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Preview: UFC on ESPN 59 Prelims
By Tom Feely,
10 days ago
A flurry of last-minute changes to the Ultimate Fighting Championship ’s latest stop in Denver resulted in a surprisingly strong UFC on ESPN 59 undercard this Saturday at Ball Arena. It offers some of the best bouts on the bill, even if half of the competitors were not assigned to it two weeks ago. To that end, the featured fight sees the short-notice promotional debut of one of the top prospects on the regional scene, as highly touted strawweight Fatima Kline makes the move up to 125 pounds for a tough but winnable clash against Jasmine Jasudavicius . From there, the two late additions stand out as particularly strong affairs: Flyweight Joshua Van , who might be the best prospect on the UFC roster, gets a willing dance partner in Charles Johson, while bantamweights Montel Jackson and Da’Mon Blackshear meet in an interesting test for both men.
Now to the preview for the UFC on ESPN 59 prelims:
A late-notice change makes this a particularly fascinating affair, as it marks the UFC debut of a top prospect in Kline. The Long Islander is a shade over three years into her professional career, and she started getting some buzz as a potential call-up in the last year and a half, scoring a win over “The Ultimate Fighter” alum Laura Gallardo and winning titles at both flyweight and strawweight on the regional scene. Kline turns 24 the day before this fight takes place, and she is quite poised for someone so early in her career. Her reputation is as a standout grappler, but she has shown a solid knack for picking her spots to either stay patient or throw down on the feet. Kline’s regional fights have mostly been extended one-way traffic, but there is some concern in the short term with her move into a major promotion. With a lot of success centering around her wrestling, she doesn’t read as the type of powerhouse athlete who can get away with a bullying style, particularly up at 125 pounds. Kline will probably be fine in the long run in terms of adding strength and muscle—she might not even need to do so if she decides to carve a path down at strawweight—but for now, this late-notice debut against Jasudavicius could go either way. Jasudavicius has chugged along on the fringes of the UFC’s flyweight rankings since signing with the promotion in 2021. The Canadian has a focused game built around pressure but keeps running into a clear physical ceiling. Large but slow, Jasudavicius is capable of mauling an opponent who can’t get out of her way—see her extended beating of Priscila Cachoeira in January—but losses to Natalia Silva and Tracy Cortez left her without much of an answer as to how to make up a clear difference in speed. Jasudavicius is an absolute gamer and clearly the toughest test of Kline’s career to date, but this does seem like a pairing where the UFC newcomer can thread the needle and walk away with a win. Jasudavicius wrestles a lot but doesn’t have lockdown defense, and Kline has a surprising amount of size parity given that she’s likely a natural strawweight. This could be an ugly grind no matter who wins. The pick is Kline via decision.
Will Van finally get his second fight of 2024? Van came to the UFC halfway through 2023, at which point he immediately established himself as one of the best prospects in the sport regardless of division. Van made his professional debut late in 2021 and needed less than two years to prove he had outgrown the regional scene. A vicious and pressure-heavy striker, Van was showing the start of what has already become a strong wrestling and grappling game when the UFC picked him up on late notice. If there’s one criticism of Van, it’s that he tends to need a round to feel things out before taking over a fight, but he has otherwise checked every box, improving every time out, showing new skills and attempting to keep an active schedule. It’s that latter point that has been the main issue for Van, as he has constantly been willing to take late-notice fights, only to have the fates intervene. His January win over Felipe Bunes saw him step in on short notice, but he has since had four different opponents fall through for various reasons in the last three months. The 22-year-old prodigy figures to finally get a fight here in a thrown-together bout against Johnson, who has made a name keeping up the type of schedule about which Van has dreamed. This marks Johnson’s ninth fight in less than two years under the UFC banner and fourth in six months, and his campaign has been a bit of an adventure. A former Olympic hopeful as a track star, “InnerG” is about as athletically talented as anyone in the flyweight division, but he can sometimes get a bit comfortable in relying on his physical gifts. Johnson had a highly successful regional career, but his championship fights saw him lean on his cardio and durability to just coast things out and wait for his opportunity to take over, usually in the later rounds. However, in three-round fights against better competition in the UFC, Johnson has lost that margin for error and slowly learned to adapt. After suffering a batch of hard-fought decision losses, he has learned to overcome some slow starts and put his foot on the gas to score wins over Azat Maksum and Jake Hadley this year. Both men are slow starters, so the first round might be a bit rough, but this should turn into a barnburner by the third. Van picks up the pace and the violence as his fights go on, and Johnson is both adaptive enough and durable enough to hold his ground and provide some answers. Van should be able to outpace Johnson for the win, but this should be an excellent and hard-fought affair. The pick is Van via decision.
It will be interesting to see what Agapova brings to the cage here, to say the least. Agapova was somewhat overhyped ahead of her signing with the UFC in 2020, but it was easy to see why people were high on the Kazakh fighter. When things clicked for Agapova, she was a whirlwind of violence capable of finding some impressive knockouts and submissions. Five fights into her UFC career, Agapova has provided some moments of danger in each of those bouts, but there has been a clear tendency for things to go south if she finds some consistent resistance. Agapova’s last two fights were each second-round implosions that saw her get submitted. It has been nearly two years since the last of those losses, and Agapova has experienced a public implosion of her personal life since then, so it’s a bit surprising to see her back in action at the moment. Santos didn’t stick out as a particularly UFC-ready prospect when the promotion signed her about a year ago, but she has looked solid through two trips to the Octagon. The Brazilian doesn’t have much of a particular calling card, but she has shown off her durability and physical strength, impressively hanging with natural bantamweight Stephanie Egger in a late-notice win at 135 pounds in December. Unspectacular steadiness should be enough to outlast Agapova, particularly at this current time. The pick is Santos via second-round stoppage.
This might not be the prettiest fight in practice, but it’s a well-matched bout that gives two middleweights a solid opportunity to get back in the win column. Petroski kicked off his UFC career with five straight wins and did an impressive job of improving during that time. The Pennsylvanian came to the UFC with a game that seemed to be less than the sum of its parts. A powerful wrestler and grappler for the regional level, Petroski had all the tools to run over the opposition but found himself running out of ideas and tiring himself out in the face of any resistance. Once Petroski made it to the big time, he did a much better job of pacing himself. Initially, this manifested itself with some unimpressively slow-paced wins over the bottom reaches of the UFC roster, but by the time of his win over Gerald Meerschaert in August, Petroski had a well-rounded game that he could keep going for three rounds. That has made the last nine months or so a bit disappointing, since Petroski has hit his ceiling and hit it hard. Michel Pereira had Petroski dead to rights in terms of athleticism and quickly knocked him out, and Jacob Malkoun was also able to finish him by running a more technically sound version of the same game. Things get a bit more forgiving against Fremd, who has taken a quieter route to essentially wind up in the same spot. Fremd’s most notable feature is that he’s absolutely massive for the middleweight division, and he puts his size to good use. He’s not much of a finisher, but he keeps applying pressure in the hopes that he can overwhelm his opponents or just turn things into a grind. That has led to some clear wins over the bottom third or so of the UFC’s middleweight roster. However, while Fremd has given better competition some tough fights, he has mostly been undone by his lack of speed and defense, which has left him a sitting duck against faster athletes. Petroski probably clears that bar without being an outstanding athlete in the aggregate, but he’s the more fluid fighter and should be able to cycle through his offense while neutralizing Fremd’s grinding style. With that said, this doesn’t figure to be a fight with much in the way of big moments. The pick is Petroski via decision.
Given that it’s all too rare, it’s nice to see Jackson back in action as part of a late-notice addition to this card. Jackson came to the UFC in 2018 as a raw but toolsy prospect who just needed more experience to hone his craft, which makes it a bit disappointing that “Quik” has settled into a schedule of about one fight per calendar year. Despite that, Jackson has clearly improved, even though his game has typically added up to less than the sum of its parts. He’s a solid wrestler with the ability to crack his opponents on the feet, but his overly patient approach has typically allowed opponents to make things much tougher for Jackson than they should on paper given his physical gifts. Jackson did at least run through Rani Yahya in his last fight 15 months ago—though that may say more about where the Brazilian is late in his career than anything else—so there is some hope that he might finally be turning a corner, and this matchup against Blackshear should answer a lot of questions. Blackshear returns after an 11-month layoff that was certainly well-earned. Blackshear fought four times in what wound up as a breakout 2023 campaign, including two fights in August on a one-week turnaround. Blackshear put together a solid regional resume heading into his 2022 UFC debut, fighting with an aggressive and grappling-heavy style that tended to result in a lot of big opportunities for both “Da Monster” and his opponents. Given that, it was fitting that his UFC debut against Youssef Zalal ended in a draw, and after a flat loss to Farid Basharat , Blackshear hit the ground running. He outworked Luan Lacerda and scored a finish with some brutal ground and pound, executed a rare twister submission against Jose Johnson and then fought Mario Bautista a week later in a hard-fought loss where his cardio unsurprisingly started to betray him. A lot of Blackshear’s success comes through his ability to pressure and outwrestle his opponents, and this could be a sneakily advantageous matchup given Jackson’s usual approach. Blackshear should have the time and space to put in work, and despite Jackson’s wrestling background, opponents have found a surprising amount of success turning things into a grind. Generally, this looks like a pairing where Jackson will need to fight up to his potential to get the win, and given that he hasn’t done so yet, the pick is Blackshear via hard-fought decision.
Evan Elder (8-2, 1-2 UFC) vs. Darrius Flowers (12-7-1, 0-2 UFC) ODDS: N/A A last-minute addition to this card sees two lightweights move up to 170 pounds for what should be an entertaining scrap. Elder might be a bit lost in the shuffle in such a deep division, but he’s a long-term prospect worth watching, coming to the UFC while trying to add some technique and patience to his game. A late-notice UFC debut in 2022 didn’t go particularly well, as he got bullied and outwrestled by Preston Parsons while moving up in weight, but it has been much smoother sailing against opponents his own size. He was doing well in a war against Nazim Sadykhov before losing via cut stoppage, and he outpaced Genaro Valdez in another engaging encounter. There are still some gaps in Elder’s game, particularly defensively, as he keeps trying to find comfort, which should make for some excellent exchanges against the much wilder Flowers. The 29-year-old Flowers didn’t look particularly UFC-ready upon signing with the promotion, but he also did all he could have been expected to do on the Contender Series in 2022, scoring an upset win with a slam and an injury stoppage in less than two minutes. That mostly sums up Flowers’ approach, as he’s a ball of muscle that leverages his physicality to try and create damage by any means necessary. That led to some chaotic moments in his UFC debut against Jake Matthews , but his technical flaws were much bigger liabilities in a clear loss to Michael Johnson in February. Elder seems tough enough to survive whenever things go sideways and should generally be able to coast this out, but it should be fun to watch him walk that tightrope. The pick is Elder via decision.
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