UFC 272: Covington vs. Masvidal

The official Tapology discussion thread for the event!

Devonte smith vs Erick gonzalez 

What a mismatch lol. They’re putting a ko artist vs the dude that got slept vs Jim miller. If I’m Erick why even take that fight. Smith has some serious holes in his game but like damn

Covington vs. Masvidal
Colby Covington, DEC
If Covington's ego gets the best of him, he might get KO'ed.

Surprised they didn't have these guys host a season of TUF before this fight, pleasantly surprised.

Begs the question... who hosts TUF now? They could do a cop out and do Pena and Nunes but i'm hoping they go for something good. Just picture this: Vettori vs Strickland. 

Strickland on reality tv would be a pr nightmare. Would love every second of that tho

where do you see smith vs gonzalez announced? i cant find it anywhere

Gonzalez ig 
  https://www.instagram.com/p/CYo1EtfFE52/?utm_medium=copy_link

* Edited at 01.12.2022, 1:40 PM ET *

wow i hope devonte can get back on track he needs this one badly

Yeah mullarkey is good but that was a baaad performance from smith last time out. I don’t even think gonzalez is ufc level so he should ko him but who knows. He was -1000 against Khama worthy and we all saw what hapoened there

Covington vs. Masvidal
Colby Covington, DEC
For longest time could not decided based on their last fights I guess Cheese boy is better, age and mileage may finally have caught George.

@ayylmao I was in the crowd when he got KO'd by the death star, the mixture of cheers at the finish and boos from people who just lost a ton of money on a big favorite was a unique sound.

Damn that must have been crazy lol

I’m just still confused why the matchup was made tho cuz skill wise they couldn’t be further apart. Gonzalez should still be on the regional shows and getting ko’ed by Jim miller of all people (bad because method of stoppage not because it’s miller himself) is such a bad look. He was losing against old miller as well. Smith didn’t look good against mullarkey but mullarkey is also pretty good. Barring a freak ko on his end I think he’s gonna steamroll the ghost pepper 

Covington vs. Masvidal
Jorge Masvidal, TKO, R3
Covington can’t KO Masvidal, which will give the latter time to land the perfect combo to put Covington to sleep

Pretty **** undercard so far. Hoping they can get some more ranked fights on. Not big on cards carried by one fight (in terms of name value, i know there's some bangers) 

Tagir Ulanbekov hasn't had the best start to the UFC in terms of performance wise. I was more impressed with his victory over Bruno Silva than Allan Nascimento. Tagir in that Bruno bout was getting his legs chewed apart but showed heart and adjustments to get the victory. Going into the Allan Nascimento bout my only worry was Tagir getting caught in a submission as Allan Nascimento is known for being a submission guy. However, Tagir still looked unimpressive as all he was doing was racking up control time but was not inflicting little to no damage. If there were different judges that night, they could have given Allan Nascimento two out of the three rounds due to actively throwing strikes up from bottom poisiton. Due to these poor performances from Tagir he has fallen out of my Top 5 favourite FlyW's (Them being Brandon Moreno, Manel Kape, Amir Albazi, Alexandre Pantoja & David Dvorak). 

In terms of this match up with Tim Elliott, Tagir Ulanbekov should win and imo even finish Tim Elliott as I believe he is better everywhere. But we could see another close fight where Tagir Ulanbekov finally gets screwed over by the judges. If he doesn't win this bout in spectacular fashion, this will prove that fighters in the top half of the FlyW division would be too much for him. Don't let me down Tagir Ulanbekov.

Prediction: Tagir Ulanbekov R2 Submission

I’m honestly gonna go with Tim Elliot here. I’m not impressed with Tagir at all tbh. He is a dagi trained by khabib but he doesn’t do anything with his wrestling, just wet blankets the opponent. He’s also been taken down before and his striking isn’t that impressive. Tim Elliot has too much of a weird style and is a good wrestler in his own right. I think tagir isn’t going to be able to deal with the awkwardness of Tim’s style. 

AyyLmaonnaise I don't blame you bro. I was thinking about taking Tim too but I think Tagir gets it done. I was hoping Manel Kape would have been matched up with Tim Elliott coz that would have been a free dub for Kape but here we are. I reckon Tagir will open as a -170 fav over Tim Elliott.

Yeah I mean it’s pretty unlikely Tim gets the biggest win of his career here but tagir is so basic (in terms of how he fights) that I think the unpredictability will throw him off

Tale as old as time. Tim Elliot has yet to find a submission that he cant wiggle his way into after winning most of if not all of the fight previous to it.