What really mattered at UFC on ESPN+ 7 in St. Petersburg on Saturday? Here’s a thing or five.
1. The big guy’s still got it – in brief bursts
The way Aleksei Oleinik talked before this fight, one got the sense that he had not gone ahead and planned himself a victory party. He came in as a late replacement and a roughly 2-1 underdog, and it’s surprising that the odds didn’t ratchet up further after his recollections of being unable to do anything at all to Alistair Overeem in the gym.
But in the fight itself, lo and behold, Oleinik had his moments. His overhand right stung Overeem on the feet, and if he hand’t been so concerned with getting a takedown he might have avoided sticking his face right in clinch knee range.
One thing Overeem has after all this time is patience and cage savvy. He knows how to roll with the ebbs and flows of a fight, and he still has enough power and technique to make opponents pay for their impatience. If you mess up against the guy, you’ll get hurt. So he’s still got that going for him. And who’s to say just how much he might make of it, if given the chance?
2. If we’re not going to get Makhachev a fight with a known man now, what’s the point?
Islam Makhachev may have found himself in a tougher fight than he expected against Arman Tsarukyan, but he got the win and a “Fight of the Night” bonus to sweeten the deal. That’s five in a row for Makhachev after the lone loss of his career. While the competition he’s facing is clearly still tough enough, the names involved aren’t going to give him much of a boost.
Right now he seems like one more very good fighter in a division that’s overflowing with them. A five-fight winning streak ought to be enough to vault him into that next tier of competition. And if not, what’s it going to take?
3. The resilience of ‘The Happy Warrior’
Sticking around the women’s division of this sport for 16 years isn’t just an accomplishment, it’s a practically superhuman feat. Roxanne Modafferi’s been at it since the days when there was zero money in it for female fighters and it was often a battle just to get promoters to let them fight five-minute rounds.
Her split-decision win over Antonia Shevchenko means she gets to prolong her stay in the UFC after a long, thankless slog to get there, and that can’t help but warm the hearts of everyone who’s followed her journey through this sport. Modafferi has hung around this long mostly through sheer stubborn will. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
4. Pavlovich bounces back upside Golm’s skull
In an act of sheer cruelty, Sergei Pavlovich ended up making his UFC debut against Overeem, who had about five times as many fights as he did, and it didn’t go so well. That put the first blemish on Pavlovich’s pro record, and probably sucked some of the steam out of whatever hype train he had going for himself.
What a relief, then, to draw someone like Marcelo Golm in his second UFC bout. Here Pavlovich needed just 66 seconds to score a violent knockout win, reminding us in the process that he might be a heavyweight with a future. If, that is, he gets time to develop before being thrown to the wolves again.
5. From Russia with a streaming subscription
I tell you, it’s not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning. You’ve got your prelims on ESPN 2 in the morning, then the main card on the ESPN+ streaming service in the early afternoon. The card itself felt more regional than star-studded, but that’s not such a problem when you’re not asking us to stay up until midnight to watch it like those far-flung events on FOX Sports 1 used to.
At times these events feel like the UFC acting as its own minor league, content to sell tickets and tease a new market while offering a few tryouts to local fighters. If you try to tell us that’s super important, primetime viewing, we might rebel. But if you offer it up as just some fun fight content on a Saturday afternoon? Sure, that works. In its own way.
For more on UFC on ESPN+ 7, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
