There were 50 minutes’ worth of title fights at UFC 312 in Sydney, Australia on Saturday night, but 45 of them lacked any kind of real suspense. Sean Strickland vowed to make the most of his mulligan title chance against middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis, but instead he offered nothing in the way of danger. He was pieced up from pillar to post, and the shattered nose he suffered midway through the fourth round only painted the proper visual for just how one-sided it was.
Women’s strawweight champ Zhang Weili was taken down in the first round of the co-main and held there for a couple of minutes, while the broad-shouldered favorite Tatiana Suarez looked — for a fleeting moment, anyway — like the wrestling Armageddon she was advertised to be. It didn’t last. By the second round Weili turned into a brick wall, rendering all further wrestling attempts futile. Punishing the double-legs on entry. Forcing Suarez to fight on her terms, which usually meant upright — and when it did go to the ground, from the soul-scrambling bottom.
Zhang stripped Suarez of her identity early and left her to deal in real time existential dilemmas. It was a patterned fight. Thwart. Reverse. Light up. And break. Zhang was unconquerable. Suarez spent nine years overcoming her own bodily deceptions to one day have the chance to seize a title that many pundits had long bestowed upon her, only to find out that there was no pot of gold. She wasn’t good enough.
She wasn’t the best.
That’s what made UFC 312 a little like the UFC pay-per-views of old. The learning of the truth, no matter how cruel. Back in the day we’d gather ’round television sets to find out, above all else, who the best fighter was. All the props and promos were nothing more than little asides, the main thing was establishing the public facts. When BJ Penn came up to face Georges St-Pierre at UFC 94, it felt like the biggest fight the UFC could possibly make. Penn was rolling as the lightweight champion, and he bragged that after they fought the first time at UFC 58, “GSP” went to the hospital while Penn went to the bar.
So, what did “GSP” do? Systematically shut down Penn’s offense, draining him of belief and drama. Breaking down the lactic acid in his shoulders, which was part of the game plan — to make Penn’s shoulders burn through the pummeling. Not exactly appointment-viewing television. St-Pierre divested Penn of all delusion for everyone to see, and it was like watching a lid being placed on a candle to slowly extinguish a flame. Anticlimactic in every respect. So dominant as to make consumers pout, yet the respect for “GSP” immediately began to drown out the grumbling.
Did the paying audience get its money’s worth in these two title fights at UFC 312? Not if you were hoping for tension. Plot twists. Competitive back-and-forth action. The things that fall more in line with entertainment. What we got was two champions making declarations that they are the best in the world. Among its many forms, greatness can also feel like a rip-off.
But sometimes you just have to let it burn.
Du Plessis’ closest fight in the UFC to date came against Strickland at UFC 297 last year, in which he was out-struck over the course of five rounds yet won a split decision. Not many people cared for a rematch, but the UFC liked Strickland enough to make it anyway. The Strickland perspective took up the majority of the narrative heading in, as if he was on the scene to correct an injustice.
But du Plessis was there to prove something, too. Namely that the first fight was unnecessarily close. That the gap between them was far wider than people realized, and that Strickland — that polarizing figure who attacked him in the stands that time at UFC 296 in Las Vegas — was merely spinning his wheels to believe otherwise.
It turns out du Plessis’ version was the truth. Even with a full year to contemplate how to overcome du Plessis’ unusual attacks — which swing wildly between measured and out of control, often in a single sequence — Strickland could do nothing. He was holstered and predictable, as his coach Eric Nicksick desperately tried to convey between rounds, unable to find a rhythm or to dig deep enough to make it a dog fight. Strickland hung in there to hear the scorecards, but it was a one-sided beatdown.
Du Plessis now gets a colossal fight with Khamzat Chimaev, which now takes on more significant meaning.
But where does Strickland go from a loss like that? And where does Suarez, who has spent her career operating as the bully in the cage, go after taking 25 minutes of dictation against a mighty champion? Rationally speaking, somebody is always the nail, but it’s especially painful when you’ve always been the hammer. Will she find a reason to continue after the Sisyphean task of merely getting there in the first place? That question alone makes for an especially long trip back across the Pacific.
Perhaps it would’ve been more emphatic if du Plessis or Zhang scored big finishes in these title defenses, but there is something about a sustained, merciless beatdown that sticks with you. There can be no real excuses in fights like these. Only levels.
Hard truths and levels.
