

Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

UFC 178 is in the books and the event played havoc with my expectations.

While a good deal of the expected took place—Conor McGregor easily beat Dustin Poirier, Demetrious Johnson dominated Chris Cariaso—there were plenty of shocks to keep fans on edge.

For a start Dominick Cruz's incredible return from a three year forced hiatus, in which he simply ran through the number five ranked, Takeya Mizugaki. How about Tim Kennedy almost knocking out Yoel Romero after nine minutes of being on the arse end of an arse kicking? And the bout between Donald Cerrone and Eddie Alvarez left me almost as short of breath as if I had been eating Cerrone's knee strikes in Alvarez's place.

So much happened that today I am going to have to be very picky about what I let into this breakdown—but everything which makes it in either turned a fight or have me thinking.

Return of the Dominator

We might as well start with the most impressive performance of the night—and the shortest. Dominick Cruz was known for his hyperactive footwork, but suffered a pair of ACL tears which put him out of the fight game for almost three years right when he was at his best. He was never beaten as the UFC bantamweight champion, but the feeling was that he would struggle to come back from his stint off.

ACL injuries are career wreckers. The most similar instance I can think of is that of Kid Yamamoto. Yamamoto ruined his knee while recovering from throwing a jumping knee in training. Over a thousand days later he was back in the ring, and he looked nothing like his old self. The explosiveness was gone, he couldn't move away from the punches, and he never looked like the monster who stopped Genki Sudo and won the K-1 Heroes lightweight tournament despite being a small bantamweight.

But damned if Cruz was going to go the same way. He came out dancing and bumping, running around the ring in that ugly style which grows on you the more you watch it. Suddenly he was in with the right lead—stunning Mizugaki—and was already weaved into the double leg. It was the old Fedor Emelianenko special, something we really don't see enough from strong wrestlers. As soon as he landed, Cruz started pounding away as Mizugaki tried to get up. With one arm awkwardly trapped behind him, Mizugaki ate an uncomfortable number of punches before the referee deemed it reasonable to stop the fight.



Notice that Mizugaki is turning to face Cruz, and simply chasing him. This is the purpose of the fancy footwork—to walk folks onto punches.

Fedor Emelianenko popularized the right hand lead into the double and it's a wonder it isn't used more. The right lead works so perfectly into the weave from inside position to outside—combine that with a slight level change and you're not only making yourself difficult to hit while landing a huge punch, you naturally come up on the outside of the lead hip, ready to run through into the double leg.

Of course a lot of questions remain about Cruz's return. Can he take a low kick? Can he go the distance? Perhaps he is doing what Muhammad Ali did after his own three year hiatus. Ali returned heavier than he had ever been—all muscle—and though he couldn't dance as well, he would dance for a round, then use the clinch, and utilize his punching power far more than in his youth.

A Cruz who throws his weight into his punches is an exciting prospect to me.

Romero versus Kennedy Controversy

Yoel Romero looked as enigmatic as ever. For fourteen of the fifteen minutes of fight time, Tim Kennedy couldn't touch him. One of the things about truly elite wrestlers—we're talking the Olympians—is that they understand that a powerful shot is one thing, but it's even more about playing with expectations. Chaining techinques, using set ups, feinting and re-shooting. And that, far more than a power double, translates into the striking game beautifully. That is why Romero and Daniel Cormier have done so well picking up the stand up game—they learned the techniques but they realize that it is the feints, the baits and the opportunities which are more important than the power or the speed.

Here's a lovely karate combination Romero was using. The low calf kick / foot sweep, into the rear straight from open guard. A fantastic balance breaker which has the added effect of landing your lead foot outside of your opponent's and giving you the dominant angle for the rear straight. A Machida favourite.

Romero was quicker, smarter and stronger and it showed in every moment of the fight. Every moment except one. At the end of the round, Kennedy hammered Romero with an uppercut which put the Cuban on Queer Street. Romero returned to his corner and couldn't leave his stool at the end of the break between rounds. Big John McCarthy—normally the best in the business—allowed Romero's corner to stall for another twenty seconds with their fighter recovering on the stool.

But then, that's not the only controversy. Kennedy's only successful offense of the bout came as he held onto Romero's glove.

The problem is that Romero—for all the talk of being unstoppable—gets clipped in most of his fights in a way which leads me to worry about his prospects against the truly skilled counter fighters of the division. That said, it's time to push Romero and get him in there with the big dogs. Props are due to Kennedy too, who fought the only fight he realistically could have and caught Romero when he was slowing, as he seemingly does in all of his fights.

Zingano Weathers the Storm

Cat Zingano also returned to the octagon after a lengthy hiatus marked by injuries and tragedies. In the first round, Zingano took a pasting—but that's what we saw from her against Miesha Tate as well. If there's one thing we know about the Octagon's first mum, it's that she can take a beating and come back to pour it on later in the fight.

This bout, just like the Tate bout, was marked by Zingano's brilliant front headlock. Not only does she have some of the best knees to the face from that position in the UFC—something often underestimated, it's very easy to only make clumsy connections with your thigh when attempting to knee from this position—but she showed us a pair of beautiful suplexes from this position. I am no wrestling veteran, but the only other occasion I can remember seeing this in MMA was Kazayuki Miyata's bout with Genki Sudo.



Slick as hell.

Zingano got top position in the second round and brutally finished Amanda Nunes, before giving another one of her charmingly lost for words post fight interviews. It's great to have Ronda Rousey's number one contender back in the UFC and in good health.

McGregor stops Poirier

Apparently I made some readers some money through bets on McGregor after I gave such a pessimistic view of Poirier's chances last week. Poirier did better than expected—landing outside low kicks which McGregor seemed to have no answer to—but the bout ended just as expected, with McGregor knocking Poirier out.

We talked about a couple of faults in Poirier's stand up which could cause him problems against McGregor. The first was his tendency to chase with his chin up and his hands down, the second was his habit of simply covering up on defence.

Within a minute, McGregor had realised that the elbows came up every time he stepped in, and he started throwing hooks around Poirier's forearm. Moments later, the finish came from exactly this blow.

McGregor is a thoughtful, skillful striker, where Poirier is simply a hard hitter with some slick jiu jitsu, and that was always going to be the case. When people are so concerned with seeing a hype train derailed that they side with the underdog, they tend to over-rate his chances and overlook the technical and strategic habits which point to him not being a particularly tough match up.

Now here's the interesting part. McGregor is undeniably brilliant, but he's fought four times in the UFC without ever meeting a strong wrestler who will attempt to take him down. And that was clearly a deliberate move. The question is, will the UFC risk their cash cow in a fight against a quality wrestler before they put him in with Aldo, or is he going to get the Nick Diaz treatment and go straight to the title shot without ever having to prove that aspect of his game?

Cerrone Comes Back Strong

For me, the main event of the evening was Donald Cerrone versus Eddie Alvarez. Some of the best kicks and knees in the lightweight division against some of the best hands. Alvarez did well in the first round by merit of getting in close and swarming on Cerrone with a salvo of punches to the head. The problem is that Cerrone has an iron dome—he took almost three hundred punches from Nate Diaz—it was body shots that Anthony Pettis used to stop the tough kickboxer.

In the second round, as Alvarez stepped in, he was met with that intercepting knee we talked about in our preview.



This one!

Suddenly, he ate three or four in a row. He seemed winded and stumped. He started standing back at range, concerned about eating a knee as he stepped in, and that gave Cerrone time and space to work. And if there's one thing you can't do with Donald Cerrone, it's sit on the end of his low kicks. By the end of the fight, Alvarez was struggling to walk as Cerrone chopped away, running into his kicks.

With his new intercepting knees, Cerrone has done much to alleviate the problems of pressure which troubled him so much. He has become the lightweight division's Semmy Schilt. You know he can't deal with someone getting all up in his grill...but how are you going to do that without eating hard knees as you attempt it?

It was a great fight which had me on the edge of my seat and rather than a slur on Alvarez, it was a sign of the improvement Cerrone has made. I truly believe that abandoning the brawling style and instead focusing on the knees, elbows and kicks which he throws so well compared to the rest of the division has changed Cerrone's chances against anyone in his division. He's finally using his height properly—with ruthless knee strikes—rather than swinging wide and giving opportunities to counter.

A terrific night of fights, and some fantastic developing narratives!

Pick up Jack Slack's ebook, Fighting Karate at his blog Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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