses an opening and has clean counterstriking.
• Honestly, Tuivasa’s defensive grappling held up better than I thought, but Volkov did a great job advancing into full mount and securing a nice Ezekiel Choke. Definitely something we don’t see every day.

Sean Strickland def. Israel Adesanya via Unanimous Decision (49-46 x3)

• Strickland’s striking style is really one of the most unique we see in the UFC. It caused Izzy problems in round 1.
• Adesanya really started landing on Strickland in round 2.
• Adesanya did a great job of staying busy despite constantly having to fight on his heels against Strickland.
• Strickland’s counters were on point and Izzy had some serious problems connecting.
• Strickland’s relentless pressure is clearly hard to deal with for Izzy. He consistently has to fight off of his back foot and its causing him to miss many of his strikes.
• Honestly can’t believe we just saw Sean Strickland absolutely dogwalk Israel Adesanya 4 rounds to 1 in a decision win. The pressure clearly got to Adesanya and he could barely get any strikes to the head past Strickland’s Philly shell style guard. Strickland really kept doing exactly what got him to this point, and it worked perfectly.
• The UFC Middleweight division is in such a great place right now. We just saw two huge upsets against the mostly accepted number 1 and 2 fighters in this division for about thr last 5 years. On top of that, we have Khamzat Chimaev moving up in weight class to throw his name into the title picture, pending the results of his fight against Paulo Costa at UFC 294.