It’s time for another edition of Writer vs Fighter – the only place where you can match-up those who punch faces with those who write about it (theoretically match them up at least). Each week, we pit the picks of a staff member against a professional fighter. This week, we’re joined by the UFC’s Rani Yahya, in a virtual throwdown for UFC Vegas 24 pick supremacy.
Here’s how each week has gone so far:
Joe McDonagh def. Randy Costa (3-2) – Fight Island 7
Doug Murray def. Bryan Barberena (2-1) – Fight Island 8
Shawn Bitter DRAW Mike Rodriguez (1-1) – UFC 257
Dalton Rosta def. Jay Anderson (7-2) – UFC Vegas 18
Austin Arnett def. Heath Harshman (2-1) – UFC 258
Sam Hughes def. Gumby Vreeland (3-0) – UFC Vegas 19
Mike McClory def. Orion Cosce (5-2) – UFC Vegas 20
Josh Evanoff def. Cortney Casey (2-1) – UFC 259
Aiemann Zahabi def. Alex Behunin (5-0) – UFC Vegas 21
Sergio Pineiro def. Kai Kamaka III (7-0) – UFC Vegas 22
Gabriel Gonzalez def. Vince Morales (7-4) – UFC 260
Jordan Leavitt def. Rodney James Edgar (4-2) – UFC Vegas 23
And with the victory last week, the fighters bring themselves within striking distance. They now trail only 6-5 with 1 draw.
Here’s how it works: both writer and fighter must pick the winner of the main event, co-main event, and featured main card bout. A correct pick will earn one point. Both must then pick a “lock” — the fighter they are most sure will win their fight — from the entire card. That’s two points. The “dog” comes next, and a correct underdog pick earns three points.
It’s that simple. Five picks: Main, co-main, and featured fight winners, lock, and underdog. To the winner go the spoils. Not actual spoils, but bragging rights anyway.
On this week’s edition, our own Ryan Fortune takes the helm to defend the lead. He’ll be facing off against WEC and UFC great, Rani Yahya. Can Fortune hold off the submission and keep the lead? let’s see what the picks look like.
There’s little margin of error for our combatants with a lot of the picks coming up the same. They agree on both the co-main and the featured fight for this weekend. Each took Drakkar Klose to beat the veteran Jeremy Stephens and Andrei Arlovski to beat Chase Sherman. They also matched with their locks of the week, taking Tony Gravely to beat Anthony Birchak.
So the winner will have to come from two places. The first of those places is the main event. Fortune is going to ride with the favorite and former champion in Robert Whittaker, whereas Yahya is feeling good about Kelvin Gastelum as the underdog. However, even if Yahya botches that, he can make up ground in the underdog. For that pick, Yahya is taking Juan Espino in his fight against Alexandr Romanov. Fortune will be taking Gerald Meerschaert who welcomes Bartosz Fabinski back to middleweight.
May the best writer/fighter win! We’ll have the results up after the event!
Results: This was a rough one for Rani. The co-main event, where both writer and fighter picked Klose, was scrapped. Rani’s lock came through, but both he and Ryan had picked Gravely. The dog came through for Ryan, as he went with GM3. Both chose Arlovski to win, which he did, but again, Ryan came through in the main event. The writer takes it, 7-3. With the loss of the co-main, only seven points were on the board.
