First and Worst: January 26 – February 1, 2015

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: Ovince St. Preux vs. Pat Cummins, UFC on FOX 15

My pick for the best new fight announced this past week is the upcoming light heavyweight contest between Ovince St. Preux and Pat Cummins which will take place at UFC on FOX 15. This event, on April 18 at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, is headlined by a five-round middleweight bout between Lyoto Machida and Luke Rockhold, and OSP vs. Cummins is slated to take place on the FOX-televised main card.

I really like this fight because it will tell us a lot about both fighters. With OSP, we already know he’s an athletic freak with knockout power (see his recent win over Mauricio Rua at UFC Fight Night 56), but he was outwrestled in a loss to Ryan Bader at UFC Fight Night 47, so we need to know if he has shored up that part of his game before he is able to compete with the elite 205-pound fighters. Going up against a top wrestler like Cummins, we’ll know for sure if OSP has been drilling his takedown defence, because it’s pretty obvious Cummins is going to look to take this fight to the ground and grind OSP out.

As for Cummins, we know he’s one of the better wrestlers in the division, and a fine athlete in his own right, but we don’t know much about his striking. In the only UFC fight he’s had where he fought his opponent in the standup, he was brutally knocked out by Daniel Cormier in a minute. We need to know if he can take a punch, because with his wrestling background, he could definitely go far in the division if he’s able to stand and bang with his opponents, and surely he’ll be tested in the standup department by OSP.

Although both OSP and Cummins aren’t considered top contenders, the light heavyweight division is lacking in contenders, and both of these fighters are fresh matchups for champ Jon Jones. I’m not saying OSP or Cummins will be fighting Jones anytime soon, but hey, if they keep winning fights, who knows what could happen?.

I really like this matchup a lot because it makes sense as far as the rankings go, and it will help to determine which one of these fighters is a contender and which one is a pretender. Good stuff, Joe Silva.

UFC on Fox 15

• Ovince St. Preux vs. Patrick Cummins

Click the stars to rate your anticipation for this fight.

Worst: Nordine Taleb vs. Claudio Silva, UFC 186

My pick for the worst new fight announced this week is a welterweight matchup at UFC 186 featuring Canada’s Nordine Taleb taking on Brazil’s Claudio Silva. The event takes place April 25 at Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Taleb vs. Silva will be a part of the event’s preliminary card.

This is just a really bad fight between two grinders with terrible cardio who are both on surprising win streaks inside the UFC. Taleb, a TUF Nations alum, is 2-0 inside the Octagon with decision wins over Vik Grujic and Li Jingliang. Both fights were awful to watch, and the only reason he won them is because he landed more takedowns and spent more time in top control. But he showed no striking or submission ability in either fight, and no one is clamouring to see him fight again.

As for Silva, he’s also somehow 2-0 in the UFC, but with both of his fights being hideous-to-watch decisions. In his UFC debut, he somehow defeated Brad Scott despite looking horribly out of shape, and he somehow defeated Leon Edwards in his second UFC fight despite having even worse cardio than in his debut. The judges seem to like his grinding style, so it will be interesting (I guess?) to see how he deals with going up against another grinder in Taleb.

This really is a bad fight, and will likely be the fight to go and take a smoke break or grab a beer during the otherwise-solid UFC 186 event this April.