170 is one of the most fatally mismanaged divisions in MMA, and nothing proves this more than the unfortunate 15-20 hopefuls trying to press forward. Each one is being forced to take the scenic route to contention as former lightweights such as Kevin Lee and Anthony Pettis (and even less successful ones like Michael Chiesa) have gotten much more fruitful opportunities in a fraction of the time. Combined with Nate Diaz bafflingly taking up a top-10 spot, the division might be the most stagnant relative to its talent level.

This hard path to a number can go one of three ways, and in recent times, we’ve seen all of them happen. Leon Edwards was the most successful; he was able to beat everyone in front of him with relative comfort (despite bizarre lateral steps like Gunnar Nelson) and took full advantage of his bout with Rafael dos Anjos to become a bona fide top contender. Vicente Luque was a bit more unfortunate; his brutal run through the unranked got a bit more difficult near the end but he managed it, only for his step-up against Stephen Thompson to be a venomous one. The worst case (and what the UFC is risking for every prospect at 170) is what happened to Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, who never made it to an opportunity; he destroyed most of his unranked opposition, but eventually ran into an unheralded matchup in Li Jingliang that just proved all wrong for him.

After his UFC 245 bout against Mike Perry, Neal looks like he’s avoided the ZDS path; while Neal’s fight prior was shaky, the man who nearly spoiled Luque didn’t touch “Hands of Steel”, and Neal is now in a position to fight up the rankings in a division that’s bloated with fighters who are either overranked or inactive (or both). As anyone at 170 would, he’s had his moments of trouble with the diverse set of skills he’s faced before even facing a top-15, but he’s also essentially cleared the unranked gauntlet inside one calendar year. It’s always possible that he gets booked against a bad matchup for him and settles into the role of an action-fighter, but for now, he seems like an exciting contender-in-waiting; a flawed one, like every prospect, but one with promise.

The Basic Southpaw

Funny enough, Neal’s cleanest performances in the UFC have come against two opponents who have dragged most of their opponents into some of the messiest of their careers; while Mike Perry and Frank Camacho don’t have impressive records nor many meaningful wins, their reputations are based more on pulling fun and competitive fights out of the best prospects. In that sense, Neal’s absolute shutouts over the pair of them are a lot more significant than the wins that others have over them. Aside from Beneil Dariush (one of the most skilled lightweights in the world), no one to date has taken apart Camacho like Neal did, and no one had finished Perry with strikes when Neal did.

The best fight to start with is probably his most recent; Neal’s win at UFC 245 over “Platinum” Mike Perry was his quickest in the UFC, and showed the core of his game against an opponent not quite cultured enough to throw it off in any way. Perry was meant to be a genuine test, though; his previous fight was a narrow split decision loss to Vicente Luque, another blue-chip prospect at the time, and he looked much improved as a boxer to work around the Brazilian’s high-guard. Rather than go through all that trouble, Neal just nuked him in 90 seconds.