On To the Next One: Matches To Make After UFC Abu Dhabi

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**Mike Heck** (0:41)
You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Well, hello there, everybody. Apologies for me clearing my throat during the intro there. I actually thought I was muted, and I wasn't. So apologies for that Thank. you. It's great audio to kick off the day, but welcome to the program, everybody. The Matchmaking Crowns have returned following UFC Abu Dhabi, an event we will surely be going back and rewatching until the end of time. But I am Mike Heck, and joining me to Matchmake following this Fight Night event is the co-host, the co-Matchmaker, the Prince of Positivity. He is back after a little bit of a hiatus, the one and only Alexander K. Lee. AK, how are we doing? How are we feeling?

**Alexander K. Lee** (1:40)
Oui, oui. I'm back. I'm returned from a trip to Paris. Mon ami meilleur. Actually, I think it's mon meilleur ami. My French is terrible. My French is terrible. Even though up in Canada, we do study like it is mandatory for us to study French through, you know, primary school. And then I even took it further until getting high school. And my French still sucks. C'est terrible, as they would say in French, or they wouldn't because my French sucks.
Cork over card to come back to, I mean, really, just it wasn't, you know, I'm being like sort of like facetious. It wasn't horrible.
It was. It started off real bad. I mean, just the oxygen, the first three fights, just the oxygen sucked right out of the building.

**Mike Heck** (2:23)
No, that's not true.
The Abdul Hussain Cody Gibson fight was like really fun. That should have one fight of the night, in my opinion, but it just happened to be the curtain jerker. And then we got to, and then I knew we were in trouble when the fight I was looking forward to the most ended up being a snoozer with Nurul Aliyev and Mike Davis. I was so pumped for that fight. It was such, it was just a boring fight. Like Aliyev got the win. It's a good name on the resume. He's undefeated, but like, there's no clamoring for him to like move up the rankings after that performance. And then we had the Magomed Tushilov-Brenson-Ribera fight, which was a setup slaughter. And we went 15 minutes in that fight. It just showing like the lack of depth at 205 And then we were saved by Axel Sola doing Axel Sola things. That's why you bring in the best division in the sport to save cards. And then Sam Patterson, somewhat sad, knocks out Santiago Ponsonibio. We had the Mohammed Sayedov saying, You know what, 205 may not be that bad. He 30 packs Dustin Jacoby. And then Walter Walker does Walter Walker things. And then we get to the main card. And like, yeah, we had some finishes and we had some stuff. But like that main event just kind of ruined everything, unfortunately. And yeah, that's, and again, that's not what everything is based around. And we say the same thing about UFC 329 UFC 329 was trending towards, you could make a case that we were trending towards the best card in the history of the UFC. And then the main event went down the way that it did. And it's just like, okay, that sucked.
You can, there's just so much memorable stuff that happened at 329 that we're still talking about. We're just not getting that here with Abu Dhabi. And this was honestly, like this was almost painful to match make AK. It was really, really tough.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:17)
Oh, my bad. It wasn't that bad.

**Mike Heck** (4:19)
It kind of was. Like I got, like I had a, just going through like, I did not expect to live in a world where I'd be matchmaking in Abubakar Vagaev, Saigid Isgamaev, main card fight. Like I didn't, wasn't prepared for that. I'm like, we're just chucking darts now. But there was some fun stuff. I had to recycle a few times just because it made a lot of sense. And let's just get right into it. Okay, let's get into the big story because everyone has an opinion about the light heavyweight division. Everybody has an opinion about Magomed Ankalaev and where he sits with Carlos Ulberg. Does he have the resume to fight for the belt next? Certainly, is he 100% undeniable? I certainly do not think so.