First and Worst: Week of April 14 – April 20, 2014

By Adam Martin

First and Worst is an ongoing series for MMARatings.net, where every week Adam will make his pick for the best and worst newly-announced fight of the past week (Monday to Sunday). If you’d like to see any additions to this series, hit him up on Twitter @MMAdamMartin.

First: Jim Miller vs. Yancy Medeiros, UFC 172

My pick for the best new fight announced this past week is the upcoming lightweight bout at UFC 172 between Jim Miller and Yancy Medeiros. Miller had been scheduled to take on Bobby Green in a main card fight, but Green pulled out this weekend due to injury. In his place, the UFC decided to move up Medeiros from the preliminary card and now his original opponent Joe Ellenberger will fight returning UFC veteran Vagner Rocha.

I loved the matchup between Miller and Green, but the UFC did well here to book Medeiros as Green’s replacement. Like Green, Medeiros is a tremendous boxer, and it’s clear the UFC wants to throw a youngster with good hands into the cage with Miller, to test where his boxing, which looked very poor against Fabricio Camoes in his last outing, is currently at.

In addition, although Miller is ranked in the top 15 still, everyone know he’s lucky he is, as the only reason that’s the case is because Pat Healy got caught for marijuana following their UFC 159 fight one year ago. Considering that Healy has lost three in a row since then, it makes one wonder how big of a decline Miller is on, and it’s clear UFC matchmaker Joe Silva thinks so too, as he’s tried once and now twice to book a surging youngster against him in an effort to see exactly where Miller is at this point of his career.

I was already thinking Green would earn the upset over Miller, and Medeiros is a similar fighter. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he did as well, although the fact this fight was made on short notice likely favors the veteran Miller. Regardless, this is a good fight, and the UFC did well here to book a replacement bout.

UFC 172

• Jim Miller vs. Yancy Medeiros

Click the stars to rate your anticipation for this fight.

Worst: Chris Beal vs. Patrick Williams, UFC 172

My pick for the worst fight announced this past week also comes from the UFC 172 card, and it’s a bantamweight contest between TUF 18 alum Chris Beal and UFC newcomer Patrick Williams. With numerous injuries to fighters during the stretch run into UFC 172, the promotion was forced to add this bout at the last minute in order to ensure 11 bouts are scheduled for the pay-per-view event.

The short-notice factor is primarily the reason I don’t like it. I just don’t see how pulling two guys off the regional circuit and having them make their UFC debuts two weeks later is a good idea. Maybe I’ll be wrong and these two fighters will come into the Octagon and put on a great showing on short notice, but I think it’s more likely both men won’t be prepared for the bright lights of the Octagon, and we’ll get a stinker out of these two.

This is a very similar matchup to the fight between Ernest Chavez and Yosdenis Cedeno from UFC 170 a few months back. Like this fight between Beal and Williams, Chavez and Cedeno were brought in on short notice to help plug up an injury-riddled card. And, not surprisingly, their fight was awful, as it consisted of three rounds of both fighters doing next to nothing and having the judges decide it via toss-up split decision. And I’m expecting more of the same here between Beal and Williams.

Thankfully, Beal does have some potential, and even if he looks bad this weekend, he might look good in his next fight. But from what I gather, Williams isn’t a UFC-caliber fighter, and there’s really no reason why he was brought into the UFC other than to shore up this fight card and give those who have Fight Pass one more reason to tune in to the early prelims – or, at least that’s the UFC’s hope.