It makes sense that both Conor McGregor and Holly Holm are big favorites this Saturday at UFC 196.
Holm is coming off her astounding knockout victory over Ronda Rousey last November, so it stands to reason she should be leaps and bounds better than Miesha Tate, who has already lost to Rousey twice.
Meanwhile, McGregor is, well, McGregor. The bombastic Irishman has yet to taste defeat inside the Octagon, and with Nate Diaz coming in on short notice on Saturday, it seems like it should be a quick and easy win.
Or does it?
Is it possible Tate and/or Diaz have any tricks up their sleeves that could give the two consensus picks trouble? As usual, there is a lot of misinformation floating around.
Here, lead writers Chad Dundas and Jonathan Snowden help sort out the facts from the fiction.
Fact or Fiction: All bets are off if Nate Diaz gets Conor McGregor to the ground.
Chad: I’m going to say this is a fact, though I question Diaz’s willingness to even try to get McGregor on the mat. Clearly, McGregor Promotions chose The Big Homie Nate for this assignment not only because of his family name, but because of his family’s inclination toward the striking arts. Diaz gives every impression of wanting to slug it out with McGregor on the feet, hence the Irishman going off as a 4-1 favorite, according to Odds Shark.
But. But. But.
But, if we can imagine a world where Diaz actually wants to win this thing, his best hope is to get McGregor off his vertical base. We know Diaz is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt, and seven of his previous UFC opponents can attest that he’s got a pretty slick submission game. Meanwhile, McGregor’s grappling arsenal remains virtually untested.
Is it possible this fight could end with McGregor locked in a triangle choke and Diaz defiantly flashing the Stockton Heybuddy to the featherweight champ, the UFC and the entire country of Ireland all at once? Yes, it’s possible, but probably unlikely, unless Nate has some plot twists planned for fight night.
Jonathan: The last time Diaz won a fight by submission, Conor McGregor was preparing for his bout with Dave Hill in Cage Warriors and only dreaming about a UFC run like this. That's both a testament to how long Nate has been in there with the killers at the top of the UFC food chain and a clear sign that his priorities have very much shifted since his early days spent mostly on the mat.
The truth is, Diaz spends almost no time considering the grappling game unless circumstances place him there. He's scored a grand total of one takedown in the past five years, and his last two submission wins both came against opponents foolish (or desperate) enough to take him off his feet.
Somehow I don't think the takedown is on McGregor's mind.
Fact or Fiction: Miesha Tate creates chaos and derails the Rousey-Holm rematch.
Jonathan: I don't have the testicular fortitude to call this one a fact. Please be assured I have just said fact with a weird inflection at the end of the word that makes it clear it's more a question than an assertion.
Ronda Rousey was supposed to be unbeatable. While Joe Rogan has been the butt of many jokes for calling her a "once in human history" kind of athlete, he was hardly alone. For years she did a pretty good job of making that case, demolishing every opponent who was callously sacrificed before her. Sometimes it took mere seconds. Other times she played with her food. One opponent, Miesha Tate, even made it out of the first round.
Then came Holly Holm. Or, more specifically, Holly Holm's left leg.
Holm deposited Rousey on the mat, her well-earned sense of invulnerability falling just as hard and as fast as her body. The aftershocks, it seems, scrambled the MMA media's collective brains as well.
Instead of Rousey's downfall teaching us all a useful lesson about every fighter's fallibility, all of Rousey's hyperbole and well-established bona fides have been bestowed upon Holm as if by osmosis. Holm, in the popular imagination, is now the unstoppable juggernaut Rousey once was.
Holm, who battled the unheralded Raquel Pennington to a split decision a little more than a year ago, is suddenly seen as the prohibitive favorite against Tate, a proven veteran who has spent a career beating up about everyone who isn't Rousey. Chad, that's a very dangerous place for Holm to be.
Chad: Your worries are certainly understandable. Tate is a tough out for anybody at 135 pounds, and she’ll be a different sort of test for Holm than Rousey was. But Tate actually winning this fight? That’s fiction.
Her current four-fight win streak was largely built on come-from-behind victories. I guess you could say that means Tate is a cagey veteran who finds a way to win, but to me it says she’s just barely getting by. Eventually she’ll fall short.
Holm will be too big and too athletic. She’ll stay on her bike, control the range and pick Tate apart on the feet. I’m calling for a late TKO stoppage or unanimous decision.
And still.
Fact or Fiction: Diego Sanchez calls it a career after losing to Jim Miller.
Chad: Sadly, probably fiction. I think it’s a good bet that Jim Miller beats Sanchez this weekend, maybe with one of those short-and-sweet submissions that reminds us all exactly how good the New Jersey native is at MMA. But the likelihood that this loss is what convinces Sanchez to finally walk away seems very remote indeed.
Despite the fact he is one of the last active fighters from the cast of the original season of The Ultimate Fighter and despite the fact that he hasn’t rightfully won a fight since 2013, he gives no indications of having second thoughts.
Outside the cage, Sanchez seems like a nice person and a loving family man. Inside it, he’s the sort of fellow you don’t want to see bad things happen to and exactly the kind we worry about sticking around this game too long.
That’s his right. It’s not our place to tell a fighter he’s not allowed to come to work anymore. But I still have mixed feelings about watching Sanchez soldier on.
Jonathan: Like the greatest actor of our generation, Vin Diesel, I'm a ride-or-die kind of guy, Chad. And I've been riding with Sanchez since the first time he howled at the moon during TUF. His passion and zany confidence were a welcome antidote in a sport filled with athletes all pressed into the same mold.
Emotion, however, can't dictate every opinion. Not in the fight game, where all but a few heroes face brutal, ignominious ends. With that in mind, I also consider facts. Here's one: Sanchez has never been beaten by submission.
It's possible Jim Miller may be the first to do it. After all, Sanchez is on the wrong side of 30 and in the midst of a four-fight losing streak. But I'm willing to bet that this is fiction. Let the universe, in its infinite wisdom, prove me wrong.
Fact or Fiction: A rose blooms in the UFC's stagnant light heavyweight division.
Jonathan: This is fact. Or, at least, I sure hope it is.
The 205-pound division, once the shiniest jewel in Dana White's promotional crown (surely he owns at least one crown) has turned into a graveyard. The barely animated corpses of MMA's glorious past, men like Rashad Evans and Mauricio Rua, are still aimlessly walking around in a vain search for victims.
While the top stars, your Daniel Cormiers and your Jon Joneses, shine as bright as ever, you don't have to go too far down the top-10 list before things begin to feel a little grim. Even "new blood" has come in the form of 36-year old journeyman Jimi Manuwa and 35-year-old barista Patrick Cummins. It hasn't been pretty.
Into this mix comes two prospects with the potential, at the very least, to offer the established names a new challenge. Either Corey Anderson, Ilir Latifi or both need to rise to the occasion in front of the massive audience McGregor commands. Because if they don't? I honestly fear for the future of the UFC's marquee division.
Chad: What sad times have befallen our beloved light heavyweight ranks, Jonathan? The weight class of Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell and (cool, old school) Wanderlei Silva is now pretty much a wasteland. With rumors the division could lose Jones to heavyweight sooner or later, I’m not sure the future is anything but bleak, either.
It speaks to the puddle-thin nature of this division that either Latifi or Anderson could be considered its top prospects at the moment. Latifi is 32 years old and, while he’s 4-2 in the UFC (including four first-round stoppages), he hasn’t yet beaten anybody of substance.
The same is essentially true of Anderson, who at 26 at least qualifies as a young gun but is also still very much a work-in-progress. We’re going to need one of these dudes to beat somebody exactly like Evans or Rua before we can really invest any of our hopes in them as something special. Hopefully wins this weekend set them up for a matchup like that.
Personally, though? I’m sticking with my pick of Misha Cirkunov as light heavyweight's most interesting up-and-comer. The more the merrier, though. This division needs all the help it can get.
