This is one of those make-or-break fights at the top of a division. A fight between two fighters who have spent their career as a “contender”, but never the “challenger”. And now is the time to win that big fight that gets you the title shot – or if you lose, accept that it is not going to happen.

MMA is a sport where you can never count someone out, but objectively, it is reasonable to claim that this is a make-or-break fight for Jared Cannonier and Derek Brunson. Brunson is outwardly talking about retirement. Saying he has two fights left. If he doesn’t win, he isn’t getting a title fight in his next fight.

Whereas Jared Cannonier does seem to have more long-term plans in the sport, he is 37 years old. He needs to beat Derek Brunson and prove himself to be a feasible fresh matchup for Izzy. If Jared wins this fight, his only loss at 185 will have been a 3 round decision loss to Whittaker. And it reasonable to claim he is a worthy new challenger for Izzy.

And Jared still looks great? I know I’m trying to sell this idea that this is make-or-break for Jared because he is 37 – but he still looks healthy and strong. He is talking about going to 170!?
Jared Cannonier is such an interesting character..

And this fight is interesting. Brunson will want to chain wrestle and get Jared down. He’ll faint and strike and shoot. Whereas Jared is going to try and control the distance and look to pick clean shots. He’ll be plenty patient – and he’ll want to always be prepared to stuff the shot from Brunson.

Jared Cannonier needed to use utilize a similar strategy in his last fight against Kelvin Gastelum, which he did beautifully. Jared displayed great fight IQ timing Gastelum’s shots – he was officially credited with a perfect 8 for 8 takedown defense in his 5 round fight against Kelvin. It was a beautiful performance, and even though he couldn’t finish Gastelum (which we know is not easy) he did hurt him a few times. And Jared Cannonier hits hard, which means trouble for Brunson (duh).

But that has always been Dereks problem! He is too easy to hit. He is on a win streak right now but go watch those fights – he gets hit in everyone. Right before Till tapped, he had Derek hurt!

I think this fight is being slept on from an action standpoint. It is very very unlikely that Derek Brunson can just lay on Jared Cannonier for 3 rounds. These two will be throwing.

And I also feel like I might be talking myself into a juicy bet here.. Let’s see.

if you do not know, now you do know