UFC 310 mailbag: What’s next for Alexandre Pantoja and did Shavkat Rakhmonov’s stock drop?

UFC 310 is in the books, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Alexandre Pantoja remains the flyweight champion after demolishing Kai Asakura, and Shavkat Rakhmonov remains undefeated after edging one out over Ian Machado Garry. On top of that, there were a few other notable outcomes this past weekend, including some heavyweight controversy, so let’s dive right into your questions.

“Pantoja vs. [Kai Kara France] 2? Or is Pantoja making an argument at double champ shot?

“ Belal vs. Shavkat, was Garry fight a product of sparring at range demons or is this easy for Belal on volume/pace?

“Did Gane make the HW scene even more ugly or does Tom Ciryl still hold interest?”

Man, the flyweight title picture is super interesting now.

If you’ve read my work before (and if not, happy to have you!), you know I don’t think much of “champ-champ” fights. I’m of the opinion that double-champ opportunities should be reserved for long-reigning champions who truly clean out a division of contenders, not guys who get a couple of wins and we think will beat their contenders. Well, Pantoja hasn’t quite cleaned everyone out, but he’s damn close.

If you count his wins on The Ultimate Fighter, Pantoja is 9-0 against currently ranked flyweights, and that doesn’t include his win over Asakura. The only dudes Pantoja hasn’t fought in the top-5 currently are Tatsuro Taira and Amir Albazi, and both of them just lost. Given all that, this is one of the times where I believe a shot at double-champ status is justified; there’s just one problem: bantamweight has too much other stuff going on right now.

Merab Dvalishvili is going to fight Umar Nurmagomedov in January, and however that ends up, Petr Yan and Sean O’Malley both appear to be in the mix to get a shot at the winner. And with no real momentum for Pantoja to jump up (plus, he’s not even making a big case for it), it’s not going to happen.

All this means that Pantoja is going to defend his title at least once more, and if Kara-France is the guy, I’m OK with that. Sure, he’s only on a one-fight winning streak, but many people thought he beat Albazi and, personally, I don’t care about Pantoja beating one of the Brandons (Moreno or Royval) for the sixth time. At least the Kara-France matchup is relatively new.

BUT, I think there’s a secret third option nobody has talked about: Deiveson Figueiredo.

“Figgy Smalls” has been lights out up at bantamweight, but the loss to Yan put him well back from getting a title shot. Perhaps he reconsiders his position and decides to return to the division he was champion of and, most notably, where he holds a win over the current champion. To me, this is the best option. Bring Figueiredo back down for the rematch, and have Kara-France and Brandon Royval duke it out for the next title shot.

As for the other two questions, I’ll get to those later.

Shavkat Rakhmonov, title contender

“How does Belal Muhammad vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov go based on what he showed last night? Where does Garry go from here, improvement wise?”

Before jumping into the future welterweight title fight discussion, let’s start with an honest assessment of Rakhmonov’s performance at UFC 310.

There’s been a quiet but growing contingent of fans that believe Rakhmonov is overhyped, and on Saturday, those people all felt vindicated. Those people are silly. Yes, for the first time in his career Rakhmonov failed to finish his opponent. After 18 fights, the previous six of which all came against high-level opposition, Rakhmonov won a clear-cut decision instead of finishing a guy who has never lost before. What a fraud he is!

Did Rakhmonov look his best? No. But even setting aside the rumors that he fought with a torn MCL (which, if true, would certainly explain some of it), it shouldn’t be shocking that Rakhmonov had a tougher time than usual on Saturday. People may not like him, but Ian Machado Garry is a damn good fighter. It’s hard to fight good fighters! And it’s even harder to fight good fighters who you’ve trained with before, who you weren’t preparing for, and who are fighting extremely defensive and are bigger than you. While the fight was undeniably a let down from a viewing perspective, Rakhmonov shouldn’t lose one iota of credibility for taking a clear win.

Now, does this make you rethink the matchup with Belal? Not really. Before UFC 310 I was extremely confident that Rakhmonov would beat Muhammad because he’s exceptional and I think the stylistic matchup favors him. I still mostly think that but now I’ll go from “extremely confident” to “pretty confident.”

Belal is a great fighter and brings clearly defined tools to the table, but they aren’t the same tools Garry brings. Muhammad isn’t near the range striker Garry is and I still don’t think he’s going to have a ton of success initiating grappling exchanges with Rakhmonov. So that doesn’t really leave Muhammad a lot of options in my mind, but I guess we’re going to find out.

As for the Garry question, read on below.

Ian Machado Garry

“Do you feel more or less confident about Ian Garry becoming UFC champion following his performance against Shavkat?”

I feel about the same. Before UFC 310 I said that Garry is almost certainly going to challenge for a title and has a decent shot at winning a belt one day. After watching him give Rakhmonov a very tough time, I have no reason to think any different.

People do not like Garry for a number of reasons, many of them stupid, but only a total buffoon would argue that he’s not a great fighter. You don’t get to 15-0 by accident and he was one round away from moving to 16-0. On top of that, he’s getting better every time out and he’s only 27 years old. All of that is in favor of him making a serious title run over the next few years.

The only question, really, is whether he’ll get the belt? On that I’m not sure because a big issue for Garry is that Rakhmonov is better than him and only three years older. If Shavkat does get the belt, that means Garry has to go through him, and while that’s possible, it’s still a tall order. If I had to make a call, I’d say Garry doesn’t get a belt, but I have no confidence in that prediction whatsoever.

Ciryl Gane “robs” Alexander Volkov

“Was Volkov “robbed” or did he lose a close fight?”

He was not robbed, and I say this as a man who had a +280 underdog bet on Volkov and scored the fight for him, too.

I’ll leave a full “Robbery Review” to the esteemed Alexander K. Lee, but statistically, this was a razor close fight. Gane landed four more significant strikes and attempted one more submission than Volkov, while Volkov had one more takedown and 52 more seconds of control time. Stats don’t tell the whole story of a fight, obviously, but they’re instructive enough in regards to robbery talk.

The best argument for calling Gane’s win “a robbery” is that the media overwhelmingly gave the fight to Volkov. That’s not nothing, but also most of those members scored it 29-28 and this simply comes down to one, extremely close round.

In my mind, “robbery” should only be used when there is no reasonable way for judges to score a round for a fighter. Scoring the first two rounds for Gane is entirely reasonable, so this isn’t a robbery, just a close fight that Volkov got the short end of the stick on.

And to answer the previous questions about whether Gane vs. Aspinall still has interest: no, but it doesn’t really matter. Jon Jones is not going to fight Tom Aspinall so Aspinall vs. Gane is what we’re getting, and while nobody is excited about it, such is the state of the heavyweight division.

Movsar Evloev

“On featherweight, how do you think Movsar Evloev would go with Ilia Topuria? And given he got his main card spot, what year did Kron’s game plan expire – pre-Zuffa late-90s, or more into late 00s? Never seen anyone jump half guard before.”

Hopefully we find out next year.

I know people don’t like Evloev because they think he’s boring but that’s just not true. Yes, he’s never had a finish in the UFC and that’s suboptimal, but his past few fights have been pretty damn fun. The idea that he’s boring is largely based on Dana White hating him, which is silly. And even if it were true, it shouldn’t matter: Evloev is one of the three best featherweights in the world and deserves his shot at the belt.

People like Diego Lopes because he’s very fun, but Evloev deserves a title shot before him because they fought and Evloev won. It’s really that simple. However, given that Alexander Volkanovski is getting another shot at Topuria, Evloev won’t get his chance and so instead I suspect we get Evloev vs. Lopes 2 as a title eliminator, which will then remove any controversy around the issue.

And if Evloev does win that and faces Topuria, he’s got a real chance to win the belt. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll favor the champion, but Topuria is not unbeatable and Evloev has an incredibly efficient grappling game that, in my opinion, presents the biggest challenge to Topuria at 145 pounds.

Merab Dvalishvili

“Can you tell exactly what is going on with Merab’s mindset? Can he be suspended for beating a fan and if so, is he setting up this on purpose because he feels UFC pushed him early to fight?”

In case you missed it, UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili got into an altercation with a fan at UFC 310. Not only is this obviously a bad look for the champ, but it may have serious ramifications as well.

To the best of my knowledge, Dvalishvili was a legitimate cornerman for his teammate Aljamain Sterling, which means the Nevada State Athletic Commission can suspend him for his actions. As you might remember from the time Arman Tsarukyan hit a fan at UFC 300, the NSAC doesn’t take too kindly to fighter to fighters doing things like this. In Tsarukyan’s case, they suspended him nine months, which was later knocked down to six. If the same thing happens to Dvalishvili, well, UFC 311 needs a new co-main event.

But here’s the thing, while I don’t think the UFC will strip Dvalishvili for this, I can’t say for certain that they won’t. At the minimum I’d expect Umar Nurmagomedov will stay on the card and fight someone else for an interim title. And while that might assuage Dvalishvili’s insane contention that “he doesn’t deserve this fight,” we all know that the champion’s behavior isn’t really about what Nurmagomedov does or doesn’t deserve.

In the UFC, you only make big money once you’re the champion. Dvalishvili was very possibly the best bantamweight in the world for several years, but his loyalty to Sterling meant he didn’t get to reap the financial benefits of that. Now that he finally does have the title, he’s staring down an extremely difficult fight in his first defense. That sucks for him. It’s why he’s trying to hard to get a fight with Petr Yan or Sean O’Malley — guys he already beat with ease — because he saw the UFC allow Sean O’Malley to hand-pick an easy matchup once he became champion, and wants the same courtesy. Sadly for Merab, that’s not on the table, and he’s raging against the only target he can as a result.

And while I’m sympathetic to all of this, in the words of Max Holloway, “it is what it is.” Dvalishvili is going to have to fight Umar, be it in January or later this year if he does get suspended. He needs to come to grips with that sooner rather than later, because he’s actions since winning the belt have done nothing but tank the goodwill he had with fans.

Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who sent in tweets (Xs?)! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck because you can send your tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! It doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.