Welterweights
Alex Garcia (15-5) vs. Court McGee (18-7)Advertisement
If nothing else, it is always good to see McGee back in the Octagon. McGee won Season 11 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” right before the series started sliding into irrelevancy, and came off well as a former drug addict who had cheated death and used MMA as a way to turn his life around. As a fighter, his solid wrestle-boxing game never quite got him over the hump to contender status, and after a two-year injury layoff from 2013 to 2015, there is a bit of a sense that the game has passed McGee by. He is still capable of earning wins -- and his loss to fellow veteran Ben Saunders was an iffy decision -- but defeats to Santiago Ponzinibbio and Sean Strickland were one-sided in nature and showed that McGee might be out of his league against younger, more dynamic fighters. Here he faces an inconsistent opponent in Garcia, so there is a solid chance we see a fun scrap and an opportunity for McGee to pick up a much-needed win.
A Dominican Republic native, Garcia is a frustrating talent. One gets the sense that if he was just let loose to overwhelm opponents with his physicality, he would have some more success. Instead, he seems like an odd fit for Tristar Gym coach Firas Zahabi’s strategy of turning his charges into all-terrain fighters. Garcia’s last four fights pretty much tell the story. There were two impressive wins that showed off his talent -- he starched Mike Pyle and dominated Muslim Salikhov on the ground -- but each of those just led into one-sided losses to Tim Means and Ryan LaFlare, as the stocky Garcia could not do much in a slow-paced kickboxing match. There is always the opportunity for danger with Garcia’s strength and power, but he never quite seems to be in a position to maximize those chances at a finish, so who knows if his talent will ever coalesce into anything impressive.
This has the same dynamic of most Garcia fights. He has the physical talent to earn the win if he presses those advantages, but he fights so conservatively that he may just give away rounds. At the very least, Garcia is strong enough for us to think that McGee’s clinch game goes nowhere, but even in a kickboxing match, McGee may just work at a high enough pace to take the fight and stay out of danger. I am not particularly high on McGee at this point, particularly since I have some concerns about his durability after the Ponzinibbio loss, and that will be my swing point here. While I am 50-50 on whether or not Garcia will actually fight a winning fight, I think he will be able to hit hard enough shots to make an impact on the scorecards and take some rounds based off of damage. I have little faith, but the pick is Garcia via decision.
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