You didn’t need to see the Marlon Vera vs. David Martinez fight to understand exactly what happened at UFC Mexico City.
This time, let’s say you’ve decided (unsurprisingly) that watching the entire fight card isn’t worth watching the entire Saturday evening. When you quickly check the results (here at MMAmania.com, right?!?) and read that Martinez beat Vera via unanimous decision, 29-28, there are no questions asked. You can even create a reasonably accurate, round-by-round play-by-play of the fight without having to see a single second of the fight.
‘Cheeto’ has done it again.
Berra failed to open his mind in his fourth consecutive loss. Inhumanly durable and possessed of god-given knockout power, Vera doesn’t take that many hits. It’s not that he doesn’t know how. We’re talking about a left-handed kickboxer with a very proficient left leg and one of the best boxing coaches in the sport. If Vera had taken the time to document all kinds of attacks that have hurt her opponents at some point, we would have been here for quite some time. He has a deep bag of tricks that rarely gets opened!
This match followed the same general path as other recent losses and losses of great Bantamweights of late. Vera can punch and kick with little reaction, but she doesn’t often attack actively. By the time he’s heated up, Vera is on the scorecards and needs a finish, or at least a huge moment.
There was a brief period where it actually worked. Vera smoked Dominick Cruz and Frankie Edgar late in their respective fights and hurt Rob Font, winning a clear decision despite throwing half a punch. However, the most recent win came in August 2022 and since then Vera has recorded five of six wins.
This loss is particularly disappointing despite its predictability. Vera came into the fight saying all the right things, talking about how she was completely focused on breaking free and how impossible it would be to win a decision in Mexico. Not only did Vera say all the right words in the lead-up, she was always in his corner giving him great advice. A quick look at his Instagram page consistently shows Vera doing hours of road work or doing a dozen live sparring rounds. There is no doubt that he puts in the work and has the right ideas in mind.
He would then corner Martinez against the fence while the punch count was low and just… kick him out of the cage. Even in the third time, Vera was not like that. really Leave it on until closing time. It’s enough to raise the ire of a fairly fair number of viewers, and I can’t imagine how irritating it must be for Team Vera to repeat the same song and dance over and over again.
But you can imagine Vera’s own feelings. In May 2020, Vera refused to shake Song Yadong’s hand and stormed out of the cage after losing a close decision, prompting him to rail against it on Twitter for days. Vera, who has suffered four or five more such competitive losses since then, no longer flies in anger.
Instead, he seemed angry, tired and accustomed to this exact fight.