BY: JORDAN ROSAS
Things change when you become a parent.
Suddenly you have almost no free time anymore. If you’re UFC champion Amanda Nunes, motherhood means you no longer have time for a full-length, five-round title fight. So Nunes ended the fight in the first round.
After briefly displaying her superior striking, rocking challenger Megan Anderson with lefts and rights, Nunes took her to the ground and quickly forced Anderson to tap out with an arm triangle.
Nunes is the greatest female fighter in UFC history. We knew that. With wins over Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm, Cris Cyborg, and Valentina Shevchenko twice, there’s hardly even a debate anymore. Nunes is now being held up against the likes of Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones, and Khabib Nurmagomedov in the discussion of the greatest ever mixed martial artist, male or female.
When it comes to Jan Blachowicz, if you haven’t eaten a punch from the Polish powerhouse, it’s time to stop sleeping. The UFC Light Heavyweight champion has now won nine of his last ten fights and been the underdog in eight of them. After being outboxed slowly but surely by Middleweight Champion Israel Adesanya, Blachowicz took down the lengthy Nigerian in the fourth and fifth rounds. Trapped beneath the much heavier opponent, the bell was the only escape for the Stylebender. After three fairly close rounds to start the fight, Blachowicz’s dominant performance in the fourth and fifth rounds was enough to secure the unanimous decision in his first defense of the Light Heavyweight title.
Despite the loss, Adesanya remains one of the top pound for pound in the sport. The UFC Middleweight champion weighed in nearly five pounds under the Light Heavyweight limit of 205lbs, which means he likely didn’t gain any rehydration weight, like Blachowicz, who was estimated to weigh somewhere in the 220’s by fight night.
Even being the much smaller fighter, Adesanya managed to stun and hurt the larger man with strikes several times over the course of the fight. Blachowicz bit on almost every Adesanya feint throughout the fight, giving almost too much respect to the Middleweight’s power.
The key moment of the fight to me, occurred when Blachowicz had Adesanya trapped on his back. Adesanya tried to create space by bridging on his neck. He exploded into Blachowicz from his hips, attempting to knock the big man off balance. Adesanya might as well have hit a brick wall. Blachowicz didn’t even move. Against a fellow middleweight, that move would have likely knocked his opponent off.
In the end, Adesanya lost, largely because he simply couldn’t move the sheer weight of Blachowicz, who wisely used his size to compensate for his shortcomings against the faster fighter. Not many fighters in any discipline would have stepped up 20lbs, and in an age where fighters are extremely protective of undefeated records, Adesanya deserves a ton of respect and appreciation for putting himself on the line to give us a great fight.
Petr Yan ruined a great fight. After being outboxed early by Aljamain Sterling, the champion repeatedly brought the No. 1 contender to the ground. In the fourth round, though, an ugly, illegal knee to the head of Sterling ended the fight. Flat on his back, recovering from the dirty blow, Aljamain Sterling was awarded the Bantamweight title by DQ. In his post-fight presser, Sterling stressed how unsatisfied he was to win the title in such fashion.
Up next is UFC 260 on March 27, which features the heavily anticipated rematch between Heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic (20-3) and Francis Ngannou (15-3). Miocic won their first fight by unanimous decision back in 2018. But now Miocic is 38 and Ngannou is 34. Ngannou, who holds the world record for hardest punch ever recorded, has won his last four fights by 1st round KO. Three of the stoppages came in the first minute. The other stoppage came just one minute and eleven seconds into the fight. Since his 2012 loss to Stefan Struve, Miocic has only lost to Daniel Cormier and Junior Dos Santos. He avenged both losses with TKO wins and beat Cormier a second time in their third fight.
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