If you were sitting somewhere hoping for several hours of MMA awesomeness you probably ended up a bit disappointed during Fight Night 187 which has a string of very odd results and two no contest decisions.
I have only ever seen one other no contest result so this was very unusual.
It is also crazy to me that we are just one week past the very controversial title loss on the part of Petr Yan due to an illegal knee to the head only to see the very first main card fight of the night end because of an illegal knee to the head. One would assume that because of all the talk that has been going on that everyone in the UFC would be very aware of this being a thing that is being focused on and avoid getting anywhere near kneeing a downed opponent. However, the opening fight between Eryk Anders and Darren Stewart ended with a "no contest" ruling after an illegal knee to the head was thrown and made contact.
There was a lot of talk about how could this happen AGAIN and how was it that this was a no contest ruling whereas the Sterling v. Yan fight resulted in a disqualification. Well, this is because it is totally up to the referee to determine intent in regards to an illegal move and Anders contact with the knee was determined to be an accidental contact whereas there was no denying that Petr Yan's move was intentional. It could also be because Herb Dean was in the ring and he is, at least in my mind, the best referee in the game.
Anders move was nearly legal but because Stewart put one of his hands back on the ground right before the knee was thrown, he is now a downed opponent. It is all very technical and difficult to determine in the flash of an eye but basically, if you have only one knee down and both hands up, you are not "downed".
Anders was winning that fight and was probably on his way to a KO before the end of the round so this No Contest ruling hurts him more than it does Darren Stewart.
Later, the Dan Ige versus Gavin Tucker fight happened... for a little while. This was one of the fights I was most looking forward to but if you went for a bathroom break during the introductions you likely would have missed the entire fight because it was over in 22 seconds. I can't say for certain, I will have to go back and look at the tape because I want to say it was the very first punch that Dan Ige threw. This wasn't even the quickest finish of the night though as the early preliminaries saw a fight end in just 16 seconds.
The next fight also ended just past the 1 minute mark in the first round. In fact, there was only one fight on the main card that went the distance and the full 3 rounds and only one other one made it to round 2. Basically, this thing was over really fast.
The worst part of the night was in the main event where an accidental eye poke resulted in the fight being ended early in the 2nd round. This was a huge opportunity for the recipient of said eye poke, Belal Muhammad, who was only in the main card because he was one of the only people that could take this fight on short notice. He was not originally slated to fight at all.
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Yikes, his finger is like under dude's eyelid
It was a pretty bad eye-poke and Muhammad wanted to continue even though he couldn't see and his eye was bleeding. The doctor was having none of it though and it was deemed no contest.
I really hope that Muhammad gets a rematch, which of course he called for straight away but we'll have to see if Dana White sympathizes with this situation. To be fair to Leon Edwards (the poker) he was looking like he was going to win this fight as he was landing some pretty solid kicks that Belal didn't really seem to have an answer for yet. Time will tell. It is hard to not feel sorry for Muhammad though since this was an opportunity that is not often offered to someone as far down the ranks as he is and he was doing better than I expected him to up until the poke happened.
So this Fight Night ended about as quickly as any UFC event that I have ever seen. It finished so quickly that the network I was watching it on had to scramble to have some programming in place for the next 40 minutes that the UFC event was meant to occupy. I don't know why they chose to air the "Marblelympics" but man oh man am I glad they did.
This show was arguably more entertaining than most of the UFC fights, I never knew it existed, and I will be looking out for it in the future. I'll talk more about that in a later entry but seriously, look it up and tell me that you don't enjoy that. Those marbles in the crowd are not social distancing very well though. What kind of message does that send to the kids?