Saturday's UFC 197 card in Las Vegas is in the books, and we have a new interim light heavyweight champion.
Former titleholder Jon Jones returned from 15 months away from the cage to take an easy five-round decision from the overmatched Ovince Saint Preux and set a fresh date with nemesis Daniel Cormier, potentially at the blockbuster UFC 200 event in July, according to ESPN.com's Brett Okamoto.
While the main event was a bit slow, the rest of the main card was outstanding. Flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson notched a blowout win over Henry Cejudo for his eighth title defense. Edson Barboza edged former lightweight king Anthony Pettis in a great striking matchup. Up-and-comer Yair Rodriguez scored a big win that cemented him as a fighter to watch in the future.
Let's take a look at the major takeaways from the main card.
Yair Rodriguez vs. Andre Fili
The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America winner Rodriguez has been on a nice run since he defeated Leonardo Morales to win the show, defeating Charles Rosa and Daniel Hooker to cap off a nice 2015. Both of those wins were clear decisions with mere flashes of brilliance, though, and he officially announced his arrival as a freakish, next-level talent with his unbelievable jumping-kick knockout of Andre Fili. Fox Sports: UFC provided highlights of the Rodriguez-Fili matchup:
#UFC197 Highlights: Yair Rodriguez vs. Andre Filihttps://t.co/4rPe2XUITG
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) April 24, 2016
What, exactly, do we have on our hands with the 23-year-old product of Parral, Mexico? There are two distinct layers to Rodriguez's explosive and lightning-fast game—both of them spectacular.
The taekwondo black belt's slick kicking arsenal is the first and more obvious of the two. He weaves together side kicks to the thigh, round kicks, front kicks, spinning back kicks and wheel kicks into a coherent tool kit that forces his opponents to stay at distance where he wants them.
Slick, consistent circular movement helps to keep him away from the fence, and he's good enough with his hands that they're not a liability. These are still his weakest areas, though, and an aggressive, technically sound opponent could make him pay for his kicking game at range. Fili did his best, but he just didn't have the footwork necessary to consistently pressure.
The jumping switch kick Rodriguez used to finish Fili is just the latest manifestation of a skill set we've known he has possessed for some time now. In fact, he threw it twice before the final shot, and it has been a staple of his arsenal during his entire UFC run.
The second layer of Rodriguez's game, however, is both less obvious and more important. The taekwondo black belt, it turns out, is an ace wrestler and clinch fighter.
This skill on the inside is what enables Rodriguez to be comfortable circling and moving at range while launching his vicious kicks. He trusts his takedown defense and scrambling ability, and if his opponent pressures him to the fence with punches, Rodriguez can simply move forward into the shots and grab ahold in the clinch instead of letting his back hit the cage.
That's what he did to get out of trouble against Fili, hitting a beautiful reactive double-leg takedown as Fili threw a punch and a slick trip off a caught kick.
Hip tosses, reactive shots, trips and suplexes make for a surprisingly dangerous inside arsenal, and it gives Rodriguez a strong plan B if forced out of long range. In its broad outlines, Rodriguez's approach is similar to what Jon Jones generally tries to do.
Keep an eye on Rodriguez, because he might be the next big thing.
(Note: Robert Whittaker's performance against Rafael Natal was strong and featured some slick striking, but it was workmanlike and fairly straightforward, so we'll skip over it here.)
Anthony Pettis vs. Edson Barboza
While Barboza's three-round win was a mild upset—Pettis was a -175 favorite entering the bout, per Odds Shark—it wasn't entirely unpredictable, and it speaks to both the improvements Barboza has made over the last several years and the former lightweight champion's ongoing issues.
Let's focus on Barboza first, because this win over the former lightweight champion was his coming-out party as an elite fighter.
More than anything else, this was a triumph of Barboza's meat-and-potatoes fundamentals and commitment to scoring. The Brazilian's incredible speed and predilection for spinning strikes obscures the fact he has a clear and ever-improving command of the basics. Jabs to the body, inside low kicks and tight footwork were the difference between him winning a 30-27 decision and losing a razor-thin contest.
Where Pettis spent much of the fight moving at range while looking for the fight-finishing strike, Barboza scored. He too looked for the finisher, but he did so while piling up damage to Pettis' body and legs in the meantime. The inside low kicks in particular were brilliant: Barboza consistently waited to throw them until Pettis put all his weight down on his lead leg, and the results were clear.
Throwing a body jab and two or three inside low kicks every minute might not sound like much, but think about how much damage that is over the course of 15 minutes. By the end of the fight, the inside of Pettis' left thigh consisted of a nightmarish bruise, and the damage to the body contributed to the former champion landing fewer strikes in the third than in the other fight frames, as FightMetric pointed out. Bleacher Report's Brian Oswald noted Pettis' severe thigh bruise:
Pettis got him a nice little shiner there #UFC197 pic.twitter.com/1nQGqdj9Ur
— Brian Oswald (@briancoswald) April 24, 2016
To be fair, Pettis did some good things. He threw more strikes than he has in the past and did a better job of moving after throwing. That kept him off the fence, though Barboza was mostly content to work in the middle of the cage.
At the end of the day, however, Barboza beat Pettis precisely where the former champion was supposed to be strongest. If that isn't a coming-out party, I don't know what is.
Demetrious Johnson
Well, that was over quickly. It took Demetrious Johnson fewer than three minutes to finish Olympic gold medalist Henry Cejudo—and to do so in style. What's even more impressive is Johnson dismantled Cejudo in the clinch.
Think about that for a second. Cejudo is an Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling and has spent years grinding away in the clinch with some of the most accomplished wrestlers on the face of the planet. It's the strongest area of Cejudo's game, and it functions as his safety blanket whenever he runs into trouble while striking at range.
Johnson needed exactly three clinch exchanges to figure him out and finish him.
Cejudo initiated their first tie-up 22 seconds into the fight. Johnson pushed forward behind a straight left, and Cejudo slipped to the side before ducking down and coming up with an overhook and an underhook. He landed two hard knees to Johnson's one, but the champion stung him with a hard right hand on the exit. It was essentially a stalemate.
The Olympian initiated the second clinch exchange as well. Johnson pushed forward behind a shifting right hand that brought him into the southpaw stance. As he ducked down for a second punch, Cejudo grabbed a collar tie, landed a knee and then transitioned to his favored over-under position. Another hard knee followed, and then Cejudo finished a slick inside trip. Advantage, Cejudo.
Unlike the first two exchanges, Johnson initiated the third. He came in behind another shifting punching combination, but instead of letting Cejudo grab ahold of him, he rose and snuck in an underhook and a collar tie. He immediately started using that leverage to turn Cejudo, and, then, using the underhook to elevate Cejudo's right arm, he snuck in a sharp knee to the liver.
After some jockeying for position, Johnson grabbed a double-collar tie and slammed home a knee to the face that stung Cejudo.
The Olympian again tried to initiate the clinch when they separated, but by this point Johnson had him figured out. He used wrist control and underhooks to move Cejudo's arms and find angles to land the knees to the body and then snuck in elbows and short punches. A knee to the head staggered Cejudo, and it was a follow-up knee to the liver that finally dropped him. Fox Sports: UFC shared fight highlights:
#UFC197 Highlights: @MightyMouseUFC vs. @HenryCejudohttps://t.co/25NEqEuj6s
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) April 24, 2016
Three exchanges in the clinch. That was all it took for Johnson to figure out Cejudo was strong from the over-under position, but the champion had the advantage when he actively fought hands, circled and created openings for his knees. Once he had Cejudo confused with all of this activity and used it to put him on the defensive, the Olympian had nothing to offer.
That's an incredible achievement, and it speaks to what an unbelievably skilled fighter Johnson is. The mantle of "greatest inside fighter in MMA" has to be his after that domination.
Jon Jones vs. Ovince Saint Preux
There's no denying Jones' win over Saint Preux was dominant, but was it impressive? Would that version of Jones have beaten Cormier had an injury not forced the light heavyweight champion to pull out?
The answer to the first question should be "yes." Jones effectively pitched a shutout against a top-10 fighter and was never in any real danger. The second is impossible to answer, but there are points in both directions.
Saint Preux isn't Cormier. He's an entirely different kind of challenge, for better and worse. He's much longer and taller, he isn't dedicated to pressure and he has an entirely different strike selection. While Jones had a few weeks to prepare for the late replacement, he had already spent months getting ready for Cormier.
Training with the 6'0" (generously speaking) Yoel Romero, for example, is great preparation for the 5'11" Cormier but not for the 6'3" Saint Preux, who boasts an 80" reach.
The kinds of traps a fighter sets for an aggressive, short opponent who's trying to get into the pocket—the stop-on-a-dime straight lefts and high kicks he threw the first time— are entirely different than what you do for a big, rangy counterpuncher like Saint Preux who doesn't throw much and isn't fond of leading. The takedowns and clinch entries you prefer are different, and so are the angles and footwork.
None of that is to say Jones didn't have to shake off some ring rust. He did, especially early, when it looked like he had some trouble finding his timing and simply letting his shots go. "I felt that I was just watching and imagining things instead of landing," he said after the fight, and that's as good a summation as any.
Still, snagging two 50-45 cards and convincing one judge to give him a 50-44 score isn't bad. He has some things to work on, and perhaps he wouldn't have fared so well against Cormier, but this was far from a disastrous outing for the greatest light heavyweight of all time.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.
