The UFC’s 2019 pay-per-view schedule ends with a bang Saturday night. Three championships will be on the line at UFC 245. All three matchups feature worthy challengers, and all have the potential to be great fights.
UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman takes on former interim titleholder Colby Covington in a matchup of competitors with a combined UFC record of 20-1. Featherweight champion Max Holloway is facing his most serious challenger in Australia’s Alexander Volkanovski. And women’s champ-champ Amanda Nunes puts her bantamweight belt on the line in a rematch with former featherweight titleholder Germaine de Randamie.
Throw in a pair of consequential bantamweight matchups in Marlon Moraes vs. Jose Aldo andPetr Yan vs. Urijah Faber and a smattering of interesting items lower on the card, and it looks like we’re in for one hell of a show Saturday night.
UFC 245 takes place Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN2 and early prelims on UFC Fight Pass/ESPN+.
Will Colby Covington’s fake shtick lead to his realest moment?
Yeah, we know the score by now. You either love Covington (15-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) and his MAGA shtick, or you hate it.
Others who have trash talked their way into getting attention and eventually the big fights, like Conor McGregor and Chael Sonnen, walk a fine line, sometimes crossing it but rarely trampling it. Covington’s banter borders on parody, turning off a whole lot of people, while others like him exactly for what his character represents.
Underlying Covington’s trolling, however, has been one rock-solid fact: He is a tremendous fighter. One who won several fights in a row before gaining any recognition. He’s a world-class MMA wrestler, a cardio freak, and an underrated striker. He’s made fighters as great and stylistically varied as Rafael dos Anjos, Demian Maia, and Robbie Lawler look silly, and did so in consecutive fights.
You don’t have to like Covington. But you’re deluding yourself if you think his phoniness outside the cage has anything with what he does inside the cage. Covington wouldn’t be in this spot if he wasn’t the real deal, and as difficult as it might be for many to swallow, Saturday night could very well be his crowning moment.
Can Kamaru Usman maintain his momentum?
We’ll admit this: We’re kind of nitpicking a little bit, here. That’s because there hasn’t been a whole lot to criticize about Usman’s performances. He’s been near-flawless in the UFC, winning all 10 of his fights. He’s by and large let his performances in the cage do the talking, and he capped his magnificent run with a shockingly one-sided beatdown of Tyron Woodley to claim the belt back in March.
Usman (15-1 MMA, 10-0 UFC) had also been quite active during that span, with the win over Woodley capping a run in which he fought six times in 23 months. Then he took time off to undergo surgery for a double hernia, which is no joke.
Will stepping away to recover from a serious injury knock Usman out of his well-established groove, especially against a guy with a gas tank like Covington? We’ll find out.
How committed is Max Holloway to a featherweight future?
For all the well-deserved superlatives you can toss Holloway’s way, the featherweight champion seems to have a wandering eye for new goals outside his weight class.
Holloway (21-4 MMA, 17-4 UFC) is plainly obsessed with making an impact at 155, as was demonstrated by accepting a bout with Khabib Nurmagomedov on six days’ notice for UFC 223 (from which he ultimately had to withdraw), and then taking on Dustin Poirier for an interim lightweight belt, where he put in a valiant effort before coming up short.
At a media day in Los Angeles last week, Holloway expressed interest in fighting Conor McGregor, and talked about going up as high as middleweight and winning a title when he gets older.
We’ve been covering this game long enough to know talk like this comes when a fighter is starting to get bored when’s he close to cleaning out his division, and we’ve seen an alarmingly high percentage of champions falter in that situation. Maybe we’re trying to make something out of nothing here, but given what Volkanovski (20-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) is capable of doing in the cage, perhaps Holloway’s talk about other weight classes doesn’t seem the wisest choice.
Can Alexander Volkanovski take the final step?
Volkanovski has been tremendous in his UFC career to this point. He’s executed a near-flawless climb up the featherweight ladder, a smart build of increasingly tough opponents on increasingly bigger shows. In his last three fights, he passed through the gate kept by Darren Elkins; sent Chad Mendes into retirement with a brutal beating; and went into Jose Aldo’s backyard and earned a convincing win.
But then, you could build a similar case for Brian Ortega’s path to a featherweight title shot, and Holloway absolutely picked him apart when the cage door shut on their title fight last year.
So it really is this simple: Is Volkanovski the next one, or will he have the misfortune many other excellent fighters have faced over the years, where they are cursed to be a strong fighter who happens to share a division with a generational talent?
Will Amanda Nunes-Germaine de Randamie 2 go any different than their first fight?
The first fight between Nunes (18-4 MMA, 11-1 UFC) and de Randamie (9-3 MMA, 6-1 UFC) was a lifetime ago by MMA standards. The duo fought in a bantamweight bout, the opening FS1 prelim at Fight for the Troops 3 in 2013. Nunes put on an impressive show in finishing de Randamie in the opening round, but the bout came and went and that was that.
It’s highly unlikely anyone at the time thought “What will probably happen here is that Nunes will go on a tear and beat one future Hall of Fame after another, win the bantamweight title, then knock out Cris Cyborg to win a UFC featherweight belt that doesn’t yet exist. Meanwhile, GDR will win the first featherweight title, abandon it, but somehow work her way back to a rematch and a shot at Nunes’ bantamweight belt.”
And yet, here we are.
De Randamie’s game has improved by leaps and bounds over the years. But Nunes has been on another level in earning nine straight wins, with devastating finishes of Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Cyborg, and Holly Holm in her last six. And for all the miles traveled by both since their last meeting, it’s on De Randamie to figure out a way to make sure this fight doesn’t play out like the first.
Is Jose Aldo in for a bad time at bantamweight?
I saw the photo, and so did you: Aldo (28-5 MMA, 10-4 UFC), apparently being propped up by his Nova Unaio teammates after a training session, looking like he was suffering from starvation, with a gaunt face that made him look like he was about 20 years older than he actually is.
And that was before he even got to Las Vegas. Fight week hasn’t exactly been reassuring.
Aldo had some rough moments trying to make 145 during his long run as featherweight champion, and when there was talk about moving to different weight classes, it usually was about a move *up* to lightweight.
But here’s where we are: Aldo has been pretty well boxed out of the top spots at featherweight, having lost four of his past seven with three of those coming by way of finish, and he’s decided 135 is the way to go. There, he’s going to meet one of the game’s pound-for-pound most creative and violent finishers in Moraes (22-6-1 MMA, 4-2 UFC), who has a point to prove as he looks to rebound from his loss to Henry Cejudo in the matchup for the vacant bantamweight title. Maybe Aldo will prove everyone wrong, but we wouldn’t bank on it.
Will this be the night people finally understand how good Petr Yan is?
Let’s say this for Faber (35-10 MMA, 11-6 UFC): He isn’t messing around in his return from retirement. Unlike Tito Ortiz fighting pro wrestlers, or B.J. Penn’s saga which has gone from sad to pathetic, this particular UFC Hall of Famer is accepting opponents which, if he wins, will actually put him back in the conversation for a UFC bantamweight tile shot.
The problem here is, on Saturday night, Faber could end up using his name to make someone else’s. Yan (13-1 MMA, 5-0 UFC) has left a trail of broken dreams in his path, winning all five of his UFC fights in a variety of fashions. In his last two bouts, he’s taken out a pair of legit names in John Dodson and Jimmie Rivera.
But he’s never fought someone with Faber’s name recognition, and never in a spotlight as intense as UFC 245. We’re not writing off Faber by any means, because that’s when he tends to be at his best. But he’s going to need to be at his best against an opponent who is exactly one impressive one over one big name away from vaulting into the elite mix in his division once and for all.
How did we go this long without seeing Matt Brown vs. Ben Saunders?
When I first heard this fight was scheduled, I went on to Brown’s Wikipedia page to figure out when they had previously fought. I mean, they had to have, right? They’re both longtime welterweights. They have a combined 71 pro fights. Brown (21-16 MMA, 14-10 UFC) has been with the UFC since 2008 and Saunders (22-12-2 MMA, 9-9 UFC) in his third UFC stint. The cross-pollination of common opponents on their ledgers is as strong as you’ll see between two fighters. I didn’t recall them fighting in the UFC, but they must have crossed paths on their way up, yeah?
No, as it turns out. Somehow Saturday night’s main card opener is a first-time meeting between the two. Now, this fight might have been more consequential had it happened several years ago, and we’re not going to pretend these guys are at their peak. But they’re still two gamers, still two guys who love what they do, and still capable of ridiculously exciting fights. So let’s just kick back and enjoy the fact we’re finally seeing these two guys lock up, in and of itself.
