The APEX facility in Las Vegas hosts this week’s UFC Las Vegas 99 event, whose fight card is populated with eleven bouts, but only a few feature world-class fighting talent.

Other bouts offer journeyman fighters yearning to graduate from the depths of their perspective weight classes a chance to earn an impressive win and solidify themselves within the organization.

To say that most of the fighters competing on this card Saturday are fighting for their UFC future is reality in my judgment. So now, besides intensity, add a sprinkle of pressure onto these athletes.

Michel Pereira +110 vs. Anthony Hernandez -130
Middleweight (185 pounds) main event

To provide readers with a perspective on the dynamically equipped, versatile mixed martial artists that populate the UFC middleweight division, let me state that these two killers, Michel Pereira and Anthony Hernandez, are ranked twelve and thirteen, respectively!

Pereira, a flamboyant striker, mixes his black belts in BJJ and Karate to detrimental results for opponents. He’s huge for the weight class (which always mandates keeping a close eye on his weigh-ins). He’s explosive, athletic and sprinkles the unorthodoxy of Capoeira striking into his attacks.

Since an unusually odd loss to Diego Sanchez in 2020, Pereira has won his last eight fights in impressive form, albeit against moderately talented UFC competition, save for a victory over fellow Brazilian Santiago Ponzinibbio at welterweight a few years back.

In Anthony ‘Fluffy’ Rodriguez, we get an opponent for Pereira, who is anything but what his nickname indicates.

Hernandez, a brown belt in BJJ with a solid wrestling base, arrives with the momentum of winning his last five fights. The last three combatants he faced presented a diversity of attacks besides representing a step up in competition for Hernandez, and he reacted by finishing all three men.

Hernandez is more calculated, matriculated, and premeditated in his approach to opponents than Pereira. His athleticism, legwork, and wrestling base allow him to transition quickly into dominant positions as soon as any opponent makes the slightest error.

Once the bell is struck for this fight, Pereira will take his pressure-striking right to Hernandez, and Hernandez will be forced to deal immediately with that forcefulness.

Hernandez must manage this fight into the second round and beyond, and provided he is able to withstand early hurricane force from Pereira, he stands a great chance of overcoming Pereira later in this fight by using intelligence, patience, and skill.

Conditioning and fight IQ are the foundational aspects for anyone competing against Pereira, and in Fluffy, the Brazilian destroyer has drawn as intelligent a fighter as there is in the division as well as the whole of the UFC.

Hernandez will need to draw Pereira into his wrestling, mauling range, then engulf the brazen Brazilian with his smothering grappling. This will force the power striker into defending himself as well as suck some of the explosivity from the monster by making him grind to get away from the clasp.

I regard Pereira as a front-running hare. He’s more explosive and powerful, but he also expends great energy on his attacks. Foes that can navigate fights into the later stages of three rounds, and this is a five-round fight, can earn success against Pereira as a determined foe and the onset of fatigue usurps the will from the buzzsaw.

Hernandez, the tortoise, has all the natural ability, and he possesses the fight acumen to navigate this battle into the late second round and beyond. I see maneuvering this fight into the later rounds as mandatory for Fluffy’s chances of winning. I believe he’ll be able to use his mind to conquer Pereira’s matter in this matchup.

Kyler Phillips -470 vs. Rob Font +360
Bantamweight (135lbs.) co-main event

This fight is such a fitting example of what ‘value’ really means in gambling.

Phillips, a brown belt in BJJ and a Nikidokai black/red belt, is called Matrix because that’s exactly how he moves. He trains with several world-class bantamweight mixed martial artists at the MMALab in Phoenix, AZ, where the competition is high and the respect is even higher.

Suga Sean O’Malley, Mario Bautista, Marcus McGhee, and Clayton Carpenter are just a few of the world-class fighters sharing rounds at the Lab with each other. There, steel is sharpening steel when it comes to these men’s abilities.

Phillips is extremely athletic. He’s quick as a cat, and in mixed martial arts weaponry, he can strike, wrestle, grapple, and gruel all night long.

He’s finally earned his top-15 stature, and with this fight against Font, he hopes to solidify his ascent within the bantamweight division, one that’s chock full of killers.

Rob Font is a determined, experienced striker from Massachusetts. He is an exceptional boxer and is complimented by a brown belt in BJJ. Font’s competed at lightweight, featherweight and now bantamweight, which at 37 is of note, for those weight cuts to 135 pounds can’t be easy for any young fighter, let alone a lower-weight athlete now pushing forty.

While these men are similar in height and reach, it’s the age, quickness and agility that separate these two in my handicap.

Once this fight begins, Phillip’s movement, athleticism and overall mixed martial arts weaponry will be on display. While he may not be able to finish the proud warrior, it’s my take that he wins a one-sided fight if there is no finish.