UFC Vegas 72 Fight Card: Why is it worth watching?

We are back with a brand new UFC event this week. Back in the day, we had to wait sometime before the next fight card. Nowadays, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the gift that keeps on giving, week after week. So, what do we have on this week? Here is the UFC Vegas 72 fight card.

UFC Fight Card This Weekend: Is the Main Card Worth the Wait?

Unfortunately, we cannot get massive cards week after week. Fighters get to fight two or three times a year and there are hundreds of them that need to get a fight. From time to time, we get an event like this one, which has almost no ranked athletes and mostly low-level fighters, rising stars, and even debutants.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the UFC fight card this weekend will also be a bit smaller than usual. First, we lost the original main event and Song Yadong vs Ricky Simon took over. Then, a few years ago, we lost two more of the fights due to injuries. Right now, we have an 11-fight card with six bouts in the main part of this UFC Fight Night.

• Bantamweight (125 pounds): Song Yadong (19-7-1) vs Ricky Simon (20-3-0)
• Middleweight (170 pounds): Caio Borralho (13-1-0) vs Michal Oleksiejczuk (18-5-0)
• Middleweight (170 pounds): Rodolfo Vieira (8-2-0) vs Cody Brundage (8-3-0)
• Featherweight (135 pounds): Julian Erosa (28-11-0) vs Fernando Padilla (14-4-0)
• Heavyweight (205 pounds): Marcos Rogerio De Lima (20-9-1) vs Waldo Cortes Acosta (9-0-0)
• Welterweight (155 pounds): Josh Quinlan (6-0-0) vs Trey Waters (7-1-0)

If you hadn't checked out the official UFC site for the full card, we can save you some time – there are only two ranked fighters on the UFC Vegas 72 fight card – Song Yadong and Ricky Simon or in other words, our main event. But we also have some legends of the game in attendance – Marcos Rogerio De Lima and Julian Erosa, for example.

The latter is a former CageSport Lightweight Champion and also the former Prime Fighting Featherweight Champion. He hasn't had the same success in the UFC but he is a very attractive fighter and we recommend watching his fight.

UFC Fight Night Main Event: Song Yadong vs Ricky Simon

This bout was originally scheduled in the main card of last week's event – UFC Vegas 71. After the main event here got canceled, the UFC offered the fighters to postpone their match and make it the main event for the UFC Fight Night this week.

Obviously, this is the bout that will attract most of the attention and we would like to say a few words about the two fighters – maybe to boost your interest by a little bit.

Song Yadong has become a fan-favorite due to his style, power, and motivation. He is what we like to call a balanced fighter. He has a versatile skill set and while he prefers to fight on his feet, his strongest weapon is his takedown.

Being a wushu-sanda style representative, Yadong can surprise his opponent with unconventional strikes and effective footwork, he successfully works at a distance and closes the distance to the opponent to get a takedown.

The main disadvantage of the Chinese is poor cardio. It is hard for him to cut to the lightest weight and therefore Yadong quickly gets tired. In the UFC, he always struggled when the fight went into the 3rd round.

Ricky Simon, in turn, is an unbelievably skilled wrestler. He has good positional wrestling, a good sense of balance, and excellent cardio, allowing him to fight for three rounds and put aggressive pressure on the opponent. His main problem is his takedown scoring percentage.

He succeeds in only 40% of his attempts to transfer the opponent to the ground. In addition, he needs to improve his striking technique. Ricky doesn't do much standing, his punches are inaccurate, and he misses an average of 4.13 punches per minute, which means that an effective striker can knock him out or beat him on points.

UFC Vegas 72 Fight Card: Only 5 Prelims Remain

• Heavyweight (205 pounds): Martin Buday (11-1-0) vs Jake Collier (13-8-0)
• Flyweight (115 pounds): Cody Durden (14-4-1) vs Charles Johnson (13-4-0)
• Women's Bantamweight (125 pounds): Stephanie Egger (8-3-0) vs Irina Alekseeva (4-1-0)
• Bantamweight (125 pounds): Journey Newson (10-4-0) vs Marcus McGhee (6-1-0)
• Women's Bantamweight (125 pounds): Hailey Cowan (7-2-0) vs Jamey-Lyn Horth (5-0-0)

We understand your pain – you probably have never heard of the majority of the fighters in the UFC Fight Night prelims. The featured fight between Martin Buday and Jake Collier should be a fun one and we can expect a KO. Stephanie Egger is an attractive fighter that hopes to reach higher in the rankings.

We also have a curious bout very early in the night – Journey Newson vs Marcus McGhee. Newson lost his original opponent and Marcus will make his UFC debut on short notice. What we know is that Journey Newson is a very attractive fighter and he has the potential to become a problem in the Bantamweight division. This is a fight that interests us a lot.

All in all, the UFC fight card this weekend does not impress with big names and attractive fighters but we definitely believe that it has potential to be solid.