One to Watch: Warlley Alves vs. Bryan Barberena

UFC 198 sees the promotion's first venture into Curitiba, Brazil, and it's kind of a big deal. In short, it's the event Brazilian fans have been yearning for since the premier MMA brand returned to the country in 2011.

Since the UFC's return to Brazil, they have had 23 events—only seven of which were deemed worthy of being pay-per-view shows. They have had fight cards in isolated Brazilian outposts such as Barureri, Uberlandia and Jaragua do Sul, but Curitiba has long been ignored—which is strange considering the MMA talents to have emerged from the area.

UFC 198 is well and truly making amends for overlooking the city. Curitiba has produced the likes of Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, Anderson Silva and Wanderlei Silva—all MMA luminaries in their own right. The former three hometown darlings (until Anderson Silva's late pull-out of his slated fight against Uriah Hall) are all featured on this card.

It's the UFC's first foray into Curitiba and their inaugural showing a football stadium in the country, in this case Arena de Baixada—the 40,000 capacity home of soccer team Clube Atletico Paranaense. It's only the fourth time the UFC have had a stadium show following their jaunts in Stockholm, Toronto and Melbourne—and this fight card justifies such a large arena.

Seamlessly mixing fights featuring Brazilian legends along with upcoming prospects, you could easily make a case for UFC 198 being the best card the promotion has ever had to offer on paper. The headliner, which sees heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum defend his title to the surging Stipe Miocic, typifies that.

However, one fight that has flown under the radar features one of Brazil's most treasured prospects in Warlley "Slingshot" Alves, who is taking on UFC plan-ruiner Bryan "Bam Bam" Barberena.

Alves, the Ultimate Fighter Brazil winner of season three, boasts an unblemished record of 10-0 with six of wins coming by way of submission. Barberena has an impressive 11-3 record to his name, boasting eight knockout wins from that tally.

At just 25-years-old, Slingshot is considered a top prospect in his native Brazil and justifiably so. A natural welterweight, Alves won his season of The Ultimate Fighter with consummate ease as a middleweight—steamrolling his opponents with knockout and submission wins to his credit. The final was also won with a submission, with his guillotine choke proving too much to handle for Marcio Alexandre Jr. Since then, he has notched up impressive victories over the likes of Alan Jouban, Nordine Taleb and Colby Covington—the two latter opponents of which also conceded defeat to Alves' crushing guillotine choke.

Alves is somewhat of a Brazilian throwback. He doesn't get bogged down in any pre-fight trash talk and gets straight to business. The closest the Brazilian media have got Alves to talk bad about any colleague was when he made a dig at UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor over their differing motives in fighting. "Money is good. But, my mum made me a man, not a whore. I'm a man, so I don't sell out. I am what I am and that's the way I live," he said to Globo. "I want to work and be paid for it. Of course I want to make three or four million someday, too. But, I'm not here for the money, I'm here to fight."

It may be early in his UFC tenure, but remaining undefeated as a welterweight—long one of MMA's most competitive weight classes—suggests this upstart is the real deal. It's expected that an impressive showing over Barberena would be a big boost to the Brazlian's career and will start his time featured in the UFC welterweight rankings.

Facing a hyped-up fighter is all too familiar for Bryan Barberena. The perennial underdog in Bam Bam derailed the UFC hierarchy's plans when he handily dealt with the highly-touted Sage Northcutt at UFC on Fox: Johnson vs. Bader back in January.

Northcutt, a 19-year-old Texan prospect, was widely expected to extend his unbeaten run against the unfancied Barberena—the biggest underdog at that event by some distance. However, the Californian, who trains out of the MMA Lab in Arizona, ignored the pre-fight preamble, weathered the "Super" Sage storm and handily dealt Northcutt an arm triangle submission his opponent simply couldn't recover from.

That was only the American's second submission win. But, it was Barberena's competency on the feet which startled Northcutt, which led to the fight eventually finding its way down on the mat. Barberena's proficiency on the feet is underrated but exemplified by his impressive ratio of KO wins and even his Bam Bam moniker.

With a UFC record of 2-1, which saw him lose against tough Canadian Chad Laprise, but earn impressive victories over Northcutt and Joe Ellenberger, there's no doubt that the scalp of Sage helped him earn this fight against Alves—a fight which is now the PPV card opener following Anderson Silva's unfortunate injury.

While Barberena's victory over Northcutt has evidently done a lot for him as the unfancied underdog, he was left a little frustrated at comments made after the fight by his young adversary—who he deemed to have made one too many excuses for losing their fight. (H/T MMA Fighting)

"I feel like he's trying to take away what I've done. Trying to put down that I beat him, like it was only because of this. In one article I saw, he said the choke wasn't what made him tap. It was that he couldn't breathe, because he was congested. No, he couldn't breathe because I was choking him. That's why.

"I can't help but take it as just excuses, him coming out and saying things. Even if they really did happen, like he did go to the doctor or whatever, it is what it is. He made the decision to step in there. We all have things. We all have injuries we go into the fight with. I had my own things that I went into the fight with that I'm not going to discuss or anything. Some people like to go out and talk about it, and some people don't. I think it's just an excuse to pretty much take away what I did, in a way. That's how I feel. I feel almost a little disrespected, how I'm not getting the credit that I deserve for beating him."

Alves is unlikely to entertain Barberena's favoured striking game over his ever-improving submission stylings. Likewise with Bam Bam, he will do his damnedest to ensure this fight doesn't transition to the canvas at any point. While both men are competent in each other's preferred position of fighting, this sounds like a classic grappler vs. striker match-up to me.

Barberena finds himself in a similar situation as to what he was in last time around with a fight against a highly-rated prospect looking to cement their place as one of the top guys in their respective weight class. But, while the Brazilian Alves' motivation is clearly that of trying to maintain his successful run in the UFC, Barberena will be inspired by the comments made by Northcutt following their fight to prove any potential doubters wrong. How will this fight pan out? Luckily, we get to find out on Saturday night.