Joaquin Buckley walked into UFC Edmonton media day on Wednesday grinning like a guy on a five-fight heater. He’s actually on a two-fight losing streak, and he sounded about as worried as a man ordering room service.
The UFC’s YouTube upload of his media day session ran under the title “Proper Mike can’t beat me,” which covers his position on Saturday’s main event against Mike Malott pretty thoroughly. The promotion’s X account also posted a clip of Buckley, captioned with a note that he was all smiles ahead of the headliner. A grinning emoji came with it, for anyone who needed help.
The card
UFC Fight Night 291 goes down Saturday, Oct. 17, at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta. Buckley vs. Malott is the welterweight main event. Erin Blanchfield vs. Jasmine Jasudavicius fills the co-main slot, and MMA Mania noted that fight carries title implications. Jasudavicius gets to do it in front of her home country.
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The reviews of the full lineup are not kind. MMA Mania’s X-Factor breakdown called the headliner “certainly an intriguing main event” and then took a flamethrower to the rest of the card, describing it as filled with “Canadian no-hopers and Wikipedia-less unknowns.” Yahoo Sports was friendlier in its weekly power rankings, saying the main event “should be a banger for a fight.”
So the pressure lands squarely on the top two fights. That’s usually where you want Buckley.
The Herb Dean drill
Buckley’s fight week started with a bit. On Tuesday he posted a training video, which MMA Fighting wrote up, where a training partner has to physically restrain him while he unloads on a punching bag. In the clip, Buckley yells at his partner to get up and keep him from murdering the guy, and he names the exercise after Herb Dean.
The joke works because Dean has taken heat lately. Alex Pereira ripped him for missing fouls at the end of Pereira’s UFC White House loss to Ciryl Gane, and Dean has been criticized for early stoppages, late stoppages and a reluctance to take points. Buckley’s caption went the other direction, though: “I made a fun drill inspired by @herbdeanmma 💯 not many like him in the game wish more refs did it like him.”
For the record, Dean has worked only two of Buckley’s 17 UFC fights. Buckley won both.
The take
I’ll always take a fighter who gets asked if he can win and just says yes, with no hedging and no speech about respecting his opponent. Buckley coming off two straight losses makes the line riskier, and that’s exactly why I like it. If he drops a third, “Proper Mike can’t beat me” goes in every recap on Sunday morning. If he wins, he gets to point at a Wednesday video and say he told everybody. Either way, he put his name on it with a smile, and the cage door closes Saturday night at Rogers Place.
