UFC Fight Island 1 Predictions – Calvin Kattar vs. Dan Ige

The first midweek Fight Island fight night card will be headlined by an important matchup at the top of the featherweight division that’s somewhat gone under the radar. Calvin Kattar vs. Dan Ige is an intriguing matchup for a lot of reasons, especially with both fighters being in a good position to demand title consideration should they win this bout. After Alexander Volkanovski controversially defended his featherweight strap at the weekend against Max Holloway, a number of fighters in the division will be eyeing a matchup with the Australian champion before the end of the year.

Calvin Kattar has developed a reputation as being one of the best boxers in the featherweight division alongside the elite tier of boxers on the entire roster. With a reasonably long reach for the division but more notably a long fighting style, Kattar approaches fights with a crisp, volume boxing game often growing better as fights go on. Kattar does sometimes tend to be a slow starter, often taking reads in the first 5 minutes of fights to develop an understanding of his opponent similarly to the way Max Holloway and now bantamweight king Petr Yan approach their fights. Offensively, Kattar feints well to set up his combinations – often touching opponents up with his piston like jab and waiting until the opportunity presents itself to throw his power shots. In addition, he makes sure to attack the body often to bring his opponents guard down to open up opportunities for head strikes – he usually ends combinations with a left hook to the body which is probably one of his best punches. Kattar’s power comes most significantly in his straight punches and uppercuts, often catching opponents right at the end of his range with straight shots and punishing fighters who attempt to crash the pocket with short range uppercuts (similarly to the tactic Holloway used to counter Volkanovski’s pocket entries at UFC 251).

Defensively Kattar absorbs a lot of strikes (6.46 SApM), but the stats tend to give a misleading read into how much danger he is actually threatened with. His first round of fights tend to be spent on the backfoot, using good lateral movement and processing the information he’s able to from his opponents offence which sometimes means he takes some strikes in order to make his reads. His most glaring weakness is to low kicks, struggling to check them because of his boxing heavy stance. Renato Moicano was able to dismantle Kattar through countering his entries and combinations with both inside and outside low kicks. However, Kattar has shown to have developed his defence since then, absorbing a lot in his last fight against Jeremy Stephens but displaying the ability to check more than he has done in previous fights before earning one of the KO’s of the year with a brutal elbow.

In terms of grappling, Kattar does boast good TDD (77%) and has a good ability to scramble back to his feet when he is taken down. He’ll need to be on point with his scrambling and TDD in this fight as I expect Ige to try to take advantage of the grappling edge he has when he can.

Dan Ige has become the dark horse in the featherweight division, who many (including myself) have wrongly doubted his ability to hang with the top 10/15 of the division. Primarily a grappler, Ige’s striking has seemed to develop with every fight he’s had in the UFC – most notably in his fight against Kevin Aguilar when he seemed to outperform his previous fights in terms of his striking significantly. On the feet, Ige comes forward with an intelligent pressure game which is exhausting to face. He swings heavy hooks and often blends fake takedowns entries with uppercuts in order to land significant shots or back his opponent up to the fence from which he can begin to look for takedowns.

Once getting the fight to the mat Ige is at his most comfortable. A black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Ige has a very good submission and back take game and also uses ground and pound well to either create an opportunity for a finish or look to take the back from where he can look for the rear naked choke. Much like lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov (and as I mentioned in the Blaydes vs. Volkov breakdown 3 weeks ago), Ige uses the Dagestani wrist control or cross body wrist control to hold his opponents down. This makes it incredibly hard for his opponents to get back to their feet if they attempt to get to the cage. This is something we’re seeing a lot more of in MMA at the moment and guys that are becoming comfortable with controlling their opponents when they’re close to the cage is causing fighters a lot of problems to scramble and get back up to their feet. Ige spent a lot of time in this position in his fight against Jordan Griffin, which he won on the time he accumulated control – which will likely be his most consistent path to victory in this matchup with Kattar.

Dan Ige has tended to be a fast starter in his UFC career and he will likely need to capitalise on Calvin Kattar’s tendency to start fights slow in this matchup. On the feet Kattar is the much better striker and as Ige hasn’t really shown the willingness to use the low kick I struggle to see him having much joy on the feet at all. Ige will have to get this fight to the mat if he’s to have prolonged success, but due to Kattar’s good scrambling ability and TDD I find it hard to see Ige controlling him to either look for the finish or win minutes across a 25 minute fight. For that reason and also Kattar’s ability to grow in to fights as they progress, I’ll side with ‘the Boston Finisher’ to pick his shots intelligently in the early rounds, avoiding the early danger that Ige poses and eventually finding a finish towards the end of the middle rounds.

Prediction:
Calvin Kattar via TKO – Round 4
(Please note: This prediction is not associated with the MMAPlay365 handicapper, packages, subscriptions, services or hub)