Sacrificial lamb? Contender? There's so much about Jimi Manuwa we don't know

You watch Jimi Manuwa’s first three UFC fights, and it’s difficult to come to many conclusions. Suspicions, maybe. Suggestions, implications, notions about certain tendencies, sure.

But firm, unequivocal conclusions? With the way his fights seem to end just as they’re getting started, those are in short supply.

It’s not like you can blame Manuwa for that. His opponents seem to keep getting hurt before he can, you know, hurt them.

That’s not totally true. First there was Kyle Kingsbury, who was stopped between rounds when a doctor took one look at his eye and realized that the many hooks and kicks and knees that Manuwa landed in the opening round had transformed him into a cyclops. Then there was Cyrille Diabate, who limped back to his corner after one round with Manuwa and mumbled something in French to the effect of (and here I’m translating very loosely), “My leg, she refuses to work.”

C’est la vie, Cyrille.

The most recent was Ryan Jimmo, whose plan to clinch Manuwa into a living death might have backfired when, after nearly two full rounds of trading knees to the thigh with Manuwa, it was Jimmo’s leg that gave out first. Another chance for Manuwa to do something violent and impressive, down the drain.

Again though, as he pointed out in a recent phone interview, it’s not his fault.

“I went in there, I fought, and they got injured,” Manuwa told MMAjunkie. “Or they said they got injured. It’s not my problem.”

The trouble is, the lack of clear finishes might make it tough to convince people that he poses a serious threat to Alexander Gustafsson, who’s coming off a Fight of the Year performance in a losing effort against UFC light heavyweight champ Jon Jones in September. That could explain why oddsmakers have pegged Gustafsson a 4-1 favorite in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 37 main event, and also why many fans seem to be looking at Manuwa as little more than a sacrificial lamb who will add one more highlight to the Swede’s resume and help the UFC set up an eventual rematch between Gustafsson and Jones.

None of this is news to Manuwa, who said he’s been hearing that talk since he agreed to step in against Gustafsson after a proposed fight between “The Mauler” and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira didn’t pan out.

“I’m aware of it, but I take no notice of that,” said Manuwa, who fights close to home at London’s O2 Arena. “I believe in my skills, and I believe I’ll stop him on Saturday. Those people who say that, they’re not me. It’s probably the rankings and his Jon Jones fight. People are expecting him to run through me because he’s beaten some great fighters. He is a great fighter. But they don’t know me.”

Which is, of course, kind of the whole point. Few people outside the U.K. fight scene really seem to know him. That’s one of the things we’re hoping to change.

Certainly he has a good record. You can say what you want about quality of opponents, but you can’t do much better than undefeated. During those times in his UFC tenure when he’s actually gotten a chance to work, as he did against Kingsbury and, to a lesser extent, Diabate, you see in flashes these indicators of real potential.

He’s a gifted, violent athlete, this Manuwa. But is he a contender? Does he have what it takes to test and possibly even shock a top light heavyweight like Gustafsson? He definitely thinks so. He also thinks he’ll “put [Gustafsson] away,” he said.

And lest you think he’s at all bothered by the fact that, with the event streaming on UFC Fight Pass in North America on Saturday afternoon, a good chunk of the MMA world might not tune in to see him do it, he’s got that part figured out, too.

The fight might be on the Internet, Manuwa said, “but when I get the win, everyone will know about it.”

Then, at least, we could say that we finally know something about him.

For more on UFC Fight Night 37, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.