The Conway UFC Predictions: Covington vs Lawler 

The Conway UFC Predictions: Covington vs Lawler 

By Alex Conway 

The UFC heads to Newark this weekend, which sits just a throw across the river away from New York City.

Former UFC interim welterweight champ Colby Covington will take on former undisputed welterweight champion Robbie Lawler in the main event, and while the co-main between Jim Miller and Clay Guida is fun, the rest of the card is pretty sparse.

We’re going to focus on the top two fights for the predictions piece and then give some thoughts on a few fighters of note sprinkled towards the bottom of the event.

Covington vs. Lawler

It was believed that Covington had already done enough to warrant a full title shot after capturing the interim belt against Rafael dos Anjos in June 2018. But the timing never worked out between his injuries, then champion Tyron Woodley’s injuries and the UFC calendar at large.

Eventually Covington was stripped of the belt, hasn’t fought in over a year and got passed over blatantly by the UFC for his title shot when they gave now champion Kamaru Usman a crack at Woodley in March.

You have to believe that Covington thought getting passed over again was a real possibility and that is why he’s booked against Lawler for Saturday.

Covington has a high-paced wrestling attack and although he isn’t a great striker, he does throw unconventional stuff like spinning backfists and kicks occasionally.

What Covington really likes to do is get in your face, push you back behind the black lines and into the fence and then level change into a takedown. From there he really takes whatever you give him. If you defend low, he’ll look to clasp his hands around your waist and if you defend high he’ll drop down for singles and doubles and work to the back.

Covington has mostly beaten his opponents because they can’t keep up with his work rate. But Lawler does a few things that make this a super intriguing fight.

For starters, when Lawler feels like you’re going to try and take him down, he goes berserker mode and throws heavy strikes quickly and from the moment the referee tells him he’s allowed to.

His fights against Johny Hendricks and Ben Askren are a good example of where he clearly wanted to hurt a wrestler with something big and set a fast pace so that they couldn’t sit back and make reads on when to shoot.

Lawler likes to maker wrestlers fight defensively. He wants to make them think about getting hit rather than allow them to set up combinations which act as precursors to takedown attempts.

The next point I’d make is that Lawler is an excellent defender of the takedown. Where he really excels is making sure his hips never connect with his opponents’ hips in a clinch situation. The Hendricks and Askren fights are again good examples of this.

More importantly, not only does Lawler defend by keeping his hips away, he uses that space to fire off heavy knees to the body that have a real impact. Lawler is excellent at hurting his opponents from an unusually close distance. While Covington is working for a takedown, watch out for him to get by big knees that could slow his pace.

The biggest question I have is what this fight looks like if it goes beyond one round. Covington was able to build momentum against dos Anjos, Demian Maia and Dong Hyun Kim as those fights went on, eventually just outpacing them to unanimous decision wins.

Lawler faded in the first Hendricks fight and over the course of his fight with dos Anjos. It’s important to note that he suffered a serious knee injury during the dos Anjos fight that most likely hampered his ability to do what he wanted.

If Lawler can catch Covington with body shots early, I’d be curious to see if Covington can keep his traditional pace.

I’m feeling like the upset is a real possibility here and I’m going with Lawler for the win.

Miller vs. Guida

It seems crazy that Jim Miller and Clay Guida’s paths have never crossed inside the Octagon. Both fighters have been in the UFC for well over a decade and have been mainstays in its deepest division, lightweight.

You know if a card is happening in New Jersey the UFC will make every effort to put Jim Miller, a New Jersey native, on it.

It’s hard to get a read on where both men are in their careers. Guida is coming off the biggest name win of his career against a decrepit B.J. Penn. Who knows what to make of that win, but Guida also has a knockout win over Joe Lauzon recently.

Miller should have an advantage on the feet. Both fighters are traditional wrestle-boxers but Miller is more diverse. He’s better at kicking range than Guida and also Miller has nasty elbows from the clinch.

I think Miller will get the win because he’s got more ways to win on the feet and is a longstanding black belt on the ground.

Miller for the win.

Mickey Gall, Antonina Shevchenko

These are two fighters that the UFC found via two of the UFC’s more successful talent development content creation methods, “Dana White’s Lookin’ for a Fight” and “Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series.”

The UFC has invested resources in both fighters but it’s interesting that they both appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum of being just not quite ready for the UFC.

Gall is probably too green for the UFC, as is Shevchenko in some ways, and you kind of wish Gall hadn’t gotten such a big push against CM Punk and Sage Northcutt, with no real road map of who to fight next once those bouts were over with.

Shevchenko is more polished than Gall, but at 34, she’s still a prospect in many ways and you have to wonder if she can get good enough fast enough before age starts to negater her progress. Also, she fights in the same weight class as her sister, so what is the path she’s on? It can’t be a title path, right?

A lot of people might assume Gall is a young prospect who just needs time to simmer, but in reality, he’s 27. That isn’t old by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s also old enough that you have to wonder how much better he can really get.

Depending on how these fighters look Saturday could determine how much we see of them in the future. It appears they are set up with winnable fights, but if they lose, you have to wonder how much longer they stick around