On March 5th, Ultimate Fighting Championship will return to Las Vegas with UFC 196: a card headlined by the newly crowned featherweight champion and arguably the sport’s biggest star, Conor McGregor, moving up in weight to challenge the reigning and defending lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos. The co-main event features another title bout: Holly Holm, fresh off the unlikely victory over Ronda Rousey, will defend her bantamweight title against the long-time contender Miesha Tate. With such a strong main event and co-main I don’t expect much from the undercard, and while the line-up has not been officially finalized, the other matchups announced so far don’t have much in terms of highly ranked fighters or divisional implications.
While both title bouts are intriguing, for this column I will focus on the main event of Rafael dos Anjos (often abbreviated RDA, or ‘RDS’ if you ask Jon Jones) vs Conor McGregor. Conor opened as underdog to dos Anjos, but the lines have slowly shifted away from RDA, and now McGregor is coming into the fight as a slight favorite. Should the featherweight champion with no recent fights at 155 lbs really be favored over dos Anjos, or is RDA worth a small bet? I believe the opening lines – set by the bookmakers before they were shifted by the betting public – were closer to reflecting the reality of this matchup, which makes dos Anjos a good value.
Disclaimer time: I do not gamble, and don’t advocate betting on fights in the often unpredictable sport of MMA. This is just an exercise in analyzing a matchup and the value it presents for the odds. With that said, let’s take a deeper look at how these two champions stack up:
Challenger: Conor ‘Notorious’ McGregor
Current Rank: #1 Featherweight, #8 Pound-for-Pound, #6 Division Dominance
All-Time Rank: #7 Featherweight
MMA Record: 19-2-0
UFC Record: 7-0-0
Age: 27
Conor McGregor took the UFC by storm and quickly became one of the promotions biggest stars in the course of less than three years. He will become the second fighter in UFC history to attempt holding multiple divisional titles at once – the first time was when lightweight champion BJ Penn challenged the welterweight kingpin Georges St. Pierre at UFC 94. Not content with potentially holding two belts at once, McGregor’s coach has already been talking about Conor challenging for the 170 lbs title, should he defeat Rafael dos Anjos. This could mean that he is looking past RDA, or it could be just more talk to rile up his already rabid fan base – after all, talk was a big part of how McGregor got to where he is today. Of course, just talking trash would not have gotten him this far without the ability to back it up. Seven consecutive wins is an impressive feat for anyone in the UFC, and Conor capped off his streak with a 13-second, one-punch knockout of Jose Aldo – the long time WEC and UFC featherweight champion who has gone undefeated for 10 years prior.
Champion: Rafael dos Anjos
Current Rank: #1 Lightweight, #4 Pound-for-Pound, #2 Division Dominance
All-Time Rank: #6 Lightweight
MMA Record: 25-7-0
UFC Record: 14-5-0
Age: 31
Rafael dos Anjos has followed a very different career path than Conor McGregor. RDA entered the Octagon with a record of 11-2, similar to Conor’s 12-2 prior to his UFC debut, but lost his first two fights in the promotion. He then floated around the middle of the division for a few years, racking up a 4-4 record before winning five in a row. His streak was snapped by a decision loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov, at a point where most fans considered Khabib to be a future title contender, while RDA was still firmly relegated to gatekeeper territory. In retrospect, things played out very differently: Nurmagomedov has not fought since, due to various injuries, while RDA went on another five-win streak. A TKO over former champion Benson Henderson, followed by a lopsided decision win over Nate Diaz, earned dos Anjos a shot at the champion Anthony Pettis in a fight RDA was expected to lose. However he dominated Pettis for five rounds to capture the title, and followed it up with a successful defense over Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, whom he stopped in just over a minute. Rafael dos Anjos has never been a flashy fighter or a big talker, but his recent performances speak for themselves: dos Anjos has shown steady improvement over his UFC career, and transformed into an elite fighter.
The Match-up:
Conor McGregor is strictly a striker, with ridiculous stopping power for a fighter his size. 17 of his 19 career wins have come by the way of a knockout or TKO, most in the first or second round, so there’s no secret to what he will try to do in this fight. He has his work cut out for him, as Rafael dos Anjos has only been stopped by strikes once (courtesy of Jeremy Stephens in RDA’s Octagon debut), but Conor has the power to shut anyone’s lights off. His ground game on the other hand is a big question mark. We’ve seen McGregor taken down by Chad Mendes and Denis Siver, but neither were able to capitalize; his most recent loss comes by the way of submission to fellow Irishman and current UFC lightweight Joe Duffy, but this was in 2010 – ages ago in MMA terms, and only two years into Conor’s professional career. I have no idea whether his takedown defense and grappling ability has evolved enough to keep dos Anjos off him for five rounds, and he has never shown anything in terms of offensive grappling.
Rafael dos Anjos evolved over the course of his UFC career from a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ type of fighter who usually won on scorecards, to a very well rounded athlete, dangerous in every aspect of the game. In his last five fights, he has shown much improved striking, stopping top opponents like Benson Henderson and Donald Cerrone on the feet and thoroughly beating up the Anthony Pettis both standing and on the ground. RDA’s arsenal has always included a dangerous ground game, but his biggest assets are his relentless pressure game, deep gas tank, and the ability to keep his opponents guessing. While McGregor described RDA as a ‘bum version of Aldo’ in the pre-fight trash talk, Rafael is a very different animal than Jose Aldo, who made a career primarily off counter striking. Dos Anjos game plan will be to pressure McGregor from the onset, mixing up striking and takedowns, and test the unknowns in Conor’s game: grappling and cardio. McGregor’s best chance in this fight is an early knockout, which he is certainly capable of attaining. Most knockout artists’ power fades the longer the fight goes on, and if Rafael is careful in the early going, he should be able to exhaust Conor’s gas tank for a submission or TKO in the championship rounds.