The Patriot Center in Fairfax, Virginia will host a UFC Fight Night event on April 4 that features a featherweight main event between Chad Mendes and Ricardo Lamas. Despite coming off a loss, Mendes will be the betting favorite in this one when the line hits the sport books. Though he clearly lost the fight, the opponent was the titleholder Jose Aldo, who incidentally is on an 18-fight winning streak and has not lost in nearly 10 years.
Now, Lamas is no slouch, as he has gone 6-1 in his last seven UFC fights, with his lone loss coming to Jose Aldo as well. Lamas is no slouch, but few can picture the well regarded Mendes losing two fights in a row, especially here where he will own advantages in strength and wrestling that will complicate things for Lamas greatly.
The co-main event comes in the lightweight division as veteran Jorge Masvidal takes on Al Iaquinta. Iaquinta is 6-2 in the UFC and he has won three fights in a row. Those wins came against Joe Lauzon, Ross Pearson and Rodrigo Damm, all men with a lot more experience than him, as is the case here. Masvidal is 28-8 and he is coming off a 2014 where he quietly went 3-0. In defeating Pat Healy, James Krause and Daron Cruikshank, the competition level is close between the two, so a loss in this fight will be a real momentum snapper for the man that loses the fight. Masvidal was originally slated to meet Bobby Green, but Iaquinta was moved into his spot.
Also at lightweight, Michael Chiesa and Mitch Clarke do battle in a showdown of fighters with identical 11-2 records. Chiesa defeated Iaquinta to win the Ultimate Fighter reality show season 15, and he has gone an up and down (3-2) since. One of the losses comes to Masvidal, and another comes to veteran Joe Lauzon, who Iaquinta has since dispatched. Clark will have been off for nine months when he enters the cage, but he is on a two-fight winning streak that includes a win over Iaquinta, so the UFC appears to be shuffling the deck in their middle ranks with these two fights, as what happens next could be widely different depending on who wins the bouts. If Iaquinta wins the lead fight, he will be on to bigger and better things, while a win for Masvidal may lead to yet another hard fight.
The bottom line is Masvidal fights safe at times, and all his wins in his current streak went the distance. Masvidal may tighten up in order to get thee win, and he has a tendency to coast if he feels he is ahead, so his future isn’t as secure as Iaquinta’s. Clark, would extend his streak to three fights and his win over Iaquinta deserves some additional credit, especially if Iaquinta wins. Chiesa just needs to win to begin righting the ship. He is coming off a “Fight of the Night” performance for his battle with Joe Lauzon back in September, but he received a brutal cut in the loss. Losing two fights in a row is not where Chiesa wants to be, and he is the only fighter of the lightweight quartet facing that possibility. On the undercard of the event, Gray Maynard makes his return to the lightweight division as he faces Alexander Yakovlev.
As well as the featherweight main event, the weight class takes center stage as Dustin Poirier faces Carlos Diego Ferreira and Clay Guida takes on Robbie Peralta. Poirier is the fighter to watch here, as at 26 years old and with a fine 16-4 record, he has the potential to affect the division for years to come, but he is coming off a heartbreaking loss to Conor McGregor in his last outing that could still have effects. In Ferreira, he is getting a fighter who faced his first defeat in his last outing, making him susceptible to the same baggage of Poirier.
The card also features two fights in the women’s bantamweight division as Julianna Pena faces Milana Dudieva and Liz Carmouche takes on Lauren Murphy.
