UFC 212 went down Saturday from one of the world’s true capitals of combat sports: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In a lot of minds, the evening’s main event lost some luster before it was ever booked. Jose Aldo, widely considered the greatest featherweight of all time, lost his UFC title and more than a little of mystique back on December 12, 2015 at UFC 194. Before that night, he had only one pro loss on his record, and that was back in 2005. But Conor McGregor only needed 13 seconds to hand him his second defeat by way of a stunning knockout.
Aldo’s career has been mercurial, but it’s been marked far more deeply by greatness. Before his loss to McGregor, no other fighter had ever even held the UFC featherweight belt.
Saturday he faced one of the best featherweights of this or any other era in Hawaiian Max Holloway. All he’s done is win 10 in a row over the division’s best fighters. Still only 25 years old, Holloway improves with every contest despite already being considered a legitimately great fighter.
Aldo has the lineal championship again after UFC brass stripped McGregor (long story). Holloway has the interim title after he defeated Anthony Pettis. UFC belts don’t mean as much as they used to because of all the various interim shenanigans and what have you, but the chance to unify the straps is enticing. We’ll have that after the UFC 212 main event.
In the co-main event, strawweight contenders Claudia Gadelha and Karolina Kowalkiewicz battled it out in an exciting women’s bout.
And there were 10 other bouts besides. As usual, the final stat lines don’t reveal everything. Read on for the real winners and losers from UFC 212.