Another Saturday, another Fight Night.  A few things about this one are unusual.   For one, the broadcast begins at 11 AM (ET), with the main card starting at 1 PM – making it more of a ‘Fight Late Morning/Early Afternoon’.  Besides the unusual start time for a US event, there are no Fight Pass prelims: the entire event will be shown on Fox Sports 1.  Most importantly, this card is nicely stacked for a Fight Night, especially compared to the last few FS1 events.  All of the match-ups are also extremely competitive, at least judging by our rankings.

Main Event: [#4 FW] Chad Mendes vs [#5 FW] Ricardo Lamas

Worth: $15

Why: This is an important fight as the winner is going to be up there with Frankie Edgar as the next contender for the featherweight title after Jose Aldo defends against Conor McGregor.  Considering the timing of upcoming featherweight fights, and assuming that Edgar beats Uriah Faber in his next outing, it’s likely that there will be another elimination bout between the winners of these two fights.  Which means that if Aldo retains his title, he will have to start on the rematch circuit, and this makes a McGregor win a far more interesting scenario for the featherweight division.

Why am I talking about Aldo – McGregor instead of the fight at hand?  Because this fight, and the rest of the division, are overshadowed by the McGregor hype.  And all the hype aside, I am not as excited about this matchup as I probably should be, considering how much sense it makes from the ranking and title picture standpoint and that both guys have been on fire save for their losses to the champion.  For me this fight just has the feel of a bronze medal contest in the Olympics.  Good, but not great.

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With two title fights topping the Pay-Per-View card, UFC 185 is off to a strong start. Add a fairly solid undercard, and you get an event that might actually be worth the asking price. This is what all PPV cards should look like. Unfortunately, I have very little interest in the women’s strawweight title bout – in fact it may be the least interest I have in a UFC title fight since Andrei Arlovski vs late Justin Eilers back at UFC 53.  Nonetheless, this is a very good card, at least on paper.

Main Event: (C) [#1 LW] Anthony Pettis vs [#3 LW] Rafael dos Anjos for the UFC Lightweight Title

Worth: $22.50

Why: After submitting Ben Henderson to win the LW title, Anthony ‘Showtime’ Pettis suffered an injury and was forced to take a long layoff.  Meanwhile, the division came to a rolling boil,  with no shortage of contenders lined up for a crack at the champion.  Pettis made a triumphant return and defended his title with another submission win against Gilbert Melendez.   His next defense should have been against the undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov, however Khabib’s own injuries and inactivity allowed a man he defeated – Rafael dos Anjos – to jump in front of the line.

For a guy with 17 fights in UFC, dos Anjos has flew under the radar for a while, stuck in the middle of the pack and losing fights to gatekeepers like Clay Guida and Gleison Tibau.  In the past few years, Rafael evolved into an elite fighter.  He is 8-1 since 2011, his sole loss a decision to Nurmagomedov.  And in his last two fights, dos Anjos has shown just how dangerous he has become, stopping former champ Henderson and brutally dominating Nate Diaz.  He is not as flashy as ‘Showtime’, but probably just as well rounded.  With two top fighters in their prime, who both have all the tools of MMA in their arsenal, this should be a great fight. It’s not quite a Jon Jones vs Daniel Cormier, long awaited #1 vs #2  type of fight, but this is almost as good as it gets.

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I’ll start off this blog by stating a brutally honest though likely unpopular opinion: I am still not totally sold on WMMA. I’ll admit that it is starting to slowly grow on me, and perhaps a day will come when I can value women in the UFC as much I appreciate as their male colleagues. That day is not likely to come soon – not until there is much more depth to the talent pool, and certainly not for as long as ‘UFC`s Womens Divisions’ is synonymous with ‘The Ronda Rousey Show’.

Needless to say, when the middleweight title fight between Chris Weidman and Vitor Belfort which was slated to headline UFC 184 was cancelled for an umpteenth time, my interest in this event plummeted faster than ‘Bigfoot’ Silva hitting the canvas after eating a hook from Frank Mir. A PPV headlined by two women’s bouts is the start of a very weak card in my opinion, and it’s further weakened by the fact that in both of those fights one of the opponents is around a 10-1 favorite. It doesn’t help that the rest of the card is mostly filled with fighters way past their competitive primes, guys on losing streaks, and various nondescript non-contenders. All in all, this event just might receive the lowest valuation of any UFC PPV in 2015 (and I really hope I didn’t just jinx myself with that statement).  Anyway, let’s get on with it:

Main Event: (C) [#1 W135] Ronda Rousey vs [#4 W135] Cat Zingano  for UFC Women’s Bantamweight title

Worth: $10

Why: You have to give credit where it’s due.  Not only is Ronda Rousey by far the best fighter in her division (and likely the best female MMA fighter in any weight class), her combination of skill, charisma, and looks single-handedly convinced Dana White to change his mind on women fighting in the UFC.  Rousey’s performances in the Octagon are a work of art.  Unfortunately she is an artist who only has a very small canvas to work with.  Of course I am not talking about the literal canvas covering the cage floor, but rather the limited pool of competition available to challenge her.

On paper, this is a fairly close match-up.  Both women are undefeated in professional bouts, and while Rousey has a perfect 100% finish rate in her 10 victories, Zingano stopped 8 out of 9 opponents.   However there is a reason that Cat is a 10-to-1 underdog in this fight: she just hasn’t shown her athleticism or skillset to be on Ronda’s level.  And while both women are finishers, the main difference is that all but one of Rousey’s fights were finished in the first round, while most of Zingano’s finishes came in the latter rounds.  In this instance, I don’t think she will make it past round one.  I love upsets and hope to be pleasantly surprised, but realistically it seems unlikely that Zingano will be able to pose a serious challenge, let alone dethrone Rousey.

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