UFC 292 was a pretty good event overall. The Boston crowd was on fire starting way back even in the prelims.
Natalia Silva looked excellent against UFC veteran Andrea Lee in their strawweight bout. Silva just outclassed Lee in the standup battle the entire time and won by unanimous decision.
Andre Petroski was victorious against Gerald Meerschaert by split decision in a really good fight at middleweight. Petroski was just in there throwing bombs and won a gritty fight, Petroski did drop Gerald at some point in that fight as well.
Petroski wants to fight another up and coming hype train in Bo Nickal, pretty good call out!
Brad Katona and Kurt Holobaugh won their fights to become Ultimate Fighter Champions. Kurt Holobaugh in particular really surprised me with his performance.
Middleweights Brad Tavares and Chris Weidman fought a pretty boring fight for the most part. Brad won easily due to Chris's leg getting injured in the fight, which limited his mobility to a great degree. ANOTHER lower body injury for the veteran and former champion. It was not quite as devastating as the injury vs Uriah Hall, but who knows what the damage of this new injury truly is at this point. Two fights for Weidman in a row where his lower body failed him, maybe it's time to hang it up for him at this point. For Tavares, that's just another decent name added to his own solid and lengthy career.
Marlon Vera defeated Pedro Munhoz by unanimous decision in their bantamweight bout. It was a pretty basic, but fairly entertaining stand up battle. Marlon's size and power seemed to make a big difference. I didn't realize Marlon would be so big compared to Munhoz.
Marlon wants to fight O'Malley and rightfully so! He's the only fighter to ever beat O'Malley.
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Mario Bautista defeated Da'Mon Blackshear in their bantamweight battle by unanimous decision. I was hoping to see Blackshear win his second fight in two weeks, but Bautista earned my respect in this fight, he's a strong well rounded fighter.
Ian Machado Garry makes yet another statement versus Neil Magny in their Welterweight Bout. Ian completely dominated Neil the entire fight and dealt out the second leg injury of the night when he beat Magny's leg to a pulp forcing Magny to dance around the Octagon in total defense mode for about half the fight. Garry couldn't finish Magny despite the injury which is the only negative, but otherwise Garry just made Magny look like an amateur.
Garry's stardom continues to rise and he says he wants Wonderboy next, that would be a great matchup. I wonder how that battle of strikers would go.
Zhang Weili defends her Strawweight Title easily vs Amanda Lemos
This fight was very very boring but that was because Zhang Weili was just that dominant. Zhang just felt like she was one or two levels better than Lemos at every MMA skillset. Zhang outstruck Lemos 296 to 29 and had about 15 minutes of grappling control time. Just pure dominance, Zhang looked great. I don't know if any girls can really challenge her besides Rose Namajunas.
A Star is Born as Sean O'Malley defeats Aljamain Sterling and becomes the new UFC Men's Bantamweight Champion
These two guys were really intense in the octagon before the fight, the energy in the arena was nuts!!
The first round of this fight was very boring and they just sort of pitter pattered around feinting and throwing light shots at each other. Aljamain tried a takedown but O'Malley defended well. I'm surprised that Aljamain didn't try to take down O'Malley more.
The second round was way more intense and they traded way more right off the bat. But it didn't take long for O'Malley's speed and timing to get the better of the exchanges and O'Malley dropped Sterling with a beautiful fight hand, he added some ground and pound and then that was it. Sterling didn't make it a full minute into the second round.
The UFC actually released the knockout video already. Just madness. Already?!?! It's cool with me!
The Boston crowd absolutely EXPLODED when O'Malley won. O'Malley is a young, tattoed, hair dyed dude, but he's great at fighting. A lot of people doubted O'Malley but it seems he proved a lot of people wrong tonight. O'Malley already has a big following thanks to his skills and his look and online presence. But now that he's champion, he's got a ton more eyeballs on him now. If he can defend his title, this guy can be a massive star. He's already pretty famous.
O'Malley is often compared to McGregor, but I don't think they're too similar. O'Malley seems way more relaxed and he talks less crap and not in as much of an intense way as Conor. But there's some similarities, and their knockouts to become champion are very similar. They played Conor knocking out Jose Aldo and compared it to how O'Malley knocked out Sterling, and it was pretty eerie how similar the two knockouts were.
O'Malley says he wants to box next? I want him to defend the belt personally, hopefully against Marlon Vera!! But I'm curious to see whoever he fights next.
It was a pretty fun night. New champion, and an up and coming star to boot. Pretty good stuff.
