Missed Fists: Bantamweight fighter goes toe-to-toe with giant in ‘David vs. Goliath’ battle

Welcome to the latest edition of Missed Fists where we shine a light on fights from across the globe that may have been overlooked in these hectic times where it seems like there’s an MMA show every other day.

UFC lightweight champion vs. UFC featherweight champion for pound-for-pound supremacy? Cool, cool, cool.

I raise you this.

(Big thanks as always to @Barrelelapierna for their weekly lists of the best KOs and submissions, and to @Grabaka_Hitman for uploading many of the clips you see here. Give them a follow and chip in on Patreon if you can.)

Raymison Bruno vs. Roger Dalet

From the first of what I hope to be many Dogfight Wild Tournament events in Sabadell, Spain, we have the diminutive Raymison “Formiga” Bruno vs. Roger Dalet. “Formiga” means “ant” in Portuguese as most of you know because of longtime flyweight star Jussier Formiga, while Dalet was dubbed “Goliat” for this fight for obvious reasons.

The above moment captured by caposa tells one story, while the fighters’ records tells us another. Bruno is a 10-year veteran who has fought for respectable promotions such as Cage Warriors, Mr. Cage, and Pancrase. Dalet has no notable combat sports experience to speak of.

What ensued was an absolute mauling, with Bruno immediately testing Dalet’s grappling, Dalet failing that test miserably, and Bruno toying with his human training dummy until he decided to put the big guy away with a quick armbar. A total mismatch, indeed.

This kind of thing should never become the norm, but every once in a while it is nice to be reminded that what Royce Gracie did in the early UFC days was no fluke or freak show, just proof of the power of the mixing of the martial arts.

Case in point, Cesar Alonso brought his 5-5 record into a 2-on-1 fight on this same show and actually managed to scrape out a win!

Jed Meshew and I have often stated that it’s nearly impossible for one fighter to beat multiple fighters (and certainly far more difficult than the average person seems to believe), but every now and then the action shakes out just right for the one. In this case, Alonso’s opponents were unable to execute the standard 2-on-1 strategy.

The key to winning a handicap fight is that one of the advantaged fighters has to establish a body lock or get some kind of hold of the disadvantaged fighter so that his partner or partners are free to throw strikes. Right away, Alonso scores a takedown and that sends the whole fight spiraling into chaos, which is good for him. On the feet, it’s a crapshoot, and Alonso is clearly the better, more powerful striker, which results in one of his attackers getting taken out. And once it’s just a one-on-one fight, it’s over.

I’m just saying, this would never happen to Fight Circus Asymettrical Champions Bank and No Money (it actually did, we just agreed as a community never to talk about it)

Believe it or not, all of this actually happened, and you can see for yourself with the free replay of Dogfight Wild Tournament on YouTube.

Tumer Ondar vs. Ismaiel Haidari

Somehow, because of all that, this next clip is only the second strangest sequence we saw this week.

In the latest from the your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine world of Russian MMA, we had an AMC Fight Nights matchup end in a tap-out controversy that led to the fighters immediately rematching one another.

O…K.

Tumer Ondar appeared to have his fight with Ismaiel Haidari wrapped up (literally) as he finished off a kneebar that had Haidari tapping out against his thigh. One tap or not, that’s a clear tap motion to me. It’s possible Haidari didn’t realize what he’d done in the moment, because he immediately protested the referee stepping in for the stoppage.

They then went through the whole post-fight song and dance before it was decided that they would fight again to remove any controversy from the outcome.

What???

Ondar’s grappling was again too much for Haidari and he bloodied him up en route to winning a unanimous decision, so it was just a bad time all around for Haidari. The strangeness doesn’t end there.

According to Sherdog’s record of the event, only the second result is official, which means the fight wasn’t really a rematch so much as a restart? Guess that means Ondar and Haidari didn’t get paid twice, eh? Next time, let’s just go with the referee’s decision, please.

Sanjar Yusupov vs. Oleksandr Popov
Bartosz Kowal vs. Lukasz Nowak

There’s nothing controversial about Sanjar Yusupov’s seven-second knockout from Strife MMA 3 in Pulawy, Poland, other than “wow, how hard does this dude hit?” I guess that’s worth a conversation.

Yusupov’s low kick had Oleksandr Popov lunging in the worst way, leaving him a sitting duck for a follow-up left hook. Haidari wasn’t the only fighter going through it this week.

In the very next fight, Bartosz Kowal wasn’t quite as quick, but this second-round switch knee knockout of Lukasz Nowak was too nice not to mention.

The Strife MMA 3 main card is available for free replay on YouTube.

Bassil Hafez vs. Evan Cutts
Alandria Brown vs. Rachel Martinez

This week on UFC Fight Pass, Bassil Hafez and Alandria Brown showed out with a couple of awesome finishes.

At Fury FC 75 in Dallas, Hafez faced off with Cutts for the second time with a welterweight title on the line. Cutts successfully defended a Cage Fury Fighting Championship title via split decision in their first fight in April 2021 and made the walk to the cage with gold around his waist once again last Friday.

This time, Hafez took the judges all the way out of the equation.

That’s about a perfect a right hook as you can throw and Cutts ate all of it. Maybe we see these two complete their trilogy somewhere down the road, but for now, Hafez has major bragging rights.

Over at LFA 153 in Hammond, Ind., strawweight prospect Alandria Brown improved to 3-1 with this brutal choke-out of Rachel Martinez.

All of Brown’s pro wins have come by way of rear-naked choke so far. Let’s hope her next opponent is a little quicker to tap should she find herself in Brown’s clutches.

The action was as wild as you’d expect at United Fight League’s inaugural show in Mesa, Ariz., which was headlined by UFC veteran Jared Gooden facing Demarques Jackson. Gooden outlasted Jackson, leaving him swinging at air by the time it was all said and done.

I can’t decide whether Gooden’s punches, his closing stomp, or an exhausted Jackson crashing face-first to the mat did the most damage.

Valodia Aivazian didn’t look super spry after two rounds with Phil Caracappa either, but he emptied out whatever was left in the tank early in Round 3 and it paid off.

That’s the definition of a wounded animal there, folks. Beware!

Bellator veteran Ty Gwerder had me chuckling with this absurdly high head kick finish of Dan Huber.

You can’t question the effectiveness, but Gwerder got his leg up so high I’m not sure if he was trying to kick Huber or Hong Man Choi.

Issa Isakov vs. Ruslan Tedeev
Shami Gaziev vs. Darko Stosic

From Brave CF 69 in Belgrade, Serbia, we have to give props to Issa Isakov for this expertly applied rear-naked choke and to Ruslan Tedeev’s immediate Undertaker impression.

Unfortunately, Taker’ing it is not a viable strategy in MMA, so that’s still one in the loss column for Tedeev.

Going up 100 pounds from the super lightweights to the heavyweights, we have Shami Gaziev dusting UFC and KSW veteran Darko Stosic in under three minutes.

That uppercut that opened that finishing sequence was a thing of beauty.

Abe Alsaghir vs. Dominic Dorsa

Last but not least, we had amateur lightweight Abe Alsaghir capturing a Lights Out Championship title and improving to 6-0 with a knockout of Dominic Dorsa in Wayne, Mich.

That’s some heavy leather being thrown by this 21-year-old prospect.

When last we saw Alsaghir, he was slapping a first-round guillotine choke on Mike Walker to add a WXC lightweight belt to his trophy case.

Alsaghir, who took his first amateur fight in December 2021, told MMA Fighting that he plans to make his pro debut in April. Congrats on the amateur success and good luck!

If you know of a recent fight or event that you think may have been overlooked, or a promotion that could use some attention, please let us know on Twitter — @AlexanderKLee — using the hashtag #MissedFists.