UFC Brasilia Preview, ‘Lee Vs Oliveira’ Predictions

Photo by Yong Teck Lim/Zuffa LLC

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) will feature an important lightweight showdown between Kevin Lee and Charles Oliveira atop the UFC Fight Night 170 mixed martial arts (MMA) event, which airs on both ESPN and ESPN+ this Sat. night (March 14, 2020) inside an empty Nilson Nelson Gymnasium in Brasilia, Brazil.

The winner will emerge as a legitimate contender for the 155-pound throne.

Before we get to the main and co-main event breakdown, be sure to check out the complete UFC Fight Night 170 preliminary card breakdown, expertly deconstructed by the jet-setting Patrick Stumberg here and here. Fighter-turned-writer-turned-fighter again, Andrew Richardson, did most of the heavy lifting for the rest of the main card right here. For the latest odds and betting lines click here.

Let’s crunch some numbers.

155 lbs.: Kevin Lee vs. Charles Oliveira

Kevin “The Motown Phenom” Lee

Charles “Do Bronx” Oliveira

It’s easy to be wooed by the lights-out finish Kevin Lee scored over Gregor Gillespie at UFC 244 last November in New York, as “The Gift” became “The Stiffed” as a result of the nastiest head-kick knockout in recent memory. But should that one epic stoppage erase the struggles that preceded it? That’s difficult to answer, because what we saw in “The Empire State” followed a move to Tristar gym in Montreal, where Lee worked to reinvent himself under head coach Firas Zahabi while training alongside the likes of Georges St-Pierre, among others. Prior to his trip to “The City of Saints” Lee was coming off back-to-back losses to Al Iaquinta and Raphael dos Anjos, the latter of which took place at welterweight. It wasn’t just losing that was disconcerting, it was the fact that “Motown Phenom” looked completely lost in both contests. A 2017 loss to Tony Ferguson is more forgivable when you consider what “El Cucuy” has done over the last eight years. Simply put, we just don’t know what version of Lee to expect, assuming that we are dealing with a case of “before and after” and not just a fighter who had a good day at the office against Gillespie.

Missing weight for UFC Brasilia is not giving me that warm, fuzzy feeling.

I probably would have said similar things about Charles Oliveira after watching him get smoked by Paul Felder roughly two years back. Rebounding with a submission win over Clay Guida was nothing to write home about when you consider “The Carpenter” has been tapped a staggering 10 times throughout his pro MMA career. Then Oliveira kept on winning and more importantly, kept on showing growth as a fighter. Since getting swallowed up by “The Irish Dragon,” the Brazilian has captured six in a row, all of them finishes. In addition, “Do Bronx” notched the eighth knockout win of his career against Jared Gordon at UFC Sao Paulo last November, proving once and for all that he’s more than just a grappler. Hard to believe Oliveira is just 30 years old but we can safely say he’s fighting in the prime of his career and has never looked better. His level of competition may not be on par with what Lee has been asked to face, but his last three opponents all had winning records inside the Octagon at the time of their fights. It’s not like Oliveira was fighting bums and the results speak for themselves.

I really want to invest in the new-and-improved Lee, but the numbers keep nagging at me. His recent snuff film (starring Gillespie) marked just his third knockout win in 23 professional fights. That’s a troubling number for a combatant with his athleticism. Either he doesn’t know how to utilize his power or he simply doesn’t have any. Either way, he’s not going to be able to fall back on his wrestling against a grappler like Oliveira. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when “Do Bronx” would fold like Brazilian origami when overwhelmed with pressure, but that deficiency appears to be conquered. I’m also not a fan of Lee’s gas tank in a five-round contest, one that will feature an inordinate amount of body-to-body contact. Unless Oliveira does something stupid or gets too comfortable in light of his recent success, I believe this is his fight to lose.

Prediction: Oliveira def. Lee by submission

170 lbs.: Demian Maia vs. Gilbert Burns

Demian Maia

Gilbert “Durinho” Burns

It’s easy to overlook the greatness of Demian Maia because MMA is and may always be a sport that is fascinated with knockouts. Something about watching a person go limp and crash into canvas, face first, is always going to provide a more palatable spectacle that a precision grappler slicing his way through guard to lock up a nasty submission. But taps and naps are not why Maia is so remarkable as a fighter. In every bout over the last decade or so, you know exactly what the Brazilian is going to do, you know exactly when he’s going to do it, and it’s up to you to stop it. He reminds me of retired Yankees ace Mariano Rivera, who would stand on the mound and throw a cutter in just about every pitch and dare you to make contact. With the exception of Division-1 collegiate wrestlers like Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington, as well as former champion Tyron Woodley, you would be hard pressed to find a better active wrestler at 170 pounds. Not that more proficient mat technique is a safety net, something the since-deposed Ben Askren found out last October.

That’s not to suggest there’s an overwhelming complexity to the offense of Gilbert Burns, who spent the first half of his UFC career sabotaging his own win streaks. Just when “Durinho” was poised for a run at the Top 10 of the division, he would lay an egg against an established veteran. Getting turned inside out by Dan Hooker at UFC 226 comes to mind. Undeterred, Burns got right back into the cage before year’s end and kicked off a four-fight win streak, as well as a 2019 fight campaign that found him to be very unpopular with the Top 10 of the division, something not unfamiliar to Maia. If you’re a streaking contender on the path to the title, do you really want to put that at risk against a wrestle-heavy submission specialist? Burns also has power, evidenced by back-to-back beatdowns over Jason Saggo and Dan Moret. Those kinds of finishes can turn non-strikers into non-strikers masquerading as strikers, which may explain why “Durinho” has been to the judges’ scorecards in three of his last four fights. Considering what he’s up against here, I would not expect him to abandon that approach.

Burns is a younger, stronger version of Maia though not quite as refined. He stands as the betting favorite for this contest and rightly so. Maia is 42 years old and even in his prime, he was hardly a cardio machine. Part of that comes from his difficult weight cut, complicated even further by his advancing age, but we also can’t ignore the fact that the former middleweight is just not built like a high-performance athlete. The good news for him is that he’s only tasked with 15 minutes of action, which is likely to be fairly grueling. I know Burns has been talking up a big game, about how he’s going to be the first fighter to submit the jiu-jitsu legend, but the more likely scenario is that “Durinho” spends most of the fight shucking off takedowns and looking for the big punch. He may not land it, but I don’t think Maia has enough left in the tank to keep him from controlling the pace of the fight.

Prediction: Burns def. Maia by unanimous decision

Remember to get the rest of the UFC Fight Night 170 main card predictions RIGHT HERE.

MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC Fight Night 170 fight card RIGHT HERE, starting with the ESPN/ESPN+ “Prelims” undercard bouts at 3 p.m. ET, followed by the ESPN/ESPN+ main card start time at 6 p.m. ET.

For the rest of the UFC Brasilia fight card and ESPN+ line up click here.

https://www.mmamania.com/2020/3/13/21172627/ufc-brasilia-preview-lee-vs-oliveira-predictions-mma

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