UFC Fight Night 121: Werdum vs. Tybura (11/18/2017) - Sydney, Australia (Qudos Bank Arena)

[Elsalvajeloco]

Werdum brought all of Brazil with him it seems.

[Guest Edwin]

Caught some of the main card fights...

Werdum vs. Tybura was the only fight I was looking forward to on the card and it was awful. Low level flabby striking sparring session.

[Elsalvajeloco]

I thought it was pretty decent for heavyweight standards, Werdum fighting on short notice, and Tybura basically having to fight someone who is completely different from the person who was suppose to fight. Not as fun as Barnett vs. Roy Nelson a couple years back, but I will take two giant dudes kicking the shit out of each other.

[Hail Sabin]

Agreed with the 4 performances that were given out only one I might change is Benoit instead of Lutz. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 minute ago, Hail Sabin said:

Agreed with the 4 performances that were given out only one I might change is Benoit instead of Lutz. 

I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work for this show (specifically the FOTN bonus), but I'm pretty sure Benoit was ineligible for a bonus. Camacho was also ineligible so Damien Brown was probably the only one who was cut a check afterwards. Camacho wanted the UFC to give the 50k that was suppose to go to him to Brown. 

[J.T.]

I enjoyed this card for far more different reasons than the Norfolk card.  Some people hate seeing so many decisions, but I like closely contested matches.

I felt bad for Marcin but he needs to refine the formula if he's going to fight Top 5 guys. 

Holy fuck, those post fight theatrics from Benoit after the headkick to Mokhtarian were something else.  That shit looked personal, but I don't recall any incidents of exceptional trash talking between those guys before the fight.

[Elsalvajeloco]

8 minutes ago, J.T. said:

I enjoyed this card for far more different reasons than the Norfolk card.  Some people hate seeing so many decisions, but I like closely contested matches.

I felt bad for Marcin but he needs to refine the formula if he's going to fight Top 5 guys. 

Holy fuck, those post fight theatrics from Benoit after the headkick to Mokhtarian were something else.  That shit looked personal, but I don't recall any incidents of exceptional trash talking between those guys before the fight.

I think that borderline top 10 is kinda the ceiling for Tybura. He is one of those "ok to good at everything, but not particularly great at anything" fighter and pretty tough, which will work against a good majority of heavyweights. The problem is he isn't really fast or have exceptional speed for heavyweight unless it's a high kick. He's basically going to be this era's Ben Rothwell but slightly better.

[Ultimo Necro]

Watching a replay of Werdum v Tybura, after the last 3-4'shows have peaked my interest,  I've been out the loop for about 4-5 years, but I feel like there's been a shift in stand up fighting, does nobody grapple any more? As a college wrestler it is freaking me out how little ground action there is.

[Elsalvajeloco]

28 minutes ago, Ultimo Necro said:

Watching a replay of Werdum v Tybura, after the last 3-4'shows have peaked my interest,  I've been out the loop for about 4-5 years, but I feel like there's been a shift in stand up fighting, does nobody grapple any more? As a college wrestler it is freaking me out how little ground action there is.

I mean Werdum just came off a fight only six weeks ago where he submitted someone in under 90 seconds. So there is that.

I think Werdum vs. Tybura isn't a good example because Werdum since joining up with Kings MMA wanted to develop his striking game under Rafael Cordeiro because it was largely absent for the first half of his career. That's kinda Cordeiro's calling card now: making great grapplers (in Werdum's case, the best HW submission grappler in the world) and making them either passable strikers so they can get it to the ground (Beneil Dariush for example) or use it to win a good number of fights (Werdum). Coming into the Tybura fight, Werdum was fighting someone who isn't amateurish on the ground or easy to take down. Coming into that fight on somewhat short notice, I don't think Werdum wanted to expend a ton of energy getting a big guy like Tybura down when he was clearly outstriking him early on. Werdum himself isn't a particularly good wrestler, but being otherworldly on the ground (both traits shared by Demian Maia) makes up for that. So Tybura had to respect that Werdum possibly could take him down.

But if you watched the other fights on the card like Volkanovski vs. Shane Young, Matthews vs. Velickovic, Lentz vs. Brooks, and Shelton vs. Jenel Lausa, you saw plenty of ground work. I mean most of the good action of Kassem vs. Alex Chambers was on the ground other than Kassem buzzing Chambers on the feet in the final round.