The light heavyweight division is constantly in a state of flux. It doesn’t matter if it’s the top, the middle, or the bottom of 205 - you just never know what’s going to happen. In such a thin weight class, two or three impressive wins puts you right into the title mix.
Title mix, meet Anthony Smith. Anthony Smith, meet title mix.
His main event bout with Volkan Oezdemir was a back-and-forth affair where he seemed to get hurt quite early by Volkan’s leg kicks. Smith shook it off though, and showed off a great chin and a solid (if somewhat puzzling) ground game when it was necessary. He also broke Volkan’s nose early, which leaked about a gallon of blood all over the Octagon (and both men).
After probably dropping the first two rounds, Smith managed to turn it around in the third. He took Oezdemir’s back pretty much immediately off of a takedown, secured hooks, and hunted for a sub. It took a while, and a few adjustments, but he eventually found it. And after taking out two former champs in Rashad Evans and Shogun Rua, Smith now has the scalp of the (former) number two contender at 205. That’s a pretty impressive last six-odd months.
- Michael Johnson and Artem Lobov was a fun and unique striking battle. Lobov always brings it and his chin is nearly unbreakable. But despite all his antics and weird angles, it definitely looked like he didn’t have much to fall back on in the third. And for Johnson, after a massive weight cut, his cardio was on point and he had a great final stanza to put the icing on the win.
- Misha Cirkunov is officially back. That is all.
- Jonathan Martinez is going to be a very good UFC fighter, and his bout with Andre Soukhamthath was likely my favorite of the fight. Despite one 30-26 scorecard (the same as I had it), it wasn’t a blowout at all. Soukhamthath did enough to win two other rounds and almost finished it in the first, but Martinez has a lot of good tools. His kicks and clinch work in particular impressed me.
- Some people will absolutely love Gian Villante vs. Ed Herman. Old school knuckle chucking. That’s fine if you thought it was great. I just thought it was sloppy.
- Court McGee put in a typical grinding performance to take a decision over Alex Garcia. As gifted as Garcia is, the book on him seems pretty much written at this rate - avoid the early power and the pressure, let him wear himself out, then take over the fight. McGee did that tonight.
- The fight between Sean Strickland and Nordine Taleb was kind of weird. Taleb had things in hand, easily navigating the distance and not allowing Strickland to touch him much at all in the first half of the fight. Then, it just...changed. i don’t know if he got tired or what, but Taleb just stopped doing all the things that had him in control. He let Strickand in too far, wasn’t cutting angles, and got tagged. A few times. And then it was over.
- Nasrat Haqparast throws hard, and if he hadn’t broken his hand in the first round, I’m guessing he would have finished Thibault Gouti in the first half of the fight. He did suffer the injury though, and Gouti showed a ton of resilience by making a fight of it. With that being said, we probably just saw the last of Gouti in the Octagon.
- Chris Fishgold looked really good in his UFC debut - until he didn’t. Calvin Kattar caught him behind the ear with a nice shot, and that was the beginning of the end. Kattar has a lot of skill and he was getting worked over by Fishgold before that, so it seems that the fighter from Liverpool coul have a bright future despite this early setback.
- Talita Bernardo picked up her first UFC win by beating Sarah Moras with a strong top game. Moras seems to be the same fighter in every fight - sometimes her unique game works out for her, but more often than not lately, it hasn’t.
- Before the fight between Te Edwards and Don Madge, many on Twitter were reminiscing about South Africa’s history in the Octagon (spoiler - it hasn’t been good). Madge looked like fodder for Edwards, the Contender Series star. That was not how it went at all. Madge was on fire from the very start, dropping Edwards. Edwards recovered to take top position, and then very nearly got armbarred. Right away in the second, Madge hurt Edwards with a left high kick, then destroyed him with the right head kick that followed. It was certainly a hell of a debut, especially for a massive underdog.
- Arjan Bhullar and Marcelo Golm certainly did enter the cage and fight in Moncton. It wasn’t very exciting and Bhullar won. Next.
- The opener was your average striking match with laughably horrible judging. I could see Stevie Ray winning maybe one round. Personally I gave Jessin Ayari all three. Ray was landing leg kicks, but they weren’t doing any damage to Ayari or changing the way he was fighting. Ayari was landing hard shots on the feet through all three rounds. One did not equal the other. Yet all three judges saw it for Ray - one with a 30-27 score, which is just awful. It was not a good start to the night.