UFC Fight Night London: Does Adversity Breed Success?

Amidst a backdrop of widespread condemnation, the UFC rolled into London this weekend with, on the face of it, arguably its weakest card for many a year.

Following an explosive end to 2016 at UFC 207, this is an issue that the promotion has been battling for the whole first quarter of this year, but has only really come to a head in London. It’s no secret that the UFC struggles to build stacked cards in Europe, though why is anyone’s guess.

But the company seemingly hit a new low with its 2017 offering in the English capital when, after reportedly being unable to find a suitable opponent for Swedish slugger Alexander Gustafsson, it decided to bump its co-main of Jimi Manuwa/Corey Alexander to the headline bout. Not particularly inspiring, especially when you consider that the main event in the marquee London card last year was the ‘Fight of the Year’ contender between Michael Bisping and Anderson Silva.

If, like myself, you had bought a ticket before the card was even fully announced, you may have been forgiven for feeling a little disappointed. Looking down, it was hard to see where the draw would come, from the underwhelming co-main match-up between Gunnar Nelson and Alan Jouban, to the inevitably dull heavyweight collision of Tim Johnson and Daniel Omielanczuk. While British MMA pioneer Brad Pickett’s final fight added a little nostalgia value, the majority of the offering was nothing more than rising stars, covering Arnold Allen, Marc Diakiese, Brett Johns and Leon Edwards.

But if the fans thought they were struggling for value for money already, they hadn’t seen nothing yet. Just hours before the event itself, not one but two bouts were forcibly scrapped due to medical reasons, leaving the already slim card thinner than the two Octagon girls. With weight-cutting already under severe scrutiny, the struggles of Ian Entwistle and Tom Breese to cope with the pressures placed on their bodies will only further serve to shine a light on the issue. Indeed, immediately following the news, Entwistle announced his retirement from MMA, highlighting just how difficult this process is.

Perhaps surprisingly, the prelims started encouragingly. Lina Lansberg, fresh off her mauling at the hands of Cris Cyborg, got a narrow, and widely disputed, split decision win over Lucie Pudilova, while Scott Askham and Brad Scott put on, in my eyes at least, the fight of the night in a back and forth encounter. This was then punctuated by my highlight of the night – a thirty second KO of Teemu Packalen by rising lightweight prospect Marc Diakiese, including a cartwheel kick, a spinning wheel kick and then a huge overhand right, leaving the Finn jelly-legged and out cold on the mat. On this performance, there is no doubt that the Doncaster-born fighter can make good on his promise to the O2 Arena to go all the way to the top, though I’m sure he’ll have tougher competition than this.

However, if those in attendance felt that was to set the scene for the evening, we were very much mistaken. While the Edwards/Luque fight was entertaining in its technical and tactical battle, the goodwill built up by the early prelims was quickly eradicated by the heavyweight contest. I don’t care how glorious Tim Johnson’s handlebar moustache is, he puts on a boring fight!

At the risk of ripping off a famous Fatboy Slim song, the full 15 minutes were a case of punch, charge, recover, repeat, largely enabled by the lumbering Omielanczuk. The worrying thing is that both of these guys started proceedings inside the top 15 of the division, highlighting once again how in need of heavyweight talent the UFC is.

While Joe Duffy’s energetic dismantling of Reza Madadi and Arnold Allen’s scramble-fest against Makwan Amirkhani instilled a bit of life back into proceedings, it was very obvious that we had seen five consecutive, and rather dull, decisions as we entered the business end of the evening.

As a proud Northerner, I’m perhaps slightly biased, but I can honestly say that I was surprised by the abject lack of atmosphere in the O2 Arena before and during the Brad Pickett fight. Considering that this is supposed to be the final fight in the career of a legend of the London MMA scene, I had expected a raucous environment akin to the one I witnessed for Michael Bisping in his hometown title defence against Dan Henderson at UFC 204. Alas, the most excited the crowd got during the 14 minute fight was when a brawl broke out in the front rows of the seated section – over what I don’t know!

Nevertheless, it was sad to see ‘One Punch’ go out the way he did. While he argued an early stoppage, he was certainly badly hurt by Marlon Vera’s head kick, and the argument was there that he was not intelligently defending himself for the second hammer-fist. An emotional farewell speech later, Pickett fittingly left his iconic pork pie hat in the centre of the Octagon, bowing out with a respectable 25-14 record at the very highest level.

The crowd did wake up a little during the co-main, however, gamely joining in on the now famous Icelandic slow clap. Outside of Demian Maia, is there a more impressive jiu-jitsu practitioner than Iceland’s Gunnar Nelson? He absolutely bullied a game fighter in Alan Jouban, beating him to the punch and dominating him on the ground, before finishing the former model with a brutal guillotine choke. While this match-up was admittedly poor, surely Nelson has to be looking at a top five contender next time out – Lawler, Cerrone or Condit?

And if the co-main was one-sided, I’m not quite sure how to characterise the headliner. On paper an interesting match-up between a deadly striker in Jimi Manuwa and a respected wrestler in Corey Anderson, it could not have been much more of a mismatch. Having failed on a couple of takedown attempts and taken a brutal hook to the body, Anderson was left flat out on the floor by a huge left hand by the Brit at just three minutes, in a walk-off KO that Mark Hunt would have been proud of.

Certainly, Manuwa is living up to his reputation as one of the scariest knockout artists in the division (second behind Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson if you believe Joe Rogan), but has he done enough to secure a fight against the winner of Daniel Cormier and Rumble? If you’re going on legitimacy of contendership, absolutely, however there is the looming prospect of a Jon Jones return, and as we have seen from Georges St Pierre’s comeback, the new owners of the UFC value a returning star at a little more than a number one contender. And calling out David Haye? What is it with MMA fighters and boxers these days?  

Overall, UFC Fight Night London had its moments of quality, but these were often too fleeting and punctuated what was largely an underwhelming card. Not as good as last year, and certainly nowhere near UFC 204. It’s a shame, because the UK market for MMA is huge at the minute, with the Manchester event selling out in under six minutes, and there is a considerable opportunity for the UFC to expand. Bellator has looked to get into this with a comparatively stacked card in May, and with the current free agency debate, the UFC needs to demonstrate its strength in depth.

Put simply, the promotion needs to stop exposing just the same small roster of fighters for the European events. I’m not even going to look, but I’d be surprised if you could find an event in the region in the past few years that does not include one of these fighters in the main card: Andrei Arlovski, Michael Bisping, Gegard Mousasi, Stefan Struve, Jimi Manuwa, Alexander Gustafsson. I get that home fighters want to fight at their own events, and that’s fine, but make more events! Tickets are clearly selling, so the promotion needs to stop short-changing its loyal European fan-base and find a better balance between demand and supply.

The Octagon returns to Glasgow later this year, so there is hope, but I shan’t hold my breath.