Most fans consider Yoel Romero to be the watershed of the middleweight division. There is one man who has beaten him, Robert Whittaker, then there is Romero, and then there is everyone else. And even appreciating Whittaker’s incredible feat, he still only handled Romero: out maneuvered him and contained him. Yoel Romero has simply destroyed everyone else.
So in that respect it feels a little strange to see Romero back in the mix of things and fighting a largely unproven middleweight in Paulo Costa. I would say ‘untested’ but in many regards the most remarkable thing about both men is that they are passing all the tests. Costa is a monstrous middleweight who looks to be a weight class bigger than anyone he meets, and who does his work with aggression and raw, unteachable power. He has that glimmer of actual fighting knowledge though—targeting the body, cutting off the ring with round kicks and herding his opponents into wheel kicks. He is demolishing opponents with God-given punch, but his application of it belies a decent fighting mind ticking behind the capped deltoids and neck beef.
The intriguing point in this fight is that if Costa fights the way he always has until now, questions are going to be asked of Romero. The Cuban superman has largely been able to get away with fighting at his own pace and working in bursts throughout his entire career, even in those bouts Robert Whittaker. The question “how can such a muscle bound fighter who works in such explosive bursts not constantly gas?” is answered by Romero’s masterful control of the pace. One soldier once referred to life at war being “long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of of absolute terror” and that works just as well to describe fighting Yoel Romero. His flurries and takedowns are so threatening that fighters are happy to leave him alone as he bounces lazily around the cage for two rounds, and then suddenly he’s jumping in to murder you, often in the third round.
The first Whittaker fight is probably the closest someone has come to keeping Romero working through the rounds and the degree to which Romero slowed was noticeable. But Whittaker was still forced to respect Romero and watch his Ps and Qs the entire time. The big question here is will Costa, who has shown disdain for the output of everyone else he has fought, need to do the same? What if Costa can walk Romero down, hammer home body kicks into punching flurries, and drag Romero up from his level changes with underhooks each time? What can Romero do that isn’t dropping on a cat-like level change or throwing back in short, explosive bursts with lengthy breaks between them? The fight we want to see if Paulo Costa throwing himself at Romero and trying to break him as he has everyone else—whether Costa can provide that with the stakes so much higher and opponent so much more dangerous is the real head scratcher.
In his second fight against the sharp shooting Robert Whittaker, Yoel Romero introduced a cross guard and did some decent work countering off it. Mostly it served to dissuade Whittaker from trying to crack in his quick jab and left hook, though. It also immediately launched a hundred internet forum threads about where Romero learned the 52 Blocks, a mythical prison martial art. On the surface Paulo Costa seems like the kind of many that cover up would work quite well against, he punches hard and often a little wild (notice how many times he managed to hit Uriah Hall in the crotch supposedly by accident)—if he just tried to blast Romero in the cross guard he could well break a bone in his hand and change his mind about overwhelming Romero altogether.
The problem is that the cross guard brings the elbows away from the body. it can completely shut down head hunters—and this is why Archie Moore was able to use it in the heavyweight division into his forties—but the defence of the body is often down to having good abdominal development to save you and whenever possible moving your feet. As Costa so often uses body kicks to enter before he even starts swinging, the cross guard seems like a bad, bad idea. Even the more exaggerated high elbows / “triangle guard” that Romero also used in the second Whittaker fight (and which broke Whittaker’s hand) exposes the body significantly. That is the price of projecting the elbows.
One interesting factor is Romero’s refusal to be nailed down to one stance. He is neither a southpaw nor an orthodox fighter. Costa has fought a good number of southpaws in his UFC run—in fact, the UFC middleweight division is full of them: Chris Weidman has met just two orthodox fighter since 2011. But against most of his UFC opponents this has meant that when Borrachinha starts backing them up, they hit the fence and then he throws the right round kick—straight into the open side where only their rear arm can protect them.
Against Uriah Hall, Costa showed that he is aware of the open side principle and not just kicking wild, by switching to kick with his lead leg into Hall’s body. But he still threw right kicks to the body in spite of their lower success rate and higher chance of hitting Hall’s back.
Where this gets interesting is that Romero will often stand southpaw, and has made extensive use of lead leg kicking from that stance, almost side on. In both Whittaker fights there were a remarkable number of occasions where both men leaped in with their lead knee raised and collided either knee to knee or chest to chest. It’s a more point fighting / American kickboxing style of striking but coming in behind the high lead knee could be a great shout against Costa because of how well it works alongside the cross check.
We discussed the cross check being a key part of Jonathan Haggerty’s gameplan against Sam-a the other week. From Sam-a to Sam-z, you will never get to a point where kicking a check hard doesn’t absolutely suck.
To survive Costa the pressure must be broken. One good way of doing this might be standing southpaw and using a cross check every time he throws the right body kick. Luke Rockhold very quickly injured his shin against Yoel Romero when Romero began checking low kicks (Rockhold went on to say that kicking Romero felt like kicking concrete). Rockhold had gone an entire career bullying opponents and kicking as hard as he could, just like Costa. Kicking as hard as you can to initiate every exchange works against opponents who are trying to block with their arms, but committing to a full on cross check—especially as Romero has little need to fear being taken down—could very quickly convince Costa to hold back a bit on his all out offence.
Another means of breaking the pressure is the reactionary takedown which of course you would expect Romero to be pretty decent at. However, Romero’s takedowns in the UFC have been few and far between. It seems he is happier going to them when he wants to than feeling any need to. Whether he can run through the gigantic Costa’s hips on the back foot, or whether he has any clever set ups or distractions that aren’t two rounds of inactivity, really remains to be seen. You might recall from the first Whittaker - Romero fight that Romero was put on the cage for a good period in the fourth round and Whittaker was able to draw all his ideas out with feints and then hit him in between. Those ideas consisted of flying knees, level changes, and not much else.
I believe Costa to be an incomplete product. We have seen him gas hard on The Ultimate Fighter (in a two round fight no less!) and while the Hall fight is remembered as a great knockout win for Costa, he was being force fed Hall’s jab until Costa’s repeated fouling seemed to throw Hall off his game. Hall isn’t the slickest mover or jabber typically, but by combining a quick, jarring jab and then immediately stepping off line, he really did well in preventing Costa from getting going in combination or trapping him along the cage. But a jabbing clinic doesn’t really seem up Romero’s street and in fact, any fight where continuous, disciplined action is required also doesn’t seem like Romero’s wheelhouse.
Perhaps the power and the wrestling of Romero are enough to make Costa not fight his usual, overwhelming style, but it is just as interesting to consider what—outside of a rogue counter flying knee—Romero can do if he is put in the position where he isn’t just allowed to float around the cage and pick his own engagements.
Odds and Sods
While Romero vs Costa is the big one for most, and we have covered Diaz vs Pettis and Cormier vs Miocic at Unibet, there are a few other intriguing match ups going on this weekend which are worth a few thoughts.
Raphael Assuncao meets Cory Sandhagen and gets the chance to turn back yet another young contender. Assuncao isn’t the world’s top fighter in terms of excitement but he is about the best spoiler you could hope for. Awkward, low pace, and able to drag even very good fighters into exactly that sort of fight. Sandhagen, meanwhile, has done well working high low combinations into low kicks, applying pressure, and keeping the pace high. It is another match up of directly opposed methodologies and you will likely either be treated to Sandhagen giving Assucao a rough time as the counters become harder and harder to find, or Assuncao somehow finding a way to slow down one of the most active and exciting strikers on the roster in a way that is equally impressive and frustrating.
One factor that might make a difference for Assuncao is the reactionary takedown or at least the threat of it just to stop Sandhagen from flowing one combination into the next as he was able to do against fighters even as good as John Lineker. Sandhagen obviously knows about this—he often attempts a nice knee up the centre when his man is at the cage boundary and poor old Mario Bautista found that out the hard way—but being an exciting, aggressive striker comes with the trade off that your hips are a little more vulnerable throughout the fight.
And on the other side of the planet another pair of bantamweights square off for the Rizin title. Despite winning the Rizin bantamweight grand prix, and taking seven fights at bantamweight in the promotion, Kyoji Horiguchi is still somehow on his first defence of the belt, having just won the Bellator title back in June as well. Horiguchi’s opponent is Kai Asakura, who on a streak of four wins since his Rizin debut.
The Asakura brothers were fan favourites in Korea’s ROAD FC but have really caught on since moving to Rizin, running a successful youtube channel and putting on exciting fights to boot. As we discussed in our Rizin 17 preview, they are pretty much the kind of star Rizin could do with now that PRIDE’s veterans are almost entirely gone from the sport: young Japanese all round talents who can actually win fights and quite on that gimmicky level that Imanari, Kitaoka and even Aoki were.
I have enjoyed Kai Asakura since his first fight with Rizin, though his fight with Manel Kape might be the most interesting comparison for this bout. Kape is wild and eccentric, but it was his feinting that threw Asakura off and Asakura seemed to try to counter this unpredictability by cranking up the aggression. Consequently, Asakura was getting intercepted a lot as both men stepped in at the same time. Asakura won the fight but it is a little concerning given that the things that Kape troubled him with are poor imitations of the looks that Kyoji Horiguchi has been smoking everyone with.
Having reacquainted myself with both Asakura’s recently and having admitted that Kai is my favourite, I cannot help but think that his brother Mikuru has the better suited style for this fight. The two are a couple of weight classes apart so it doesn’t really mean anything but Mikuru’s patient southpaw kickboxing, centring around body hitting and evasions seems far better suited to the problems that Horiguchi presents. But fighting as often as Horiguchi does, you have to make a misstep at some point and Asakura is as dangerous as anyone.
This has only been a brief overview of the things that have me excited this weekend but make sure to check out the Youtube channel because we will have a Filthy Casual’s Guide to Daniel Cormier going up there shortly after this is published.