I don't often get excited about non PPV UFC events but thought I would give this one a go because Derrick Lewis is one of those fighters that if he gets a hook on you, it can send you to dreamland even if you partially block it.
I think that Lewis is one of those guys that has kind of overstayed his welcome in the UFC and is just riding paychecks at this point. He simply doesn't have the variety of skills necessary to ever win the championship. He has a rather massive chink in his armor and that was on full display tonight vs Jailton Almeida.
In the heavyweight division, we don't really need to be all that concerned about ground game because these big fellas don't normally operate that way. I can't say exactly why that is but a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that the big bois enjoy standing up to fight for the most part.
I don't recall Derrick Lewis ever having much of a ground game and well, especially when you are fighting against a Brazilian, this is something that you need to have in your arsenal. Derrick simply doesn't have it.
A 5-round fight has a maximum duration of 25 minutes and keep that in mind when reading the UFC official Tweet
I hate the fact that ground-control time is a factor in UFC decisions but it is what it is. There are quite a few fighters that go for takedowns without any intention of actually doing anything with it. A few years back certain referees like Herb Dean have started to stand the guys back up if they don't "work" while they are down there. There is a fine line between what working and not working is and of course it is left up to the official in charge. During this fight, Almeida was in fact working, but just not very much. When you weigh over 200 lbs and you have full mount on a guy that has very limited mobility, there is a very good chance that you are going to stay in that position for the rest of the round.
This is precisely what happened for almost all of the 5 rounds and dear lord, was it boring.
I ended up changing the channel at certain points only to switch back and see that almost nothing had changed. It felt as if I had paused the fight but no, many minutes had passed and the two were basically in the same position.
Ok every now and then they would change position a bit, but the fact of the matter is that Lewis simply isn't capable of getting back up once he is on the ground. Jailton attempted a whopping 15 takedowns and landed 6 of them. Lewis on the other hand spent most of the match on his back and only had 28 total strikes in 25 minutes.
I suppose if we were to give any credit to Derrick Lewis it would be that he was a late addition to the card when Curtis Blaydes pulled out of the card for reasons that nobody actually explained. This doesn't really change the fact that Lewis has no ground game though and was a poor choice of opponent for Jailton who focuses quite heavily on his ground game.
I regret going out of my way to watch this event but I am kind of happy that UFC is deciding to get involved in events in Brazil again because I have lately kind of felt like the UFC has been ignoring this country almost entirely despite the fact that they were instrumental in making UFC and perhaps MMA as a whole the world-wide phenomenon that it is today.