Monday Early morning Hangover: Did Dana White discover his following superstar at UFC Vegas 15?

UFC Vegas 15 went down last Saturday night within UFC APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada, which observed Anthony Smith snap his two-fight shedding streak by submitting Devin Clark in the principal party of the evening (see it once again in this article).

When that get was impressive, the winner of the co-most important party is who actually caught Dana White’s focus. The UFC president could not halt singing Miguel Baeza’s praises after he submitted Takashi Sato in round amount two, which moved Baeza to 3- inside of the Octagon, 10- over-all in his vocation.

In the course of the put up-struggle presser, White talked about Baeza’s acquire and his possible as a star for the promotion.

“He’s a terrible boy. He looked great, male. He’s a single of the guys we highlighted this week in ‘If you really don’t know…’ and he came out and shipped tonight,” mentioned White (via MMA Junkie).

What is even additional impressive is that “Caramel Thunder” has completed all 3 of his UFC foes — Matt Brown, Hector Aldana and Sato — in two rounds, giving him a full of 8 finishes in 10 victories consequently significantly. And if there is a single issue that Dana likes, it is finishes.

Which is one particular of the causes why the prime MMA promoter in the recreation feels he has a star on his arms, and getting Puerto Rican, White feels he can carry in whole new crop of admirers immediately after building the most of his sudden co-headlining obligations in “Sin Metropolis.”

“He had a primetime location on ESPN and, in this organization, what we do is we put together the platform for you to go out and present most people who you are, and what you ought to do is go out and make folks communicate about you on Sunday and Monday. He did that tonight,” he said.

“He went out there and experienced a large platform – we arrived out of the school football recreation tonight – so yeah, the kid’s a stud. 10-, Puerto Rican. When New York opens up all over again, you know what I imply? Get him fighting in New York,” mentioned White, who claims options are in motion to perhaps stage a battle in Puerto Rico for the 1st time.

“I’ve been chatting about Puerto Rico, far too. We talked about going to Puerto Rico a very long time back, I talked about setting up a Functionality Institute in Puerto Rico, so he could be the dude. … He could be our Puerto Rican star.”

Obtaining the backing of the boss is usually a excellent thing, just inquire Khamzat Chimaev.

Baeza has set himself up for stardom, but as we’ve found in the earlier, there have been several fighters arrive out of the gate powerful — catching White’s attention in the procedure — only to tumble brief of the anticipations White experienced of them.

Cynthia Calvillo and Volkan Oezdemir are two names who occur to head.

And which is not a knock on Calvillo or Oezdemir, they are two gifted fighters, but it just goes to exhibit you how speedily White can drop out of appreciate with a once-blossoming star. It also show just how hard it is to regularly acquire beneath the UFC banner.

Do you consider Baeza has what it takes to be a breakthrough UFC star?