UFC 298 Cage Locks: Volkanovski vs. Topuria nearly a pick’em on chalky card

February 17, 2024

UFC 298 features a scintillating championship headliner when 145-pound great Alexander Volkanovski aims to defend his title a sixth time, this time against undefeated challenger Ilia Topuria.

DUNEDIN, Fla. – Alek Manoah expected to make a big jump during his sophomore year at West Virginia. A highly touted recruit who’d performed well as a freshman, he’d climbed into the rotation and with continued progress, he’d set himself up well for the Major League Baseball draft a year later. Then the games started and “it just didn’t happen, went backwards,” he recalled. “Found myself middle of the season, in the bullpen, not even as a starter. I remember those days being really tough, trying to get to the big leagues and trying to get drafted and trying to do all that stuff and finding a way out of that rut.”

Eventually, Manoah did find a way out, the Toronto Blue Jays drafted him 11^th overall in 2019 and a rapid ascension to the majors, an all-star game, a post-season start and a Cy Young Award finalist season all followed. Now, after an unfathomably difficult 2023 that capsized his progress and raised doubts about his future with the club, the newly married 26-year-old is looking to draw from that college experience, even if, “it’s totally new getting your butt kicked in the big leagues, that’s for sure.”

“There’s 50,000 every night, with social media and all that stuff nowadays, things can get crazy,” he explained Friday while speaking with media at Blue Jays camp. “There have been a lot of times where I’ve gone back to old videos from college, old notebooks, old journals, things like that, trying to think of some of those sayings and quotes that got me back into my tiger mentality. So, yeah, there’s been some struggle, but struggling at the big-league level, obviously, is something different.”

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Also different is how the end of his 2023 season went down, as he didn’t pitch again after he was optioned a second time Aug. 11, ending up on triple-A Buffalo’s temporary inactive list.

The Blue Jays said he underwent several medical tests during that time and he eventually was shut down after receiving injections in his right arm.

Manoah declined to revisit how his season ended, saying “when your team is going to a playoff and you’re not there, it’s tough, but talking about 2023, for me is kind of not worth it, it’s in the past right now for me, which is really good.”

“It was a tough year,” he added. “It was a tough mental grind, going through all that stuff, being a guy that you always want your teammates to trust you, that you’re going to go out there and be a bulldog. For me, that was the toughest part. I’ve done everything I can to be healthy and feel great and do everything I can to help my teammates this year.”

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To that end, after reflecting on how his 2023 went so far off the rails, Manoah spent the off-season doing “really detailed” training to help with his mobility, speed, agility, and strength with help from his inner circle. His brother, Erik Manoah Jr., pushed him during workouts while his wife, Marielena, who recently earned certification as a nutritionist, helped with his diet and hydration.

Best-shape-of-my-life may be spring training’s most tired trope, but it really fits in this case.

“Alek understood what needed to do, the work that he needed to put in to get back to where he was in ’22, and you can see looking at him that he’s done the first step,” said Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman. “I watched him (throw a side Thursday) and he looks a lot more like himself than he ever did last year. When you’re a young kid, you don’t understand the toll that having a season like he did in ‘22 is going to take on you the next time you pick up a ball. He got off to a bad start last year and couldn’t get back to a good spot. He pitched through some things at the time trying to just be one of our guys. I think he understands now that he just wasn’t in a good spot.”

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Gausman is no stranger to facing sudden struggles after experiencing big-league success and recalls how difficult it is once a season begins snowballing the wrong way. He describes the feeling of being the on mound under those circumstances as “debilitating, to be honest, mentally, physically.”

“You start trying everything you can do to stop the bleeding and sometimes make it even worse,” he continued. “After every good inning, you’re kind of taking a sigh of relief, but also worried about the next one. It’s tough. And the first time you go through it in the big leagues is completely different. You can struggle in college or in the minor leagues, it’s just not the same. In the big leagues, everything is under the spotlight.”

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Manoah can certainly attest, describing how he began to second-guess himself during starts, worried about whether his mechanics were right, was his stuff going to be there, was he throwing the right pitch. He conceded that he didn’t have the best off-season after his brilliant 2022 campaign and was “still searching for things” at spring training a year ago. While he felt good heading into the season, his stuff wasn’t where he needed it to be and that led to constant adjustments, “just trying to get back to me, and we just never got there.”

“The me is the guy that grabs the ball, who cares what the technology says, who cares what the scoreboard says, who cares what anything says?” said Manoah. “I’m going out there and I’m attacking you. And I feel really good about being that guy again this year.”

Feeding into that is the knowledge that he’ll be able to trust the work that he’s put in, the strength he has, no longer needing to muscle up to generate more power.

The way his delivery looks “says a lot about him,” said manager John Schneider. “When he’s on point with that, his stuff plays. He gets swings and misses in the zone. He gets weak contact in the zone. That’s what we’ll look at, first and foremost.”

Eventually, the types of swings his stuff induces will matter, but for the time being, Manoah has the provisional hold on a spot in the rotation. When the next inevitable hiccups arrive, the Blue Jays are counting on him going through what Schneider described as “the biggest bump in his career thus far” providing him with “a little bit better perspective on how to handle things and understanding that it’s not going to be great all the time.”

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“Really, when you think about it, between when he got drafted and then short season in the minor-leagues, pandemic and then all of a sudden he kind of burst onto the scene, it’s been all great for him,” Schneider added. “When there are ups and downs, this year, the next year and the next year, he’s going to be that much more well versed in and how to navigate it. Relying on his teammates is a big thing. And when you go through a tough year, it teaches you a lot about yourself.”

Manoah experienced that once already at West Virginia and now, on a much grander stage, with much higher stakes, he’s determined to do it again.

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UFC 298 Cage Locks: Volkanovski vs. Topuria nearly a pick’em on chalky card

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