“I’m back!”
That’s Francis Ngannou’s words after his UFC Beijing main event win against Curtis Blaydes. The Cameroonian bounced back from two tough losses and seemed to have gotten his mojo back after scoring another first round knockout.
Ngannou landed a big right hand that dropped him early, and he swarmed on him and forced the referee to stop the action just 45 seconds into the headlining bout.
In the co-main event, Alistair Overeem looked tentative and gun-shy, seemingly concerned about not getting KO’d again early on against Sergey Pavlovich. Once he got the takedown though, he unleashed brutal ground and pound that swiftly ended the fight and got him back in the win column.
UFC Beijing wasn’t the most stacked card in terms of talent, but it did provide some entertaining action and gave a platform for the Chinese stable that the UFC is trying to develop.
- Li Jingliang proved once again why he is considered as the best Chinese UFC fighter. He survived an early knockdown and went on to win with an impressive side-kick to the body that ended the fight.
- Weili Zhang is certainly living up to the hype. She completely dominated Jessica Aguilar, including getting very good positions on the ground, landing quality ground-and-pound, before submitting the more experienced BJJ brown belt. 18 straight wins, including this impressive win over the former WSOF champ probably puts Zhang in the top 15.
- Yan Xiaonan looked a lot sharper on the feet and improved to 3-0 in the UFC with a pretty impressive performance.
- Song Yadong improved to 3-0 in the UFC as well. He won a pretty comfortable decision and got valuable cage time in the process.
- Other prelim action: Lin Pingyuan take a razon thin split decision over Martin Day. Kevin Holland had a nice sophomore outing in the UFC, choking out Phillips after a fun back and forth contest. Louis Smolka also had a nice submission to notch a win on his UFC return. Coulter took a unanimous decision, slugging out with Hu Yaozong for three rounds.
- UFC is really investing in the country, and on this event, Chinese fighters went 6-3 overall.