Khetag Moraov and Justin Meyers met in a lightweight bout on the preliminary card at CFFC 145, which took place at New Jersey’s Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City.
John Morgan and Din Thomas called the action live. Check out the rest of the night’s preliminary action on the Cage Fury Fighting Championships YouTube channel. To see the night’s five-fight main card, head to UFC FIGHT PASS.
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The New Jersey man Myers has some support in the crowd trying to will on their man to another impressive performance here. Yeah, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Meyers with some body shots and maybe even some takedowns. We’ll see how he tries to go to solve the puzzle of this much taller athlete. And there you go. Right through the body. And he does it with the kick. does another one there from the southpaw stance. Try to work that long torso early with the early chop at the leg. And you can really see the height difference between the two of them. Dean’s listening to your advice early trying to chop down that taller man. Yeah. And he and he also did a good job just early off with the just circling to his right. You see how he’s circling off to his right and you don’t often see that with southpaws. A lot of south falls just like to walk their way to the left to try to line up their left hand, but he’s doing a good job of circling to his right to stay out of the range of morale. Nice footwork early. Talk about these work. Boy, another stinging inside low kick thus far. Is doing everything right. There’s a flurry though unleashing a rapid fire strikes. Myers wisely drives into the fence there trying to slow down that assault. Yeah, and I know that looked a little ugly, but I thought Myers did a good job of defending a lot of them punches. The shot was a little sloppy, but him defending them punches, I thought he did a good job of not taking any of them really on on full impact. Agree. Not an easy thing to do. Missed an onslaught like that. Now Marco trying to change levels. Drop it down. has got the single leg wrap drive wisely pushing down on the head in defense. Yeah, Meyer’s got to hurry up and transition off of this. He’s spending too much time in this position and the longer you spend it’s the more time War off has to build up his defense. Now we might try to look at an attack on the neck here. The taller man might have an option in the standing guillotine can’t quite get the wrap in place. But that spoke to exactly what you were saying Dean that Myers can’t let himself get stuck in these positions. Don’t get stuck in that position, especially this one. But being the shorter guy, like his head’s already pretty low and those elbows coming down from the top can do a lot of damage when you get stuck on a single leg or in this case, he’s in on the double. Talked about that danger right at the top. Couple of those elbows look nasty in there. Continues to defend well against the cage. Yeah, Myers just has to find a way to get to keep his head up a little higher. Like you see how he’s got his head up higher right there? That’s where he wants to kind of keep his head even when he’s in on the legs. But now he’s on a good be careful with that. Nice reversal from Ryan. Steps over to Mount as well. It’s a great work from Myers, but excellent counter from his opponent. Yeah, Myers got himself a little off balance trying to take the leg out, but finds himself on the bottom here. Tag on top right now. Under two minutes to go in the opening round. Nice shoulder pressure from the top. Walking his opponent’s head to the cage. Meer tried to buck and roll. Couldn’t quite escape. The turn to expose the back and an opportunity to get out. Has to be careful, of course. Happily takes the back. Yeah, that’s a technical mistake from Myers there when you just try to explode out and not use proper technique. And that’s again, he’s a young fighter and that what happened in that situation. Just trying to buck himself out. looking to attack the neck right now. Myers trying to spin inside, but that body light making it difficult. Bad position right now for Justin Myers. Oh, doesn’t quite have it on the neck. Just put a little squeeze on the chin. And look at this. A turn in for Myers. Great reversal from the Truth. Found himself in a difficult spot, but showed his character and battling out of it. Now Justin Myers in top position with a minute to go. Power up the hips. Get his legs away from the I like how Myers is using his head up against the head of Morovra. Just it’s a frame. He’s creating a frame with his head and that keeps Mor from being able to sit up or do a lot of different things from that bottom position. You can hear the corner saying head position, head position. Exactly what you’re alluding to. Spot on. Exactly. And this is what separates MMA jiu-jitsu from jiu-jitsu because in regular jiu-jitsu, your head is in the chest or behind. In MMA, you have to have that forward pressure like he’s doing here. Great work here. 20 seconds to go. Justin Myers on top. Has to be careful here. Mariah thinking arm bar triangle opportunity. Myers felt it. Defended well. Stays on top. And after a very, very difficult situation for Justin Meyers, he finds himself in a nice spot here in the closing seconds of round number one. He’s going to try to throw some strikes in there late and he’ll end punching. Fun fun opening round between these two talented athletes. Yeah, good stuff from both guys in that. I don’t know who I would give that round to though. I’m just thinking I’m thinking the same thing. Like I I should probably No, I’m watching this. I’m watching it, but I don’t know who I would actually give that round to. I mean, you had that nice flurry on the beat from Morav, right? But you had the reverse. I mean, man, good round. Seeing the skills on both sides for sure. Morph maybe thinking this was going to go nice and easy. He’s had a lot of first round finishes. And here we go. We see that flurry. He let throws a right hand right up the middle and then he just backs Myers up to the fence just throwing punches lefts and rights. Myers did a good job of defending those. takes us a bad shot. But now we see him trying to sweep the leg, gets himself a little off balance, gets hip tossed by Mariah. Mariah gets to top, gets him out position. Then he here we see back control by Mariah. He starts to slide off a little bit and we see him create we see Myers create an angle, turn into him. Now he’s in full guard where he ends this round. Did a good job there uh reversing that position and ended up in the full guard of morale. Upon reliving the highlights, I’m leaning Mariah round one, but it was very good for some momentum. For sure. For sure. Myers had some momentum late. We’ll see if he can capitalize on that here in round two. There’s that early flurry this time. Mariah wasting no time. Myers dives in on that single, but he left the head behind. And the reason why he was able to get that flurry is earlier I alluded to Meyers circling off to his to his right. He wasn’t doing it then, which allowed that straight path for Mariah to just run him down with that right hand. SL slips away, avoids that shot from Myers. And now there he go. There he goes. He’s moving to his right. He’s got to keep going to his right. He’s got to keep Mariah turn. Chopping the leg again as we discussed earlier. Dives in. Mariah though sprawled easily on that. Sits back. Can he latch up this guillotine? Is he falling back? Does he have If he does If he doesn’t get that, I’m sure I think he’s going to sweep him and try to catch him with the anaconda. Oh, yes. Look at this. Trying to get the squeeze. Can he get the tight? If he if he blocks that arm off, he might be able to cinch this in. Myers, to his credit, is doing everything he can to survive right now. You can see Mariah grimacing as he squeezes. Wow, nice job. Difficult situation once again and Justin Meyer showed his character. Yeah, he did a good job of just taking a centimeter, turn it into an inch, turning that into a foot to be able to get out. Kag Mariah has to be thinking, man, what do I got to do against Justin Myers, who’s now standing on the outside. Nice head position on the feet here as well. That’s it. body lock. Try to work that first round. Try to win that body. Yeah. Even though Mariah might have won that first round, I like where Myers is going with this in terms of like winning these little battles and getting some momentum back on his side. He may be able to steal these last two rounds if it does go that way. Controlling from the outside right now, trying to change levels. Mariah capable in defense, but taking the time to knee the legs a little bit, do a little bit of damage. Not just control here, but stay busy enough to maintain the position. Maybe do a little bit of slight damage with these little peppering blows as well. Rav has had a couple good looks at submissions thus far in this fight. Myers battled out of them both. Myers still looking for the take down from the outside. Yeah, I think Morav needs to find a way off the fence here. I think just being on the venture, he hasn’t had a lot of success from well except for the early throw, but you know, I think he he has more success in the open. He’s the longer fighter. I think he needs to get this fight in the open and try to use his strengths. Solid advice there from Dean Thomas. See if Mario agrees. Right now, Myers sliding down, changing level, switches to the single once again. Like that he’s chaining it together a little bit more now. not letting himself get stuck in those positions. Still though, finding a take down difficult. Look at this. Corner call for him. Tried to grab the kamura off that take down now. Sliding around the back and he turned it to an arm bar. Belly down. That left arm in trouble at the moment. It’ll be interesting to see if he can tighten this up. As of right now, I don’t think it’s tight enough, but he may. Yeah. Again, Mariah needs to separate. I think he I think he has more of an advantage on his feet, but this is a situation where he might just be primarily more of a grappler. Well, these grappling I mean, these exchanges have been high level and fun to watch. But I agree, use that frame to your advantage, right? You’re finding yourself incapable of submitting. Can you work from distance here where you’re the longer man? We’re going to find out. Well, just the idea of him just backing up here shows me that that’s probably not in his bingo card to to stand in strike. Couple of deep breaths there. And I don’t know if Justin Myers saw it, but now he drives forward trying to slip around to the back. 50 seconds to go in this opening round. Mor wisely reaching over and turning back inside. Great work here in the clinch. Goes to get it down. Got caught with it again. Normally that doesn’t happen twice. Look at this. But Meer scrables out of me. I am loving the grappling work in this fight. I think Morav gets a beautiful sweep but take down but just didn’t have enough energy to establish a position afterwards. But Myers did a good job of just out gritting in those positions. Fun stuff from these two athletes. Both victorious in their professional debuts. Trying to build on that tonight. Each of them blue chip prospects. Final seconds of round number two. Brad Davage, come on. Beat him up. Come on. Corner collar from Damage for Justin Myers. Wants to finish strong. He tries to do so. Another entertaining round. Did Me Myers maybe do enough to perhaps level this one back up? Certainly, you feel the momentum starting to shift. Mariah taking a couple of deep breaths here and there. Yeah, I thought he did enough to even up the score here. So, I thought he did enough to even up the score here. And I think the momentum is all going his way. And I think he feels it too when when you look over at Mariah. I mean, he looks he looks like he’s feeling it right now. Getting a couple of warnings there, it seems from the referee. Meanwhile, Meyers head up. We look at this. He’s got this Anaconda locked in. Almost there. He just didn’t get the proper angle. He did everything he could, but credit to Myers for being able to just maintain control over that top leg. Then he seen this head kick from Meyers as Morale was dipping to his to his right. Boom. Head kick caught him right there. Myers did a good job in my opinion of evening out evening out that round. I think so because I mean Mariah had that nice take down but he didn’t establish the position. He did have that really nice submission attempt but that would really be about it and it wasn’t successful. So deep breath there from the 22year-old rushing finding himself in a heck of a fight with Justin Meyers potentially even on the cards going into three. And I’m not a judge anyway. So what do I know? I’m not a judge. I don’t know. Exactly. They’ve been through much more training than we have. That’s for sure. Nice opening kick there from Myers, but Mariah punched over the top of it. Now maybe he will try to use that link cuz he just throwing elbows. Yeah, I think he needs to stay on the outside. He might not have a lot of confidence in his in his game outside, but I think he needs to stay on the outside. Yeah, that he’s been shown that he’s well matched in the grappling department. So, can you use that reach advantage? Right now, Myers walks past it and you can see as Mariah disengages. Man, that was kind of a tired little push away. Yeah, it was. Myers has been dealing with the same pain. I’m sure he’s not exactly 100% fresh right now. He’s trying to dig deep. Pushing forward. Looks for the take down. Hands are wrapped. Yeah, that was a pretty good bite on that shot. Nice. He’s got his his hands locked. It’s going to be tough to try to squeeze that other leg inside. Myers slips around to the back. Still has the hands class. Looks to kick the legs out. Lor has proven very difficult to take down this far. Stay in front of trying to turn inside. Stay in front of him. Stay in front of him. Right in front of his arm. Connect your hands. Connect your hands. That’s it. Good. Still a battle here in the clinch. Do not go behind. Time winding down. Well, here’s the thing that Myers needs to do. He’s obviously having a hard time. getting the take down. But what he should be focusing on is just at least try to offbalance Mariah. Like if you can’t get him down, at least keep him moving. Just move them forward, backwards, up and down. Just keep them moving. One thing you can’t do is just sit there. Yeah, I think that’s a great point, right? Like at this level, you’re not just going to muscle your way through a takedown, right? It’s a matter of leverage and balance and getting your opponent, as you said, off balance so you can take him down. And and you see the crates do it. A guy like Morav, Morav just he just keeps you moving until he finds the the way to get you down. Looked like there was a warning there as Mariah grabbed the cage on the takedown attempt. Might have been worthy of a point in that situation. The duction wasn’t made. Mariah now trying to swing as he disengages. There’s the time. You know how I feel about that. Is take a point. I think she’s going to right now. Corner one. Yes. One point for grabbing the cage. My goodness, that is huge. But you know what? I don’t hate the call. I I always say that like when they give you the rule, you know the rules. Yep. You grab defense, it should be a point. Yeah. And Myers almost had that taked down. I mean, that was very impactful. You take a look at it. Here’s a replay. You see gets him elevated and grabs onto the cage. I have no problem with that being a point deduction. Me neither. He knew what he did. That wasn’t an accident. He grabbed the fence to keep from getting taken down. Take a point. I agree. Boy, that could be massive. And Mariah knows it right now. He comes out swinging right away. He’s got to make something happen. If it’s even right now, he’s fighting for a draw. Oh, couple of strikes exchanged it slips around to the back. Mariah really pushing for advantage now knowing that the scorecards could get very interesting on the back hooks coming in. Meyers trying to address him potentially turn inside. Oh my goodness. Just like that. Mariah, just like that. It’s getting close. Oh, that’s deep. He’s got a squeeze on that one. You see, this is pretty close. He’s trying to pull down on the hand. He’s stuck at half the tap. Ketag Mariah pushed, tested, but finds a way to pull off the submission in the end. And you see why point deductions are good. Yes. Had he not had that point deduction, he might not have went for it like that because he know he needed to. Agreed. Wow. What a great fight between these two. And one mistake was all it took. I don’t even know if it was a mistake. Just one opportunity. It wasn’t even really a mistake. There was nothing really that Justin Myers did fully wrong. He just got overwhelmed and Morov took advantage of the opportunity. My goodness. And I agree, right? I mean, you know, he was tired. You can see now how exhausted he is. And Myers is as well, man. What a great fight that was for Justin Myers. I know he’s disappointed, but he is a hell of a prospect. But Mariah, Fury, right, after that point deduction, he took it up to another level. I was like, man, we see and this is what he did. He jumped in on the back of Meyers. Said, you know what? I got to get this back. I can’t let this fight go this way. He secures his back position, gets back control here, throws in that far side hook. The near side hook is already in. Here comes that far side hook. Myers tries to roll out, but just Mariah said, “You know what? I can’t go out like this.” Then we see him get the arm under the neck and just overwhelms Meyers and just finishes him. That was a hardfought victory Mariah who had been finishing opponents with relative ease. That certainly was not the case tonight. That man Justin Meyer is going to be disappointed to pick up his first professional loss, but showed his heart and showed his skills. Unbelievable fight. Let’s take it up to our man Dr. David Sarna. Ladies and gentlemen, this bout was stopped at 3 minutes and 31 seconds in the third round. Winner by tap out by way of the rear naked choke out of the blue corner, Katak Iron Mar. Third round submission, rear naked choke. Could have been an absolute mess had that thing gone to the scorecard. Some competitive rounds. a point deduction in there as well. But I saw two great athletes in there tonight.
1 Comment
Justin would've smashed him if not for the fence grab