Ooi, it's your boy, Jack Slack, and it's Top Player FM.

And you're listening to another 30 minutes of rambling about guard passing, uninterrupted by commercials.

No, we're probably going about five minutes today because they've bugger all happened over the weekend.

Just enough happened that if I don't cover it, I'll be viewed as a lightweight by the hardcore M.M.A. fans, but a lot of those same M.A. fans probably haven't watched this card, or at least had it on in the background and second screen viewed it. The card was Al Jermaine Sterling versus Yusuf Zalal. Not a bad headliner. Very little effort put into the rest of this card. 13 fights. Two finishes. My goodness. That was a long watch the next morning. It's not so bad if you're watching it live. You're just like, oh, this is shit, isn't it? With everyone else, having a good laugh. If you wake up the next morning and you go, right,

what have I got to watch? Did anything interesting happening? You look at the results and you go,

oh, I'm in for a solid four hours of decisions here. That's a bit grim. But that's the

sacrifice I make as a UK MMMA fan talking about MMA.

There were three things that really impressed me on this card.

Two Unks, this was the unction, this card, two Unks just really performing brilliantly.

And then the main event, Al Jermaine Sterling versus Yusuf Salal, quality grappling on display,

decent striking on display.

It was one of those ones where Al Jermaine Sterling, let's do main event first.

Al Jermaine Sterling had just fought Brian Ortega.

And Brian Ortega looked so washed and hopeless in that fight that I felt like the entire

point, you know, there was no point in that fight. I thought it was just

a filler, a waste of time, a way for Al Jermaine Sterling to make some money. It didn't tell us

anything about like Al Jermaine Sterling's further career that he can hit Brian Ortega with

flush overhands on the chin because Brian Ortega has no reactions. With that being said, I'm now coming around to the opinion that maybe you should be allowed to fight a zombie every now and again because Al Jemate Stirling's hands have always been flappy and terrible. His striking has been made up for by volume and nice kicking and good frames, good movement. Whenever someone says, like, I have no punching power, how do I get better in MMA? It's like you can get by on kicks and frames if you move well. And Al Jermaine Sterling, John Jones, perfect examples of that. John Jones has landed like three good punches ever and they were to DC's body. Oh, and the one he hit Leo DiMichita with. But if you're using your hands to check, frame, pull in, clinch, poke eyes, that's another good one. Then you're doing good work. With that being said, Al Jem Stirling came out and his hands were still quite flappy, but he was throwing them with confidence and he was landing them on Yusuf Zalal, who is pretty good at avoiding getting hit in the face for the most part. Now, of course, Yusuf Zalal was hampered by the fact that he, you know, the Chekhov's gun in all these matchups is Al Jermaine Sterling wants to wrestle. He wants to get on your back, mostly. And whenever that exists and both fighters know about it, that changes the dynamic of the striking altogether.

The number of like good kickboxers who have fought grapplers and then been knocked out on the feet

because they're so worried about the grappling is enormous in MMA.

But Zalal is not bad on the floor and I thought all the grappling in this fight was really solid.

So this fight was Al Jermaine's turning versus an opponent who clearly wasn't washed. I was watching Yusuf Zalal in this fight going good reactions, doing good stuff. Al Jamein Sterling is just beating him to the transitions. Al Jaljamain's just beating him on the setups, walking him down. When Yusuf Zalal has good outfighting technique, it's just that he ended up like under pressure walking himself onto the fence a lot of the time in this fight, which was good because I don't, I've never really rated Al Jermaine Stirling's offensive footwork much, but it looked really good in this fight. On the ground, there's loads to be happy about them. You know, seeing effective guard passing and effective guards in MMA. You know, you seldom see effective guard passing against guys who can't play any guard,

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