UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs. Magomedov – Fights to make

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• SEAN STRICKLAND
• ABUS MAGOMEDOV
• GRANT DAWSON
• MICHAEL MORALES
• BENOIT SAINT-DENIS
• RINAT FAKHRETDINOV
• KAROL ROSA
• ELVES BRENER
• ALEXANDER ROMANOV
• Join the Bloody Elbow Substack!

All things considered, UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs. Magomedov could have been worse. The card featured a lot of grinding decisions in lackluster affairs, but the main event wasn’t one of them. Sean Strickland found himself with a rapidly fading Abus Magomedov in round 2 and pounced on him for a strong TKO victory. In the co-main, Grant Dawson put the grappling screws to Damir Ismagulov. And Benoit Saint-Denis put on a career best performance to get by Ismael Bonfim.

So, does Sean Strickland have a chance at fighting for a UFC title in the next year? Is Grant Dawson going to finally start getting top-tier lightweight matchups? And is Michael Morales a darkhorse in the welterweight division?

To answer those questions—and a bit more—I’ll be using the classic Silva/Shelby fight booking methodology from the UFC of years past. That means pitting winners against winners, losers against losers, and similarly tenured talent up against one another. Hopefully, by following that model, a few of these bout ideas will actually make it off the page and into the Octagon. Now, let’s get to the fights!

SEAN STRICKLAND

Is Sean Strickland turning over a new leaf? The man known for his trying personality and exhausting fight style walked out of his latest UFC main event with a thrilling win and an attempt to walk back some of the more obvious recent nonsense he’d been spouting. Abus Magomedov gave him a lot to handle for a few minutes, but it tends to take a lot more than that to put the Xtreme Couture talent away, as he once again proved with his second round TKO rally.

After the bout, the 32-year-old even had a callout ready, claiming that he wanted to take out the UFC’s “first and only Chinese champion”—a shot at Israel Adesanya and the Nigerian-born New Zealander’s past adoption of Chinese identity during his kickboxing career. If he’s hoping to follow Dricus Du Plessis’ path and get under Adesanya’s skin, however, it seems more likely that Strickland will continue to find himself outside of the elite looking in for at least the short term. His win over Magomedov may have been strong, but it was hardly the stuff to demand UFC gold.

It’s too bad that Strickland and Marvin Vettori seem like they’re pretty good friends. That feels like a fight that would be good for both men right now, and test both their willingness toward volume and pace. It’s also too bad that Paulo Costa is already booked against Ikram Aliskerov. That’s a UFC fight nobody needs to see and Costa vs. Strickland feels like it needs to happen at some point in the near future.

The other option would be a fight with Roman Dolidze, but that doesn’t hold much draw in my opinion. Given all that, then, I’ll say book Strickland against the Costa/Aliskerov winner. Aliskerov could use some resume building on his way to the top and, even with a win, Costa probably won’t be in contention.

ABUS MAGOMEDOV

Credit to Abus Magomedov, he took about as big a step up in competition as someone can take from their first UFC bout to their second. And while he wasn’t nearly so successful in that attempt, he did at the very least look dangerous against Strickland whenever he was pulling the trigger. Unfortunately, he was also entirely unprepared for the breakneck pace and pressure that top level UFC fighters like Strickland present. After a solid enough first round, Magomedov was already gasping for air. The end followed shortly afterward.

Given the man’s age and experience, and wildly disparate first two UFC fights, the promotion should search out some middle ground for the Dagestani. Find him a UFC fight or two against other solid talent still looking to battle their way up the ranks. Men like Eryk Anders, Michał Oleksiejczuk, Bruno Silva, and Chidi Njokuani would all be totally reasonable options. As is often the case, just having written that list out takes me to one obvious option.

Another man in need of a win. IMAGO/USA TODAY Network

Like Magomedov, Njokuani came to the UFC with a ton of experience and ability already under his belt. Similarly, his results have been mixed. Seems like two men at the same point in their career; Njokuani vs. Magomedov would be a quality battle of journeyman veterans.

GRANT DAWSON

I am depressed. Grant Dawson’s not a bad UFC fighter in his own element, but he’s built a reputation over the years as a clinging grappler with a decent wrestling game, and without much else to offer. Given the difficulty past opponents have had in holding Ismagulov down, it seemed likely that Dawson would struggle. He did not.

A fight made for scrambles. IMAGO/ZUMA Wire

Dawson was continually able to find takedowns and turn them into backtakes. He didn’t do a lot of damage or get to many dangerous submission chances, but he absolutely controlled Ismagulov for almost every minute of three rounds. That has to get Dawson a top ranked lightweight; he’s unbeaten in his last seven years and twelve bouts. The methods may not be pretty, but the results are inarguable.

I’d love to see Dawson take on Mateusz Gamrot. It seems like the perfect point to see if his grappling skill can take him all the way to contender status. If that can’t happen, then a bout with Renato Moicano would be more than acceptable. Dawson vs. Gamrot is the kind of test ‘KGD’ needs.

MICHAEL MORALES

Not an easy, or hype building win for Michael Morales, but then Max Griffin is a hard fighter to look good against. Credit to Morales, he was more patient and controlled for this bout than he has been in any of his previous UFC fights; focused more on working behind long strikes and forcing Griffin to deal with his speed rather than just making the bout all about physicality. No matter the strength of the result, the important thing is that the Ecuadorian is now 15-0 and climbing toward the top of the welterweight division.

The TUF champ has been on a tear. IMAGO/USA TODAY Network

As such—and with a win like Griffin under his belt—Morales should be primed for a more difficult test. If he really wants to try his luck and find out how ready he is for a top fight opponent, then they could always throw him in with Neil Magny. But it feels like he could use another mid-tier challenge or two to keep building his game. Someone like Nicolas Dalby, or Joaquin Buckley, or Bryan Battle would be strong options. I’ve been nicely surprised by the quality Battle has been bringing to the Octagon lately. How about a prospect vs. prospect matchup? Battle vs. Morales would be a great meeting of young UFC fighters.

BENOIT SAINT-DENIS

A shockingly effective fight from the the Frenchman. Benoit Saint-Denis has seemed too wild for his own good at times in the Octagon. His bout with Elizeu Zaleski became one prolonged beating when they met in 2021. Credit to Saint-Denis, however, he seems to have kept his confidence and aggression since that setback, and has a lot more physicality to offer down a division at lightweight.

Along with an obviously improving and sharpening skill set, that seems all set to make him a real problem. The ‘God of War’ tore up Bonfim’s body with kicks, took him down with ease, and eventually locked in a face crank so brutal the Brazilian had no choice but to tap out.

After the bout he called for any of three top ranked lightweight fights against Arman Tsarukyan, Mateusz Gamrot, and Rafael Fiziev. Normally, I’d just ignore that kind of callout, since top ranked UFC fighters rarely ever look to fight down the division. But I could actually see him getting the Fiziev bout, just for how much fun Saint-Denis’ game is.

Fighters like to face action-focused opponents and Fiziev coming off a hard loss needs a bounceback. If that fight can’t get made, then fights with Jim Miller, Matt Frevola, or Carlos Diego Ferreira would all be rock solid. Saint-Denis vs. Fiziev would rock, but Frevola vs. Saint-Denis would be a great consolation.

RINAT FAKHRETDINOV

Gaddamn. Kevin Lee came back to the UFC after a lackluster win over Diego Sanchez, but for a man who once seemed like he’d be a perennial top contender it still seemed likely he had a lot left in the tank. If he does though, he didn’t get to show an ounce of it against Rinat Fakhretdinov. The Russian absolutely blew Lee out of the water with a right hand into a guillotine that left Lee asleep on his knees inside of a one minute.

Will that catapult Fakhretdinov up the division? Lee’s name certainly used to carry a lot of weight, but I’m not sure it still does. UFC fights with Mike Malott, Khaos Williams, or Joaquin Buckley would all be reasonable jumps, however. I’ve really been enjoying how Malott has shown up in the cage so far, and he also seems primed for tougher opponents. Malott vs. Fakhretdinov would be a great next test for both men.

KAROL ROSA

It wasn’t pretty, and it took Karol Rosa a worryingly long time to feel her way into the bout, but once she did finally start to get her game clicking it was clear she had a lot more danger to offer than Yana Santos did.

All things considered it was a pretty grimy performance in the end, with Rosa finding just enough offense in the last two rounds to tip it in her favor, but the win puts her back in play at bantamweight anyway (assuming that’s where her next fight will be). Macy Chiasson is still ranked higher than Rosa and isn’t booked, that’s the easy fight to make. Otherwise a bout with Josiane Nunes would be about right. Chiasson vs. Rosa is a solid way to welcome Rosa back to 135.

ELVES BRENER

I’m not going to say I saw this coming, because I still picked Guram Kutateladze to win this fight. But, Brener’s mix of insane toughness and insistent output always seemed like it had the chance to be a real rough night of the Georgian, who performs best against opponents that fade in the face of his speed and power. Brener got hurt badly, multiple times, but never let Kutateladze off the hook for even a moment. And when Kutateladze found himself still facing the onslaught late, he couldn’t do anything to prevent the Brazilian from pouring it on.

Viacheslav Borshchev just had a fantastic win in his last bout. His style of high-output kickboxing seems like it’s tailor made for another war. Brener vs. Borshchev would be a killer fight.

ALEXANDER ROMANOV

It’s a desperately needed win for Alexander Romanov, so I can’t knock it too hard. But it’s pretty remarkable how poorly Blagoy Ivanov showed up in this fight. Romanov kept a messy jab and some low kicks on Ivanov and the Bulgarian just couldn’t force himself forward with enough conviction to turn the tide. A little wrestling helped seal the deal, but largely this was just a chance for Romanov to lean on his kickboxing arsenal against an opponent who didn’t bring anything back to him.

Normally, for a ranked fighter, I’d argue that they should get another ranked foe off a win. But with the bottom half of the HW division coming off losses and already booked, Romanov could just use another fight against any reasonable body. Martin Buday is 3-0 and big as a house. Buday vs. Romanov is a fine chance for Romanov to do some HW gatekeeping.

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UFC Fight Night: Sean Strickland is ‘Mr. APEX’

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• Sean Strickland is a weird fighter
• Sean Strickland is a weird dude
• The end result
• Join the Bloody Elbow Substack!

While it’s been obvious in practice for years, the UFC has never had a more clearly tiered product than they do right now. What was once a fuzzy line between a PPV event to a network TV Fight Night card to a standard Fight Night has now become a series of hard divisions. PPVs have title fights, network TV cards get top contenders and fan favorite action fighters, ESPN+ gets misc. There are even event tiers for UFC-adjacent talent scouting shows, with DWCS getting top honors over TUF—which at least still gets more love than Road to UFC.

In that ecosystem of octagonally-branded fighting fixtures, Sean Strickland’s place couldn’t be clearer. The Xtreme Couture talent has locked down his role as ‘King of the Third Tier’ through a combination of skill and personality that makes him exactly notable and talented enough to headline something, while not enough of either to break out into the main stream. There are a couple of very simple reasons for all this, and unfortunately (fortunately?) for Strickland, they’re probably not going to change.

Sean Strickland is a weird fighter

First and foremost, any conversation about an athlete and their ability to perform has to start with a discussion of their ability to perform as an athlete. Whatever else might be said of Strickland both in and out of the Octagon, the man is where he is today because he knows how to win fights. But, his journey to becoming one of the UFC’s most consistent talents has been anything but clear and obvious.

Jump all the way back to Strickland’s time in King of the Cage and a fairly typical vision of an athletic ‘MMA native’ prospect emerges. He looked stiff and uncomfortable on the feet, drove for takedowns whenever he started getting plugged, and had a solid BJJ game to fall back on as the fundamental core of his training. It’s where most fighters find themselves when their first experience of combat sports comes from joining their local MMA gym.

Even in those old fights, however, the framework of what would become Strickland’s modern game could be seen in flashes. The insistence on a pawing jab, the swatting attempts at hand parries. While the confidence and consistency wasn’t there, the tools were at least in play.

Unlike most fighters in his position—who tend to lean, insistently on a well-rounded jack-of-all-trades style for the entirety of their career—by the time he took his first knockout loss (against Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos back in 2018) Strickland’s interest in being the guy that does everything had seemingly vanished. Over his first eight fights in the Octagon, Strickland shot for 19 takedowns. In the ten bouts that followed? 9 takedown attempts—and 6 of those came against Uriah Hall.

Instead, Strickland began leaning increasingly on a weirdly bastardized version of the modern MMA meta-game (which calls for large amounts of high-volume kickboxing at the top levels of the sport). With his feet close together and his chin high, Strickland has been walking opponents down with near robotic consistency, pushing out a constant stream of low power jabs and winging hooks. Pushing the jab down the middle of the guard, while trying to fit his followup strikes around it.

When it comes to defense, while he can slip and counter once he commits to fighting on the inside, he mostly focuses on pulling straight back and parrying punches to chase followup strikes. Long fighters who aren’t afraid to pull the trigger on him, find his chin square on the center line, but his tendency to keep his eyes on his work, means he doesn’t usually get caught so off guard that he gets knocked down by much.

On offense, at least, it’s not dissimilar to some of the striking form that Colby Covington has fallen into. But without a clinical wrestling game to go with it, Strickland finds himself living and dying entirely on his ability to be unbreakable and indefatigable. To his credit, he’s largely been both.

The result, however is a long series of battles that feature function over form. He’s so continuous and one-note in his approach that he can rarely surprise anyone enough to knock them out, and he shows little interest in controlling anyone enough to truly break them down. It’s death by 1000 cuts, but with time only for 750 of them. Sean Strickland wins rounds, but he doesn’t make highlights or win fans. At least not inside the cage.

Sean Strickland is a weird dude

The other part of this equation, then, is the person Sean Strickland is outside the Octagon. Even terribly boring fighters who are successful enough for long enough tend to bring in some kind of following, and Strickland’s certainly won enough fights for that. But, much like he’s placed a firm cap on the excitement he creates in a fight by insisting on volume and persistence over form or power, he puts a firm cap on his public image with a personality shipped straight out of a 4chan forum.

It’s no secret at this point that Strickland’s got his past traumas to deal with. A childhood filled with abuse and trouble, a short stint in prison, some dabbling in white supremacy; it’s a cocktail that could skew anyone’s view of the world. It probably doesn’t help that, by all appearances, the 32-year-old seems to be battling through all his demons with MMA alone.

“[Fighting] gives me purpose,” he admitted in a 2021 post-fight interview. “If I wasn’t in the UFC, I’d probably be cooking meth in a trailer in prison. I’m grateful for the fans, to the UFC, you guys that gave me purpose. And I appreciate that.”

Listen to Strickland talk long enough about anything and it becomes pretty clear that all the functional parts of his life are trafficked purely through his fights and his training. His ‘celebrity cribs’ style tour of his apartment was equal parts hilarious and sad.

In another, more recent interview, Strickland was asked about his favorite food, leading to a rant about how “good food” like “sushi” and “pizza” was only something guys eat to “get pussy” or if they’re “a gay” and that he only eats “cheap shit.” It’s a perfect distillation of the man’s personality, which comes off as unflinchingly honest, and occasionally even funny, while also totally sad and unmarketable all in the same breath.

In the lead up to his UFC on ESPN headlining fight against Abus Magomedov, Strickland used his media day press conference to go on an extended rant about why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and are generally responsible for the downfall of society.

“We need to go back to taking women out of the workforce, and maybe that’s where we f—d up,” Strickland told the assembled media (transcript via the Daily Mail). “We let women vote, no offense. Think about America prior to women voting. They tried to ban alcohol, I don’t even drink but I’m not trying to ban alcohol. So, what you did, man, you let these women come into the workforce, now we make less money, you got kids raising themselves on TikTok, we need to go back to like 1942, maybe 1958 after we f—d up the Germans.”

After he finished his screed one member of the media asked if Strickland had ever considered going to therapy. That’s more or less where his personality has left people, though; willing to give him the time of day for his ability to fight, but quickly running out of ways to interact with him that produce anything more than a stark reminder of why he’s best left to fighting.

The end result

Where does all this leave Sean Strickland? Or, more importantly, us as fans? With another headliner upcoming that, for better and worse, promises predictability. Strickland will always show up and fight his fight, he’ll always show up and speak his terrible truth. He is a fighter that can be entirely relied up on to hit all his marks at a very specific level.

For the UFC, that’s just exactly the right level of a Fight Night headliner; someone that wins enough to be considered really very good, but never demands a PPV audience. And who, if we’re being real here, wouldn’t know what to do with one if he got it all to himself.

Maybe Abus Magomedov can provide a bump in the road, and throw Strickland off his game enough to get a win and push his own profile higher up the UFC ladder. But win or lose for Strickland, it seems likely fans will see more of him filling high spots in low places.

Note: H/T to Andy Hickey on Twitter for coining the ‘Mr. Apex’ nickname.