The UFC Vegas 122 “Prelims” were embarrassingly terrible.
“But Andrew,” UFC diehards who don’t know s—t about fighting will cry in response, “There were six finishes in seven fights! It’s always the cards you least expect that are actually exciting!”
From an entertainment standpoint only, the early fights were serviceable. A quick KO is a quick KO, a clip to make the rounds on social media. My criticism is not aimed at the outcomes but the actual fighting skill and qualities of the athletes and matchmaking
involved. To be quite frank, there were multiple fights here that felt like an amateur-level event, not the sport’s grandest stage designed to find the world’s best combatants.
Let’s break it down from start to finish.
Ernesta Kareckaite vs. Melissa Gatto was not a memorable fight for either good or bad reasons. It happened. The next bout featured Alice Pereira, perhaps the only genuinely good women’s Bantamweight prospect in the entire sport, mauling No. 15-ranked Darya Zheleznyakova.
That was the high point, and it’s all downhill from here.
Allen Frye Jr. vs. RJ Harris may have ended with a first-round knockout, but it was offensively bad MMA. Neither man showed the skill or physical conditioning one should expect of a UFC fighter. Harris walked forward and threw like counter punches were illegal, while Frye Jr. scampered around awkwardly until Harris walked into his right hand.
The matchup would’ve been at home in the parking lot of a Midwest bar.
One bout later, famously not-good Brendson Ribeiro submitted Felipe Franco with a closed guard guillotine choke in two minutes. Hilariously, Ribeiro is known as a kickboxer yet only wins UFC fights by tapping out Light Heavyweights who never managed to attend a jiu-jitsu class.
An anecdote: I’ve trained with Team Alpha Male for more than a decade. I learned guillotine tricks firsthand from Urijah Faber and Joseph Benavidez. I’m pretty good at the move, and when I teach it in the context of MMA, I always begin with the following speech: “If you’re going to attempt a guillotine in the cage, you have to commit of your own volition. You cannot hang onto the neck and hope to secure the choke as the other guy slams you to the canvas — you’ll never catch anybody good that way.“
Franco confirmed not good.
Next up was Niko Price’s second retirement fight. I will not say a bad word about “The Hybrid,” who was legit in his day. Sadly, “his day” ended in roughly 2019.
His opponent, Leon Shahbazyan? There’s a fighter I’ll happily decry as less than UFC quality. In two UFC fights, he didn’t land a single punch and looked horrified at the shots coming his way. Genuinely, he fights like a jiu-jitsu purple belt forced at gunpoint into the Octagon. Price — age 37 after severe knee injuries and countless brutal losses — pummeled him with absolute ease.
Next up was the best matchup of the “Prelims,” two genuinely skilled and talented fighters in a good division. Sadly, Ismael Bonfim showed a real disrespect to the sport and general lack of professionalism by missing weight by an astounding eight pounds.
Thankfully, Francisco Prado kicked his ass, but missing weight massively is a regional MMA staple.
Lastly, Julius Walker squared off with Gerald Meerschaert in a fight emblematic of the current UFC roster issues. Walker is an excellent athlete who was signed to the UFC at a mere 6-0. As a result, he has the physical tools but not the technical skill, and it’s hard to develop that in-cage experience in a division where everybody has knockout power. “GM3,” meanwhile, has the same issue as Niko Price: he’s been in the game too long. 19 years and 60 professional bouts will take their toll on anyone.
The result? A vaguely sad beatdown and the second Apex retirement of the evening.
It has never meant less to “make it” to the UFC roster, not when undercards like UFC Vegas 122 are entirely satisfied with cheap thrills. The athletes featured were aged or inexperienced … and definitely disposable. Though the main card was a significant step up, the first half of the night was indistinguishable in quality from random fight events around the globe.
This is the best $1.1 billion per year can buy?
