Curtis Blaydes (left) and Phil Hawes, both past NJCAA national champions, were among the ex-wrestlers on the UFC Fight Night cardProfessional MMA at the highest level sure seems like a cruel, volatile, unpredictable proposition. The UFC held another fight night card on Saturday, with one of our own prominently featured as top billing. Heavyweight contender Curtis Blaydes, in all likelihood, was a win or two away from his first shot at one of the most coveted titles in combat sports: UFC heavyweight championship.
There were several wrestlers on Saturday's UFC Fight Night card, even after collegiate wrestlers/high school state champs Drakkar Klose (Michigan) and Chas Skelly (Texas) had their bouts canceled at the last minute. Here we will examine the bigger fights featuring the better wrestlers.
Let's examine what we learned about wrestlers on the UFC Fight Night card.
Curtis Blaydes
Wrestling resume: 95-18 high school record wrestling for Chicago's De La Salle Institute, including a 44-0 state championship winning senior season. Received scholarship money to wrestle NCAA Division I for Northern Illinois University, going 19-2 before transferring to Harper College and winning an NJCAA national title at heavyweight.
This one has got to sting for Blaydes. The big man from Chicago has been steadily improving since his UFC debut in 2016, and came into this fight red-hot, dominantly winning his last four fights. He has used his wrestling brilliantly to serve as the foundation to implement very effective striking, sound top-side grappling, round-winning clinch/cage work, and a veteran's sense of strategy. On Saturday night he started out looking fantastic against his extremely dangerous foe. One-time UFC heavyweight title-challenger Derrick Lewis is a KO machine, needing just one punch to put out the lights.
Blaydes kept Lewis guessing and off balance for nearly the entirety of the contest, using solid footwork, great distance via a steady jab, multi-punch combinations, and a slick, chopping low-kick to punctuate engagements. He was fighting like a fully developed mixed martial artist. The approach worked like a charm until he decided to take his first fully committed shot and ate a lethal uppercut in the process. A couple-cringe-inducing follow-up shots ensured Blaydes would not be getting up any time soon, and just like that, Blaydes must regroup and rebuild.
The long and short of it is this: Curtis Blaydes looked absolutely stellar through 6.5 minutes of action. He was in great shape, composed, confident, and very sharp. But this is the heavyweight division. And Derrick Lewis is the most prolific puncher in said division. These unfortunate outcomes will always be lurking when fighting under such circumstances.
Blaydes still has the ability and relative youth to make another run, and I'm sure he will, but I'd be lying if I said this isn't a considerable setback that couldn't have come at a worse time.
Phil Hawes
Wrestling resume: Qualified for 2006 and 2007 New Jersey state championships. Won 2009 NJCAA Nationals at 197 pounds for Iowa Central. Signed with North Dakota State, but ultimately wrestled a season a piece at Iowa State (NCAA Division I) and Wartburg College (NCAA Division III). Hawes gave freestyle a brief go for the 2012 season before moving to MMA.
Just like with wrestling, Hawes has been a bit of a slow starter, or perhaps a late bloomer in MMA. Undeniably capable of competing at the highest level, Hawes is finally making good on buzz that he first cultivated way back in. 2015. Hawes arrived violently in the UFC this year, making a statement with a first-round knockout win less than a minute into his official debut. For his second outing he was paired with Russian Frenchman Nassourdine Imavov, a fighter with about as much MMA experience as Hawes.
I was more than a little nervous for Hawes leading up to this fight. Imavov is an enormous middleweight (185 pounds) with problematic height and length, very good boxing, serviceable wrestling (he is from Dagestan after all), and the ability to fight well on the inside. It seems that Hawes, aka Megatron, was aware of this, and when he couldn't find a home for his powerful hands early on, he decided to switch up his approach.
What followed for the next three rounds was a wrestling and clinch-fighting clinic put on by Hawes. The New Jersey native, fighting out of South Florida, put Imavov on his back repeatedly. And when he wasn't scoring takedowns he was vigorously pressing his foe against the cage, working his grips, fighting the hands, and landing short but effective strikes to the entirety of his target's body. He was expertly implementing a strategy known to be absolutely miserable for the losing fighter as it leaves them dog-tire and much less dangerous.
Hawes survived quite a scare in the final round, finding himself on rubber legs and fending off a late rally, but in the end he had done more than enough to collect his victory. It was a solid showing for Hawes and one that he needed to flash at some point in his ascent.
Darrick Minner
Wrestling resume: 2007 and 2008 All-State at Nebraska Class B High School (Nebraska City High School) State Championships (112 pounds and 125 pounds). Wrestled collegiately for Iowa Western.
A professional fighter since 2012, featherweight dynamo Darrick Minner fights the way we want to see all lighter-weight converted wrestlers fight: fast and powerful, with awesome takedowns, even better scrambling ability, and a hammer from on top. Minner has coupled a nasty submission game with his frenetic wrestling and will mix it up on the feet enough to avoid being predictable. Minner looked outstanding on Saturday night, landing punches in volume and making his takedowns count by maintaining positional advantages on the mat and working for submissions.
Of Minner's 26 pro MMA wins, 22 have come by submission, 20 of them in the first round. It's usually some sort of arm choke (wrestlers have a real affinity for this) that he snatches up quickly. When Minner is forced to fight an entire fight, he often loses some of his edge. Not this time. Fighting a very game opponent, Minner was the clear frontrunner for the duration. After kicking around on the regional MMA scene for seven years, Minner now has some real momentum in the big show. Let's see if he can parlay it into something big.
Others in action
John Castaneda, a Minnesota high school wrestler with a season at Minnesota State University-Mankato (NCAA Division II), had his hands full with former WEC champ and aging-but-dangerous vet Eddie Wineland, but he hung tough in a firefight and came out on top. Castaneda pulled out a pretty furious barrage of punches to end the fight in the closing seconds of Round 1. British Junior National freestyle champ Tom Aspinall took on grizzled legend Andrei Arlovski in a pretty gnarly fight. Arlovski is a man who spent several training camps wrestling with three-time world champ and Olympic medalist Bilyal Makhov as his training partner. Aspinall got the better of the tough Arlovski standing before taking him down and choking him out. California high school wrestler Jared Vanderaa is shaping up to be a promising fighter, but he got put on his back, clobbered, and finished by Sergey Spivak in Round 2.
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