In the opening fight of the night Ryan Benoit defeated Fredy Serrano by split decision who took the fight on 10 days notice. The fight was very unorthodox with most of the alien type things coming from Serrano. Serrano landed some huge takedowns... then did nothing with them, loaded up every single attack and threw most completely abandoning technique. Benoit landed with a few heavy shots which seemed to do some damage and spent most of the first and second round running after Serrano who ran around the outside of the octagon and... didn't really look like he had a plan with that. Anyway it was a correct judges decision, split decision to Benoit, fair enough.
In the second fight oh god damn didn't all hell break loose! The first two rounds were very close but the real fight began at the very beginning of the third round, I had it even going into the third. The ref called fight and they charged! Francisco Rivera and Erik Perez went toe-to-toe of unrelenting swinging, technique was minimal, power was maximal. They went at it for 45 seconds, tagging each other and it looked for certain like someone was going to drop, Rivera was getting the better of the shots and connecting a bit cleaner and seemed to have more power. However this spelled the beginning of the end for Rivera, the last haymaker he threw, he threw so hard that he fell over, he also got tagged too, Perez was easily able to get the takedown to the point where it almost looked like Rivera pulled guard. Perez then easily held Rivera down and hit him with shots and Rivera was unable to get up until nearly the end of the fight. And was still a crazy fight! Now Perez won 29-28 and that's all fair and square and I could see how it could be 30-27 but we really need to talk about the judging on this fight (29-28, 30-26, 30-26) the supposed 10-8 round (the last round) given by two judges is ridiculous, Perez didn't dominate on the ground he was just able to keep active and hold him there, also Rivera almost finished Perez at the start of the round so it can't be a 10-8.
And then WTF just happened. Matt Brown, one of the hardest fighters in the welterweight division and arguably the UFC to finish... was just knocked out by Jake Ellenberger in the first round. A man who was about to be cut and most likely retire, he asked Dana for one more shot and he TKO's a man who had never lost via KO/TKO in a 35 fight professional career. The story of this fight is incredible, Ellenberger will now extremely likely fight and actually puts himself back into the picture for the rankings!! what an incredible turn around.
The women's strawweight title picture just changed, pretty dramatically. Karolina Kowalkiewicz beat Rose Namajunas and added another upset victory for the top contenders and title fights for this year. The first round went as expected and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who thought oh no here comes a 30-27 UD victory for Rose although it would've been good for the title race, it wouldn't have been good for the night. In the second round Karolina really began to pick up her pace and was much more accurate, in the post fight interview she said that she needs time to fight (she takes a little while to warm up). The big factor in the second and third rounds was the clinch. Karolina's Muay Thai clinch was extremely good and a game changer, the second she or Rose initiated the clinch Karolina immediately threw knees and elbows hard and fast as if they were fighting under Glory rules and I think this should be encouraged greatly from coaches as you saw how Rose was put off, hurt and didn't really know how to deal with it. Rose was outclassed on the feet in the second and third round however she did have an advantage on the ground which she showed briefly but chose not to try for the takedown which was slightly confusing. Let's also be clear that Karolina did not dominate, it was a fairly even fight and it scares me tremendously that they're talking Joana next, I'll address that in the next blog post. Another point of notice was Pat Barry, Rose's boyfriend was not in Atlanta this weekend because Rose wanted to be able to do it on her own, he has been at almost all of her fights since they were together and she has now lost so it will be interesting to see how she rebounds from this loss.
Well ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champion! and there's been a fairly mixed response from twitter, all the fighters and celebrities have come out of the wood and suddenly revealed they've been a Woodley fan since 1684...hmm everyone else is keeping it more real. What we do have to do though is give credit to Woodley for a good performance and becoming the best in the world at that weight division... for now and should he defend then I will truly give him credit for that. The entire fight for those who didn't see it was about 2 minutes of feeling out, Robbie dropped his left hand and Woodley threw a 100% power right overhand and knocked Robbie out with a few shots on the ground. Now, let's get down to it. WOODLEY. YOU CAN NOT CALL YOUR SHOTS WHEN YOU'VE ONLY JUST WON. YOU HAVE TO FIGHT THE NUMBER ONE CONTENDER FIRST. I'm pretty damn pissed about this, I will also cover this in the next blogpost.
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