Lyoto Machida vs. Eryk Anders headlines UFC Fight Night: Belem this February 3, 2018 at the Arena Guilherme Paraense in Belém, Brazil.
One sentence summary
David: Return of the Patrol Wagon.
Phil: It’s ya boiiiiii, here to try to make you really really sad
Stats
Record: Lyoto Machida 22-8 | Eryk Anders 10-0
Odds: Lyoto Machida +225 | Eryk Anders -265
History / Introduction to both fighters
Phil: The Dragon returns! Again! After a sad KO loss to Derek Brunson, and a bullshit PED suspension, and then two straight brutal losses before that. As a Machida fan, it is more than a little difficult to watch. Gone are the days of the elusive will’o’the wisp who glided in and out, the untouchable one-hit, one-kill ghost who briefly brought traditional martial arts back into popularity. Now you kind of have to watch his fights through splayed fingers, with your cheek muscles ready to wince.
David: I’m not really sure what to say about Machida about this point. The writer in me always wants to pad the word length here, and wax poetic about Rashad’s face after Machida blitzed him and drone on about whether or not it’s true what they say about great fighters—the great ones always have one last great fight in them. But that eulogy could have been written ages ago. Machida’s just one of those fighters who we might have undersold how critically his athleticism was à la Roy Jones Jr.
Phil: Eryk Anders has risen quickly through the ranks at middleweight due to a combination of natural physical ability, a clear knack for fighting, and 185 just being old and stagnant. The former football player had a tough debut lined up in Rafael Natal lined up, and blew through him with relative ease. He’s not much of a talker, but he radiates confidence, makes his opportunities and takes them. That counts for a lot in a division which is rife with “technical but unathletic” and “powerful but flawed.”
David: Unlike most football players turned MMA fighters, Anders has some pedigree you wouldn’t know from commentators who get lost in their “pro athlete” hyperbole—as in, Anders really did have a legit college career and (at least) signed an actual NFL contract. That counts for something in a world that can’t sell real athletes (most of the time at least) which is we always endure some nonsense on the mic how about awesome it is that fighter X and Y work three jobs, and need GoFundMe to pay their medical bills. So about Anders; he seems like a good fighter, and Natal was a good test. Fighting Machida is a good test too—if we rewind the fight clock.
What’s at stake?
David: Nothing much. A Machida win would feel too much like temporary confirmation of old cliches, and I’m just not sure I could enjoy it. Anders is still somewhat of a wild card. He could either be MW Mitrione or MW Schaub (is that even the middle ground?).
Phil: Despite it not being the kind of fight which is going to have anyone clamoring to renew their FS1 subscription, this is a rare win-win main event for the UFC. Either Machida comes out on top, and the Belem crowd goes absolutely wild (a la Nog-Schaub), or a new contender emerges in a division which is still struggling to find its bearings.
Where do they want it?
Phil: Machida is, or was, *the* defined UFC counter striker. It’s difficult to think of someone who was built his game more singularly around drawing the opponent onto shots. It’s a style which has led to some frustration at times, in uneventful fights which where people decided that they’d hold off attacking him, and which ended up being decided by a handful of moments (Henderson, Rampage, Davis). Feinting with hands and hip feints, Machida lands sporadic, snapping kicks from the outside to draw opponents onto the left hand or the step knee. Hard to take down, hard to keep down, Machida has perhaps always been fundamentally limited by his physical gifts. He was a chronically undersized light heavyweight, and simply doesn’t have the blazing speed advantage over middleweights which he enjoyed at 205. For all that, he’s still not big, either.
David: It’s funny to go back and remember how Machida used to be viewed; godly away from the UFC, which is where fans have the most fun mythbuilding (“dude he took out Sam Greco” – even though it was mixed rules/”BJ Penn was still the man at the time no matter the weight”), and then sort of underappreciated once he got the UFC contract (4 decision wins in his first 5 bouts). It’s as if the cycle is simply repeating itself as he went back to godly after the Rashad Evans KO, and went back to underappreciated when Mauricio Rua supposedly got robbed in their first bout. Now here we are, looking at the husk of a dragon. Even in his diminished state, he’s still good for some quality front kicks and stabbing straight lefts. Perhaps the biggest deficit in his game is how little he seems supported by his ground game. I know he was hurt against Rockhold, but where before his synthesis of trips, and grappling pace propped an already stout defense, lately he just kind of gets ragdolled out there.
Phil: Anders represents a decently functional game which has had high-end athleticism poured into it, along with liberal amounts of confidence and some underrated fight smarts. There isn’t a whole lot of nuance there, but… it’s middleweight. Anders’ game stretches back past his relatively brief pro career to a more developed amateur run which started in 2012, and thus he is approaching something like his technical prime. One of the elements which defines him as the “next generation” fighter is his fondness for the jab. He’s happy to throw in open and closed stance, and the strike is often somewhat lacking in older southpaws’ games. This includes Machida, and his struggles against fellow southpaws have been noticeable. Anders is also a competent takedown artist and a brutal ground and pound threat. A notable lack of bells and whistles, and a technical game which may be rather shallow, but threatening for all that.
David: I know we’re fresh off whatever Bisping vs. GSP was, but your distaste for the division could practically be its own plot for a John Carpenter film.
Anders fights with the stripped dedication of an athlete who believes they can learn new techniques on the fly against men trying to hurt him. To that extent, his belief is warranted; with a heavy foot, he’s comfortable plodding around, seeking that straight left with technical inputs (jab, kick, takedown, etc). On the ground, he’s somewhat of a barbarian. There’s not much else to say about Anders. He hasn’t been tested too hard at this point, and to Machida’s credit, I think some of his technique will be properly tested for at least a round.
Insight from Past Fights
Phil: Anders showed against Natal that he had no fears of entering the UFC, and knew exactly what to do against a fading veteran: don’t give him a chance to get his bearings, push him to the fence, force him into a fight of opportunism rather than any kind of technical battle. Conversely, though, he often swung ugly against Perez, or made some bizarre grappling decisions. I’m not fully sold on him, basically.
David: Yep. Anders’ flaws are typical of most fighters still on the soaring end of their pugilism curves; his decision making needs some fine tuning. For me it’s seeing Machida try to angle out of exchanges. That half a step too late killed him against Brunson.
X-Factors
David: No x-factor that hasn’t already been covered. I’m still seething over Dodson vs. Munhoz getting cancelled. That’s the second time in the last four weeks we’ve put hard work into adjectives and adverbs for our dear readers only to see it get scrapped in the google doc bin.
Phil: Nothing that isn’t really captured. Anders struggled slightly to make weight. Machida’s decline isn’t so much an X-factor than a documented fact.
Prognostication
Phil: I would easily pick Machida over Anders but for one thing: Anders is a southpaw, and Machida has struggled with almost every southpaw he’s faced apart from maybe… Tito? Franklin? Machida is a unique, disconcerting fighter with a boatload of experience, who could easily move around the outside, playing the matador to the inexperienced young bull, but Anders appears to have a fantastic chin, and I just think that the loss of space provided by the open stance matchup combined with his declining speed and athleticism have changed Machida’s game from a high-percentage game to a low-percentage one. I hope I’m wrong, it would be wonderful to see the Dragon turn it around in front of the Brazil crowd, but Eryk Anders by TKO, round 1.
David: I think Machida still has plenty of raw abilities to keep the fight competitive early on. If Anders can’t figure out Machida’s movement, or hesitates to box him in, it’ll be highly competitive (which doesn’t necessarily mean exciting). If he’s constantly on the attack, Machida has to land a killshot or hope his trips give him enough room to stay out of the pocket. That’s hard to bank on at this point. Eryk Anders by TKO, round 2.