Esteban Ribovics expects first-round finish of Elves Brener at UFC on ESPN 71
LAS VEGAS – Esteban Ribovics expects a quick night at the office.
The Argentine UFC lightweight believes he will only need one round to get the job done ahead of his fight against Elves Brener in the main card of UFC on ESPN 71 (ESPN, ESPN+) – which takes place Saturday at the UFC Apex. Ribovics (14-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) respects Brener (16-5 MMA, 3-2 UFC), and is aware of his durability, but he's confident he can put him away come fight night.
"I see the advantage in my hands," Ribovics said at media day on Wednesday. "I know I have heavy hands, and I know I'm capable of ending the fight in the first round, so I'm going for it. I'm going to use my hands. I know that he has a good jiu-jitsu game and can take a shot, but I don't think this fight is getting past the first round."
Should things go his way on Saturday, Ribovics is hoping to get one more fight before the end of the year. He'd like to close out the year with three fights and further himself from his close, split decision loss to Nasrat Haqparast in March.
"My plan is to fight again this year, around November, December," Ribovics said. "I want to end the year with three fights for the year. And if it's in a big arena, it would be even better. I get much more fired up fighting in an arena where there's people, and if I'm the visitor, I love it even more.
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Now he can look and see that Tapology currently has him as the promotion's No. 17 welterweight, which isn't too shabby. Conversely, a fighter like Jeremy Stephens can look at Tapology's lightweight rankings and see himself at No. 83 (out of 94 total lightweights on the list), which is bound to sting a bit more for someone who might otherwise have only known that they were hovering somewhere in the vague outer darkness of the division. Now they (and everyone else) can see just how far from the top they are, which might be unwelcome news for many fighters. The flip side, Saks pointed out, is that it also gives fighters a way of determining which matchups make sense for them. If you're the 36th featherweight on the list and you were thinking of calling out a fellow 145-pounder you dislike or just think you could beat, you might change your mind if you knew he was ranked somewhere north of the No. 50 spot. 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Take Saturday night's win for UFC flyweight contender Tatsuro Taira, for example. Headed into that main-event bout, Taira was ranked sixth in the 125-pound division by the Tapology rankings — the same spot he held in the UFC's own internal rankings. Hyun Sung Park, his opponent, was unranked by the UFC, but ranked at No. 23 by Tapology. The dominant submission win for Taira didn't move him up at all in Tapology's rankings, Saks said, mostly because he was facing a much lower-ranked opponent who was serving as a late-notice replacement. According to the Tapology rankings algorithm, there was basically nothing Taira could have done in this fight in order to change his ranking and move closer to the top of the list. 'It is kind of like treading water, essentially, is how the Tapology system saw that [fight],' Saks said. 'To move ahead of elite contender top-10 fighters, you need to demonstrate that you are performing better than them. And our system did not think that Saturday night's performance, as awesome as it was, proved that he deserves a higher position in the ranking.' It's not hard to imagine how this, too, could rankle some fighters. Obviously, fighting for money is about more than the number next to your name, and the UFC has never been all that constrained even by its own rankings once it sees a fight it would like to put together, so maybe Taira is unconcerned with where the Tapology algorithm puts him. Then again, some fighters may not love knowing that they're headed into matchups that offer no possibility of positional advancement. Some might even conceivably decline certain fights on that basis. But then don't rankings always exist, at least in part, to give us something to argue about? It's why sports websites love them so much. They foster engagement by giving readers something to get angry and bicker about in the comments section. They are a springboard to discussion and debate. Tapology's system provides more date to argue about, but also substitutes a faceless computer algorithm for the human rankings panels, which might make spewing online vitriol a little less fun for users. For his part, Saks isn't terribly concerned that the rankings will mean either too much or too little to those who view them. Receiving angry emails over all aspects of its record-keeping has been part of the job at Tapology, Saks said, and he doesn't expect that to change any time soon. But now, at least, there's more information for readers to sort through. 'What's good about it for fans is having a reliable ranking system that now not only talks about the top 15, but allows you to understand the context of every fight that's happening on the card,' Saks said. 'Hopefully they'll get more enjoyment out of watching the fights and knowing that there's more at stake than just whether or not these fighters will maybe appear in the top 15 soon. So for fans, I think the best-case scenario is that this adds some enjoyment and fun and debate. For Tapology as a business, if it's driving more eyeballs and users to the site, then that helps our business grow and allows us to put money into doing other stuff, whether it's a new ranking system or something totally different. These features that we add take time and effort, so we have to fund them somehow.' As for how UFC fighters and officials might react? That's a trickier question. It's possible both will choose to ignore this new system, at least at first. But, Saks pointed out, with enough time and chatter from the fans, that could change. After all, if you were a fighter swirling somewhere among the unranked masses of the UFC roster, wouldn't you at least pull those rankings up to see where you stand? Wouldn't you be just a little bit curious?
