Stand and Deliver: UFC on ESPN 21

Sign up for ESPN+ right here, and you can then stream the UFC live on your smart TV, computer, phone, tablet or streaming device via the ESPN app.

Advertisement

To a certain way of thinking, a win is a win and a loss is a loss. But while it is true that every fight matters, some feel as if they matter more, for any number of reasons. In some cases, the elevated stakes are easy to quantify. Picture the fighter on a losing streak who knows he or she is likely fighting for their job; or conversely, any matchup on Dana White's Contender Series, where two hopefuls know that the brass ring is within their reach if they can win impressively. In other cases, a fight feels especially important for reasons that are harder to quantify, but no less real. Whether it’s the symbolic heft of being the first title challenger from one’s country, or the simple added spice of two fighters who really hate each other’s guts, that fight means just a little more.

This Saturday, UFC on ESPN 21 features several fights that carry that kind of tension for one or both participants. Here are the fighters from “UFC Vegas 22” who are under just a little extra pressure to stand and deliver.

Contender or Gatekeeper, Derek Brunson?

Eight years into his Ultimate Fighting Championship run, Brunson is as much of a known quantity as the middleweight division has to offer. Match him up with a Top 5 fighter — Israel Adesanya, Robert Whittaker, Yoel Romero — and he falls short, often in spectacular fashion. Give him anyone outside that very top echelon, whether it be a former champ whose top gear has slipped just a bit like Lyoto Machida, or an undefeated blue-chip prospect like Edmen Shahbazyan, and he’s going to do work. Outside of a decision loss to Anderson Silva that was controversial, to put it mildly, that’s the book on Brunson, a rock-solid fixture in the middleweight Top 10 for going on a decade now.

Brunson, of course, does not see himself as any kind of fixture, but as a future title contender. At 37, he has time to make that happen, but not limitless time, and for as long as Adesanya sits on the middleweight throne, Brunson will have to do more than most other contenders to earn a title shot. For those reasons, Brunson’s main-event tilt with Kevin Holland this weekend represents a harsh blend of risk and opportunity. Holland, Sherdog’s Breakthrough Fighter of the Year for 2020, is riding a five-fight win streak and might be the hottest fighter in the sport at the moment. However, Shahbazyan was a hot prospect right up until Brunson crushed him, and so was Ian Heinisch, whom Brunson handed his first UFC loss before that. If Brunson wants to stay in the title picture, he needs to prove he is still poison for anyone below the Adesanya/Whittaker level. Turning aside a fighter with Holland’s momentum —while stealing a bit of it for himself as he extends his own winning streak to four straight — would accomplish that, and place Brunson closer to a title shot than at any time since the Whittaker loss. If he loses, however, it’s Holland who vaults into title contention, and Brunson who will have finally slid into the role of gatekeeper to the stars.

Happy Birthday, Gregor Gillespie

Speaking of momentum, two years ago Gillespie was the fastest-rising fighter in the sport’s deepest division. The former NCAA Division I wrestling champion was a perfect 13-0 in MMA including six straight wins to open up his UFC career, the last five of those by finish. “The Gift” actually ascended into the lower reaches of this site’s lightweight rankings, a rarity for a fighter without a Top 15 win to his name yet. It was a product of the eyeball test; Gillespie was so prodigiously violent that his wins over solid fighters like Vinc Pichel and Yancy Medeiros simply looked like the work of a top fighter.

However, in his last fight, the same eyeball test that had once certified Gillespie as a surefire future great left him looking like a fighter with a few things to work on. Facing his first ranked opponent in Kevin Lee — and favored to win, at that — Gillespie saw his first and only takedown attempt thwarted with ease, moments before being knocked out cold by a perfectly thrown, completely unblocked head kick. Now, with 16 months to stew on the shocking loss, Gillespie is jumping right back into the deep end, as he takes on 9-1 Brad Riddell in the co-main event on Saturday. Riddell is on a six-fight win streak, the last three in the UFC Octagon, and represents a more than respectable challenge, but he is a 2-to-1 underdog for a reason. Gillespie, who turns 34 this week, has a prospect’s promise but the timetable of a veteran in which to do something with it. It starts by beating Riddell in dominant fashion this weekend, earning himself another shot at a Top 10 lightweight.

Don’t Get Lapped, Tai Tuivasa

“Bam Bam” entered the UFC in late 2017 and made waves by winning his first three fights, including a victory over the eternally relevant Andrei Arlovski. The most notable heavyweight member of the UFC’s late-10s Australasian invasion, he fit right in as an affable slugger who stood out for his memorable, hilariously disgusting post-fight “shoey” routine. Even when he lost his next three in a row upon graduating to mid-level opposition, there was a sense that Tuivasa — young, popular and generally entertaining — would be fine, a feeling that was only reinforced when Tuivasa snapped the streak last October by knocking Stefan Struve back into retirement.

Thus, there is no particular reason to believe that Tuivasa is fighting for his job when he takes on Harry Hunsucker this weekend. However, if the 28-year-old wants to do more than simply survive, it’s go time. In the last couple of years while Tuivasa treaded water, a pack of 20-something heavyweights burst into the UFC and, rather than go .500 and drink beer out of sneakers, several have gone on impressive winning streaks and even stormed the Top 10. Ciryl Gane. Tom Aspinall. Chris Daukaus. Sergey Spivak, who beat Tuivasa in 2019. The chronically ancient UFC heavyweight division is suddenly undergoing its greatest youth movement in almost 20 years, and if Tuivasa wants to be more than a footnote to a historic era, he needs this win.