I like to think it’s strictly coincidence that two of the three titleholders at UFC 259 have names pronounced as yawn, and that by making Amanda Nunes something like a 150-to-1 favorite over Megan Anderson Vegas is trying to make us do just that, but I’m telling you — something’s in the air for Saturday night. These triple title fight bills are sometimes sloggy affairs, but this particular ensemble has a strange feel to it.

For starters, whenever people start flirting with somebody’s “invincibility” in the UFC some Holly Holm or other comes along and makes idiots of us all.

Amanda Nunes has been blowing up everybody she comes into contact with. She’s been blowing people up in two different weight classes (or, at least one-and-a-half, since women’s featherweight is basically an under construction Death Star). She is on the verge of cleaning out every division she can be associated with, and honestly, she just kind of makes mandibles spin around people’s heads whenever she lands a punch. It was Nunes that essentially booked Cyborg’s one-way trip to Bellator, after all.

There’s really no way she should lose to Anderson, who is the definition of a woodwork contender. Anderson is being ushered into a title fight because Nunes has already laid waste to everybody else. She’s the only one still standing fully intact in a pile of smoking ash and rubble. Yet there are intangibles. Anderson has those cool tattoos and, even more dangerous, a Why The Fuck Not attitude. There is virtually no pressure on her to overthrow anybody. In fact, nobody expects her to do anything, which has a way of loosening the hands a little bit.  

I don’t know, man, I just don’t know. I honestly don’t think Nunes is susceptible to a trap fight but because I just wrote she’s probably not susceptible to a trap fight I think it might be a trap fight. It just feels a little too “gimme” for comfort. The minute anything is taken for granted in MMA is when, to paraphrase Nate Diaz, somebody gets got.

The bantamweight title fight between Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan looks like a coin flip but…well, I’ll just come right out and say it: I don’t trust Petr Yan. There’s something a little too close to the Baby Faced Finster character going on there. You know, from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the bank robber who pretends to be a baby but we know better because we see him shaving and smoking cigars and shit? That is Petr Yan.

There’s just more than meets the eye going on there is all. He hasn’t really shown his full hand yet. I feel like he’s going to pull something out against Sterling that we couldn’t have possibly predicted, a rare choke or a Tommy gun, and we will have hatched a kind of cult hero afterward. I guarantee something like that happens.

Which brings us to the main event between Israel Adesanya and Jan Blachowicz. It’s not a stretch to think that Izzy — an incredible athlete who is built like a human pogo stick — might be biting off a little more than he can chew by moving up to challenge for the light heavyweight title. There’s a very real chance that Blachowicz will outweigh Adesanya by more than 25 pounds on fight night. It’s a throwback to the UFCs of old, when weight classes weren’t yet a thing.

There’s so much to love in this kind of fight. The idea that Adesanya, the UFC’s most adventurous spirit, is moving up in a historical moment of his career, trying to win a second title. The idea that a victory for Adesanya could make him the UFC’s biggest star and open the floodgates for a big event in Africa. The idea that Adesanya is facing Blachowicz because Jon Jones bolted, and Jon Jones remains out there on the horizon. The idea that Adesanya could come crashing back down to earth with one well-timed right hand from a veritable colossus.

The idea that Blachowicz could emerge as the destroyer of all hype.

Back in the day, when Anderson Silva moved up to face former light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin at UFC 101 on a lark, the tale of the tape created a lot of buzz. Griffin was a broad chested 205er, fairly massive and gangly, with a chin that wouldn’t quit. How would Silva, a massive middleweight somewhat suited to the light heavyweight frame, handle all that burly man bulk when it crowded him?

By just picking Griffin apart and spooking the hell out of him in the process. It remains one of the most mesmerizing fights in UFC history. It looked choreographed. Silva’s speed and general witchery were just too much for Griffin to handle and process. And that was Silva, who was far closer to Griffin’s weight than Izzy will be to Jan.

So how does Adesanya stack up against him? This could be Izzy’s Forrest moment. Izzy was too skinny for Yoel Romero and too skinny for the oenophile Paulo Costa. He will be too skinny for just about anybody he faces, including Jan. But those limbs are so spring-loaded and explosive, and his fighter IQ is so high, and his confidence is so soaring, it feels like the right set-up for Adesanya to paint his opus.

Will that happen? I mean, probably not. Not after I wrote it. I did a whole piece on Sean O’Malley’s “It” factor in the Ringer a couple of months back just to watch Chito Vera dance all over it. I know how this goes. Fate is a pendulum in the UFC. Just when you think you see what’s happening, things swing the other way.

I don’t know. UFC 259 does have a strange feel to it, though. Too many mysterious characters, too many expectations, too much taken for granted. Nothing ever happens as it’s supposed to, but when the stakes are as high as they will be on Saturday night, all deviations become that much more magnified.