This event which took place in the Las Vegas Sphere seemed as much an advertisement for "Sphere" as it was a UFC event. I mean, I was impressed by the building as well but I know when I am being advertised to and this is what this event seemed like to me.
It was also plagued with two of the most boring co-main events in recent history. At least the undercards provided some much needed intensity prior to those 10 rounds of basically snoozing and lying on the ground.
before we talk about the fights let's briefly touch base on Sphere. Yes, it is an incredibly impressive technical marvel of a building. The ability to have whatever you want on the walls behind the action is truly something else. This completely redefines "jumbotron" because apparently the entire room, floor-to-ceiling, is one gigantic custom made LED screen. The building cost 2.5 billion dollars to construct and it shows. It looked nice but that being said, it seems strange having the entire crowd be on just one side of the action and I hope that they do not do any more UFC events here. While the crowd probably was ooohed and ahhed by it all, it seemed like an inordinate amount of time was spent on celebrating Mexican heritage in an IMAX++ theater than they were actually focusing on what we were here for, which is mixed martial arts. Plus, if we really wanted to celebrate Mexican heritage then why not have the event in Mexico? Instead we had it in Las Vegas and the thing was sponsored by the Riyadh board of tourism or something. It didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me.
Anyway, let's get on to the fights. The main event on the prelims aren't something I would normally bother to watch but because I arrived a bit early I got to see the fight between Irene Aldana and Norma Dumont.
I have not seen someone this badly cut in UFC I think ever. I have seen fights that were forced to stop for far lessor wounds but this one was allowed to carry on. Aldana could barely see yet she simply wouldn't give up. She was using her shirt to try to get the blood out of her face and she was an absolute wreck. Particularly the gash above her right eye was gruesome. Aldana ended up losing the fight by unanimous decision but wow did she earn my respect. The floor was tinted red for the rest of the night because of her.
Aldana had to get dozens of stitches and this is going to take a long time to heal. Other fighters chimed in on Twitter and there is now a call to have the in-ring doctor reprimanded for allowing this to continue. It is rumored the fight would have been stopped but because Aldana is from Mexico and this was Mexico night for UFC, they allowed it to continue. I don't think that ring doctors are supposed to factor in such things. A much lessor cut resulted in a Nate Diaz no contest for the original BMF showdown and it wasn't nearly as bad as this one. I also recall a Robby Lawler event where his bottom lip was split to the point where it met his nostril.
Anyway, lets leave the gore on the sidelines for now. We already have the "ugly" now I will briefly talk about the "good."
For the first time since I can remember, every single fight on the main card went to a decision. This doesn't mean that they were boring fights though. The first 3 fights were absolutely outstanding with the fighters using a wide array of tactics to try to get the job done. One of the best was the first one where Ronaldo Rodriguez got rattled very early on in the 1st round to the point where the ref nearly stopped the fight. It's a good thing the ref kept his hands away for a few seconds longer because Rodriguez rallied like I have not seen ever before and ended up winning the fight. That was amazing. The other two fights went the distance as well but managed to be really interesting because both fighters were swinging for the fences. It was amazing and enjoyable.
Then we get to the "bad." I kind of expected O'Malley and Dvalishvili to be boring because Dvalishvili is a wrestler and O'Malley is a striker. As expected this ended up on the ground and well, not a great deal happened there other than O'Malley trying really hard to get back up. Testament to Dvalishvili as he did at least attempt to do some stand-up game but we all knew he was going to take it to the ground and that is where it was for a lot of the entire match. When it went to the scorecards there was no one who was thinking that Sean was going to get his hand raised and have Bruce Buffer shout "and still!"
O Malley did a reasonably good job defending on the ground but the fact that they had to be stood back up by the ref at least twice kind of tells you all you need to know about how much work was actually being done on the ground. It was boring and now we have a boring champion in the Bantamweight division. For the love of everything holy I hope that they do NOT put Aljamain Sterling into the picture since he too is a boring ground game fighter.
The real shocker to me was the fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Alexa Grasso. On paper this looked like it would be the true "fight of the night" with Valentina looking for vengeance after being beaten by Alexa once and their second meeting going to a very rare draw. Valentina is one of those fighters that seems to be good at everything but once again, we had a fight with two people who were not trying to win, but instead were trying desperately to NOT LOSE.
There was a whole lot of lying around on the ground with weak submission attempts followed by some rolling into another position with the occasional tippy-tap strike to the head that does no damage to anyone. I don't know what the ground control time was nor do I care. I just know that it was actually Valentina who is largely responsible for the fight ending up on the ground as she was constantly shooting for takedowns, succeeding on 8 out of 12 attempts. Once the first 3 boring rounds were over it was evident that Shevchenko was up on points and therefore the only thing she had to do to win was keep doing the same boring-ass crap. This is exactly what she did and at one point the crowd started to boo. This is quite rare for Shevchenko as she has been a bit of a crowd favorite for many years. I hope that this is not her new "style" because if it is, I likely will not even be all that interested when she has another fight. Apparently her "rematch" with Grasso ended up on a Fight Night and that is why I never even knew it happened. I guess this is why.
I hope that she can re-evaluate a game plan this is more entertaining in the future but I guess if the real objective is to win, then her strategy was a good one. It doesn't mean the fans have to enjoy it though... I certainly didn't and in the bar I was in while it was on, many of the attendees simply stopped watching the TV's for most of that fight.
I had kind of high hopes for this event because often it is the ones where there aren't huge stars on the main card that end up giving us the best fights as people try to make a name for themselves. In a way that is exactly what we got outside of the two main events, but of which were dreadfully boring.