Dennis Bermudez vs. Darren Elkins co-headlines UFC on FOX 25 this July 22, 2017 at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.
One sentence summary
David: An unpredictable object meets a predictable force in this weekend’s episode of Game of Thrones.
Phil: Featherweight’s greatest glass cannon takes on its most rawhide grinder
Stats
Record: Dennis Bermudez 16-6 Darren Elkins 22-5
Odds: Dennis Bermudez -210 Darren Elkins +175
History / Introduction to the fighters
David: Bermudez seems destined to be that fighter who only needs a little magic dust sprinkled over him to catch that career defining victory if he could just… but alas. I was one of the few (I think) who really thought the Korean Zombie fight was the perfect lay up for him. Bermudez scored a couple of wins. He had all the momentum. And his opponent was an action fighter with a crackable chin who hadn’t even fought in four years. So naturally, Bermudez got knocked the ‘f out. This Elkins fight is perfect for him. You would think.
Phil: Dennis Bermudez never quite panned out the way that everyone hoped. That first TUF finale fight against Diego Brandao was the one which introduced him to the wider UFC, and it defined him pretty handily: a tornado of kicks, punches and takedowns who then suddenly gets wiped off the face of the map by a single piece of finishing offense. He’s been essentially the same guy since then: winning a few, then periodically clanging his way into a brutal stoppage loss. On the plus side, you’re normally guaranteed a fun fight.
David: Elkins grew up in the UFC ecosphere as a Halloween Snicker-sized Jon Fitch. He was a good fighter who relied on top control and attrition to beat exciting fighters, which early on, pissed off the UFC addicts of red meat. Over time, he’s managed to round out his game. And over time, he’s managed to get a little more exciting in the process. The Bektić fight is over. Which makes Elkins that final girl in a horror film who happened to survive by the grace of a Deus Ex Excalibur. And like all final girls, Elkins must answer the question of whether or not he can survive the sequel.
Phil: Darren Elkins is an unlikely folk hero who seemed destined to be one of the UFC’s under-the-radar grinders. If someone looked like they were on their way to the upper levels of the UFC? Here was Darren Elkins, a tough-as-boots test who would clinch, and grind, and wrestle, and grind, and probably lose. Going to Team Alpha Male has led to an unlikely career resurgence, one which was capped by his comeback over über-prospect Mirsad Bektic. After two rounds of merciless beating left Elkins looking like a Midwestern farmer who had fallen into his threshing machine, he somehow found some clinch offense and a strange, awkward head kick to put the younger and more athletic fighter down.
What’s at stake
Phil: Is it weird that in this particular situation it feels like Bermudez is the one who has to hold the gates, and Elkins is the one who will be moving on up with a win? Because it feels super weird.
David: It’s definitely weird. It’s like Deep Cover. Jeff Goldblum is the beta male of the drug lords. He can’t even beat an old Latino man in a game of slapsies. He’s brutalized and embarrassed, in fact. But somehow he becomes the evil heavy of the plot through sheer f’ing will.
Where do they want it?
Phil: Dennis Bermudez is the aforementioned whirlwind of offense, working behind a decent jab, and Dutch-style kickboxing combinations, which he blends into a dizzying array of slams, trips and takedowns. He is normally a joyously reckless but oddly fragile fighter, without anything like the chin which would be necessary to make that style stable.
I would contest that he has become a bit more careful of late, but I’m not sure that it’s in a way which actually speaks to his strengths…? Essentially it feels a bit like he’s gotten scared off striking somewhat, and has decided that the only space where he is safe is when he has his hands on the opponent. This tendency then got him ducking into a predictable takedown, right into a Chan Sung Jung counter uppercut. This is a worrying tendency, because I think it’s better to be fragile and unpredictable and dangerous than fragile and predictable and dangerous.
David: Very well said. Bermudez has essentially tried to add (focused attacks) by subtracting (sustained pressure), and all he’s done is subtract. This really cuts to the heart of the fighters who hurt most when refinement turns into regression. Wrestle-boxers like Bermudez stand to lose the most when they try to whittle their approach. Their profiles are already trimmed down mechanics. Still, at his best, Bermudez shines when he’s doing something of a Lineker impression, threatening with potential takedowns. On the ground he’s heavy on top, and unlike many of his Hughesian ilk, Bermudez is surprisingly nimble with transitions and scrambles.
Phil: If you’d never seen Darren Elkins fight, I think you’d still have a good idea just from looking at him. Words like “workmanlike”, “blue-collar”, and “gritty” trip right off the tongue, because he looks like he should be coming out to the cage wearing dungarees, with a blade of grass trapped between his teeth.
He does his best work in the clinch, where he tends to work between underhooks and front headlock positions while pinning his opponent against the cage with his head, constantly chipping away with short, interstitial strikes, and then endlessly dragging away and down and away and down from the rear waist lock. He is an exhausting man to fight. He will never be a good striker, but he is incredibly difficult to discourage and will wing ugly hooks and ungainly leg and body kicks, no matter how much offense he absorbs.
David: His last name is fitting. Bull Elks are heavy, durable creatures whose method of combat is to parallel. We’ll ignore the part about elks rolling in their own piss for analogy purposes. There’s nothing real dynamic or sharp about Elkins’ combat mechanics. It’s red in clinch and sprawl. Linear, and unimaginative, yet deliberate and strong. Elkins fights like he controls the canopy of midrange, lobbing strikes that sweep instead of pierce, closing distance with his grip and clinch, hoping to pancake an opponent for an attrition breakfast. He’s similar to Clay Guida in that he struggles when an opponent can match his wrestling, forcing him to strike with an opponent more dynamic on the feet. Unlike Guida, he doesn’t have a panic button though. Guida realizes he can’t outmuscle a man, and goes into manbearpig mode. Elkins is a thinker, willing to wait out the storm for a prime opportunity.
Insight from Past Fights
Phil: The interesting thing is that neither man has ever really been outwrestled consistently to a loss. Instead, both have tended to get laced by better strikers, or caught by sudden moments of offense.
David: Needless to say, this fight will be won on the feet. Bermudez might be an obvious comparison to Jeremy Stephens, who beat Elkins handedly, but Bermudez never strikes with a clear flowchart, and now that’s developing something resembling a flowchart ,I’m worried, as you are, that he’s worse as a result. Elkins showed against Stephens, as he has against other strikers, that he’s actually good at doing more than merely surviving on the feet long enough to suffocate with clinch entries and wrestling. In another life where his genes have endowed him with more fast twitch muscle fibers, he probably develops into a really efficient wrestle-counterstriker hybrid.
X-Factors
Phil: Which way the fighters are trending, I guess. Elkins is coming off the best win of his career, and Bermudez just got knocked out in the main event by the Korean Zombie. I don’t think Elkins is a man you want to fight if you don’t have a lot of confidence.
David: Nothing real tangible. Elkins might be relatively “old” for his age, and I could see him having post traumatic Bektić stress disorder.
Prognostication
David: Elkins is a very good fighter with or without his Vegas city miracle. But Bermudez, even with his philosophical uncertainty, will force Elkins to fight on the feet. There, Bermudez is quicker, stronger, and more likely of the two to actually score enough takedowns to seal these rounds out comfortably. Hot take: Bektić stole pieces of Elkin’s soul. This fight is too soon. Dennis Bermudez by TKO, round 3.
Phil: In the end, I have to pick Bermudez based largely on plain ol’ speed and power. Elkins’ comeback against Bektić was something magical, but I’m not sure that I can trust him to put out another moment like that. Bermudez just does not get tired in fights, and he puts out more offense in close, is likely a better wrestler, and basically has every physical advantage apart from pure durability. Dennis Bermudez by unanimous decision.