After a few weeks on the road, the Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday returns to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas for a decent enough event. The headliner serves as the clear standout for UFC Fight Night 244 , as top flyweight prospect Tatsuro Taira gets a shot to break into contention at 125 pounds against recent title challenger Brandon Royval . There are some recognizable names beyond the top of the card, with Brad Tavares set to add to his prolific UFC career against Jun Yong Park in the middleweight co-feature and Grant Dawson getting back to action in a lightweight showcase opposite Rafa Garcia . However, the best-made match might be found in a welterweight clash between veterans Daniel Rodriguez and Alex Morono .
Now to the UFC Fight Night 244 “Royval vs. Taira” preview:
The flyweight title picture is a bit of a mess right now, with Alexandre Pantoja having little in the way of obvious next challengers, so this would be a nice time for Taira to earn his breakthrough win and become a true contender. Taira has been one of the top prospects out of Japan since the UFC has pivoted back to recruiting talent from that country, and he has lived up to that billing thus far as both an accurate striker and an excellent grappler. However, Taira’s game has shown some cracks along the way, mostly on the feet. While he’s technically quite sharp and has some knockout power, his approach is a bit overly patient and ponderous, leaving him open to get hit and doing little to flow into his wrestling. That has mattered little in Taira’s UFC career thus far, mostly thanks to the UFC slow-playing his matchmaking up until a June main event against Alex Perez . That fight ended unsatisfactorily, with Perez injuring his knee in the second round as the two grappled, but it was a solid enough showing for Taira up to that point. He got neutralized a bit but also showed an increased willingness to pick up the pace and effectively use the clinch. With that win under his belt, Taira now looks to unseat a recent title challenger in Royval and potentially earn his own championship opportunity in the process.
Royval has been frustrating to track, as even despite his success, he has the potential to be a much better fighter. Royval came to the UFC in 2020 as an absolute whirlwind of violence, pressing aggressive ideas until his opponents were unable to keep up and eventually got finished. After Royval’s aggression charged him directly into losses against Brandon Moreno and the aforementioned Pantoja, “Raw Dawg” has been much less committed to those concepts. Instead, he has tried to reinvent himself as a range striker, to mixed results. He still has a dedication to pace that means he throws out plenty of striking volume, but he’s extremely inaccurate in doing so. Nevertheless, he was able to string together three straight wins to get to a title shot in a rematch against Pantoja. Rogerio Bontorin was cowed by that empty volume, Matt Schnell essentially forced Royval to beat him in a brawl and he was able to catch Matheus Nicolau with a knockout knee. While the rematch against Pantoja was a much different fight than the sprint that was the first, it was still a disheartening result that saw the Brazilian consistently outwrestle his challenger for five rounds, suggesting a clear path forward for opponents to control Royval while he works for submissions. Royval then stepped in on a quick turnaround for another rematch, this time against Moreno. Naturally, Moreno followed none of the blueprint that Pantoja had laid out, instead taking his own range striking approach that allowed Royval to steal a decision victory through his volume. Given that Royval had just gotten dominated by the champ two months prior, it still left him frozen out of the title picture, so now it’s just a matter of racking up wins until things change or he somehow becomes undeniable. It will be fascinating to see how Taira handles this one, as Royval presents a unique challenge even with all his inefficiency. He’s the rare flyweight with a size advantage against Taira, and there’s not much of a historical precedent as to how the burgeoning Japanese star will deal with all that volume. If Taira can effectively close ranks, this becomes a much more winnable fight, as Royval will either concede to hunting for submissions or indulging him in some fairly even scrambles. However, a lot of this fight, particularly early on, could see Taira getting hit while he tries to feel things out, both in terms of landing his strikes and in being able to secure takedowns against such a long and fast-paced opponent. The lean is that Royval can clip the former Shooto champion before that feeling-out process is complete, but the opportunity is ripe for Taira to answer a lot of questions in the positive. The pick is Royval via second-round knockout.
An intellectually interesting fight that was a late scratch from a card in July winds up here. There’s a worry that Tavares is finally starting his late-career slide after a quietly consistent decade and a half on the UFC roster. A 2010 alum of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Tavares toiled for years on the prelims before settling in as a gatekeeper to the middleweight elite, primarily serving as a decision machine for most of the way. He has always been technically sound to the point of almost never taking opponents by surprise, but his combination of consistent volume, durability and sneakily excellent takedown defense has almost always kept him ahead on the scorecards until recent years. Tavares’ rare losses usually came to top prospects or future champions, up until a knockout loss to Bruno Silva last year, which raised the concern that his durability had finally betrayed him. He rebounded but didn’t dominate against a particularly flat version of Chris Weidman , but a one-sided loss to Gregory Rodrigues earlier this year—the Brazilian found a surprising level of success with his wrestling—raised more worries that Tavares might have slipped past his margin for error. He might still have enough to give Park a tough fight.
Park has been an entertaining fighter and shown some solid development during his half-decade in the UFC. Initially a potshotting counterstriker, “The Iron Turtle” did well to pivot towards his wrestling and grappling game, at one point winning four straight fights that included three victories via submission. A December loss to Andre Muniz resulted in a frustrating split decision, and while Park seems poised to rebound here, this isn’t exactly the best matchup given Tavares’ historically successful defensive wrestling. However, if the Rodrigues loss was the start of a trend rather than an outlier in terms of Tavares’ takedown defense betraying him, this could turn into a blowout win for Park. Even if that’s not the case, the Korean should be able to take the lead against an increasingly passive Tavares. The pick is Park via decision.
Any hopes for a massive evolution from Dawson were seemingly dashed in his last fight, so now it’s just a matter of seeing if he can continue to do Grant Dawson things. Initially a featherweight, Dawson’s gameplan at 145 pounds was fairly simple—go for takedowns and hunt for rear-naked chokes—though he had a tendency to tire badly by the third round. Dawson eventually moved up to lightweight and showed a bit sharper striking in the process, but the main change has been that “KGD” now has the cardio to wrestle his opponents for three straight rounds. That’s exactly what he does, though there have been some third-round submission wins along the way. There was some intrigue heading into his first UFC main event against Bobby Green , mostly centered around how Dawson’s gas tank would handle a five-round fight. That wound up being a non-factor after Green knocked Dawson out in just 33 seconds. If there were any takeaways from the loss, they didn’t come through in Dawson’s rebound win over Joe Solecki in June, as that fight served as a return to his grinding ways over three rounds. As such, the game plan against Garcia becomes fairly clear.
Garcia has been a solid midcard lightweight during his time in the UFC and always a tough out, as he’s durable and capable of doing a bit of everything. With that said, the double-edged sword is that everything needs to be clicking for Garcia in order for him to put together a truly great performance. There’s a chance he can work enough to tire Dawson late and take the fight over, but dedicated wrestlers have found success against Garcia in the past—including the under-athletic Chris Gruetzemacher —so it seems likely that Dawson can dedicate himself to the grind and once again walk away with a win. The pick is Dawson via decision.
This pairing should hopefully result in an engaging scrap. Signed by the company shortly after her 21st birthday in 2021, McKenna has had a solid UFC career to date, even if the Welshwoman hasn’t had much momentum in recent years. McKenna is an undersized fighter with one of the shortest reaches in UFC history, so she has done well to become a serviceable striker, even if the best parts of her game always figures to be her skills on the mat, where she’s aggressive in trying to make things happen. McKenna seemed to be making a bit of a run after outwrestling Cheyanne Vlismas to cap off 2022, but she became a forgotten woman after missing all of 2023, then got tapped out going to the mat with submission ace Jaqueline Amorim in her return fight earlier this year. Things figure to go a bit easier against Polastri, a fellow undersized scrapper who will enjoy a rare size advantage.
As a former atomweight, it now looks even more absurd that Polastri was tasked with facing oversized flyweight Jasmine Jasudavicius on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2021, but the Brazilian did well to regroup as a strawweight and eventually earn her way back to the UFC. It’s hard to call Polastri a standout in any one area outside of her willingness to keep fighting, but she has been able to outlast a lot of lower-level opposition, and while her UFC debut was a loss to Josefine Lindgren Knutsson in June, she held up better than expected against a physically strong strawweight. She might skate by here, but the read is that McKenna can control this fight more often than not on the mat, even if this doesn’t figure to be a blowout. The pick is McKenna via decision.
Veteran welterweights square off in this confrontation. Rodriguez has had a rough stretch, with his last win coming in 2022, but “D-Rod” has still looked fairly solid in recent years. Rodriguez immediately made himself known in his late-notice UFC debut, finishing Tim Means in 2020, then quietly became one of the division’s dark horses with seven wins in his first eight UFC fights. Rodriguez is a fairly meat-and-potatoes fighter, a sharp boxer who has done well to balance his technique with his scrappiness. While it’s not a shock that he found significant success up to a certain point, it’s also not a surprise that his lack of athleticism and one-dimensional approach would eventually find a ceiling. Indeed, that has come in Rodriguez’s last three fights. He fell short against eternal divisional gatekeeper Neil Magny , got picked apart by top prospect Ian Garry and got outwrestled by Kelvin Gastelum , the last of whom badly mismanaged his weight and leveraged that size advantage as a result. Even with Rodriguez’s lack of recent success, it’s hard to say he has slipped much even as he closes in on his 38th birthday, so he should be game for an attempted rebound against Morono.
Morono has been a fighter with a high floor and a low ceiling during his decade under the UFC banner, and it has been a pleasure to watch him go to work. He might be among the least athletically gifted fighters on the UFC roster, but “The Great White” has a sharp enough mind for fighting that he has usually been able to game plan around more talented opponents. A loss to Santiago Ponzinibbio to cap off 2022 stopped a four-fight winning streak and basically reaffirmed that ceiling. Morono was doing well until Ponzinibbio buckled down and hunted for a knockout, at which point the Texan was clearly overmatched. He has struggled to build much momentum since, alternating wins and losses in his subsequent four fights. Morono’s last two performances have raised some worries that he has slipped past his margin for error. A decision win over Court McGee was a flat performance, and Morono tired badly in his next fight against Niko Price , which can perhaps just be chalked up to taking that bout on a quick turnaround. At any rate, this probably would have been a Rodriguez pick most of the time anyways, owing to his ability to lean on his weapons consistently and throw some sharp counters. The potential for some slippage from Morono only makes that lean stronger. The pick is Rodriguez via decision.
Like most Alhassan fights, this has a clear potential for violence. A judoka by background, Alhassan came to the UFC about a decade ago as a pure one-round fighter, hunting for the quick knockout—and often succeeding in finding it—with little sense for any sort of energy management or a backup plan. That made for a pretty clear split for most of Alhassan’s career, with him either winning within minutes or losing an ugly decision. In recent years, he has at least found some other ideas. Alhassan’s best weapon is still his knockout power, but he has learned to pace himself and even wrestle a bit, mostly as a way to manage time and pick his spots while carrying his power into multiple rounds. Even with those progressions, Alhassan’s last fight against Cody Brundage in July was a throwback for the 37 seconds it lasted, as he seemingly had the knockout in hand after some wild strikes before it was ruled that some were illegally to the back of the head, ending the bout in a no contest. Alhassan looks to get back in the win column against Fremd, who lost to Andre Petroski on that same card—part of a UFC career that has seen him settle in as a middle-of-the-road middleweight.
Fremd is massive for the division and surprisingly well-rounded, but that size comes with some clear drawbacks. He’s also one of the slowest fighters in the division, forcing him to outlast rather than surprise his opponents and usually eat a lot of offense in the process. Fremd has grimed it up against limited athletes before and could find some success making this ugly down the stretch, but it’s far from a safe bet that he can survive that far against someone with the horsepower and occasional recklessness that Alhassan provides. The pick is Alhassan via first-round knockout.
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