Blood Diamond vs Orion Cosce Preview
Mike Mathetha otherwise known as Blood Diamond has had a tricky start to his UFC career and that journey continues deep on the UFC 277 undercard against Orion Cosce. Blood Diamond is the latest City Kickboxing trooper to enter the UFC and his first bout earlier this year was as weird as these scraps can get, resulting in a loss. Diamond then suffered an injury training for Cosce and this fight was rescheduled for a few months later to be nicely packaged with Kai Kara-France's interim title fight.
The tricky vibes are amplified by the fact that this is the third scheduled fight between BD and Cosce. Along with the most recent flip due to BD's injury, Cosce suffered an injury ahead of their initial fight and that led BD to fight Jeremiah Wells in his debut. Instead of fighting Cosce, BD fought Wells who slipped in his opening movements of that fight which caused BD to rush in and take advantage. Wells slipped, BD rushed in, only to be wrapped up and lose by submission in the first round.
BD didn't have a chance to showcase his skills in his debut and apart from adjusting to the bigger stage, staying calm with his process etc, there wasn't much to learn about BD. One can look at BD's endless mahi around the world in kickboxing and MMA to learn about his style, yet as we saw with BD and Carlos Ulberg's debut; UFC scraps are a different level.
This is the main nugget to preview BD vs Cosce as it's all about learning. We know BD is a fantastic fighter because of the journey he took with CKB to get into the UFC and each fight in this opening UFC stanza will add details to the BD scouting report. There is the typical CKB style of world-class striking and adequate defensive grappling that BD should have, but couldn't show in his debut loss.
BD has longer reach than Cosce which could help his striking, especially if BD can tap into patience and accuracy. Cosce poses a takedown threat and averages almost 2 takedown attempts per 15mins to challenge BD's defence in that department. Ideally BD picks Cosce apart from range, using his full range of CKB weapons such as fakes and stance-switching to dictate the fight.
BD and Cosce are both coming off losses. BD does not need to look past his CKB comrades learn about UFC losses. Israel Adesanya and Kai Kara-France are the only CKB fighters from Aotearoa without back to back losses, yet all of CKB's UFC fighters have been defeated in the UFC. Dan Hooker, Brad Riddell and Shane Young have all have back to back losses, while Ulberg bounced back from his first up loss.
BD would have lost a bunch of fights in his 1-outs career and he is a reminder of the slow-cooked CKB journey as he's 34-years-old, preparing for his second UFC fight. These CKB dudes have immense kickboxing experience and that provides many ways of dealing with losses. Combine that experience with CKB skills and BD's second UFC fight will hopefully be a win.
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