Biggest Winners, Loser From UFC Kansas City

UFC Kansas City went down last night (Sat., April 15, 2023) in Kansas City, Mo., featuring a Featherweight main event fight that saw former division champion, Max Holloway, defeat Arnold Allen via unanimous decision (recap here). In the co-headlining act, Edson Barboza knocked out Billy Quarantillo via first round knockout thanks to a well-placed knee to the face (see it again here).

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Biggest Winner: Edson Barboza

Relax, “Blessed” will get a spot on the “winners” list, but the top spot goes to Barboza because he needed that win pretty badly. “Junior” came into the event with two straight defeats at the hands of Giga Chikadze and Bryce Mitchell, so a third straight consecutive defeat would have been a huge blow to his career. The win gets him back on track and the fact that the Brazilian striker knocked him out in impressive fashion reminded everyone that he is far from done — he still packs the power and possesses the skills to turn anyone’s lights out. He also won his eleventh $50,000 post-fight bonus award. Not a bad night at the office.

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Runner Up: Max Holloway

Now, let’s get to “Blessed.” The Hawaiian-born scrapper got back in the win column by putting on a great five-round performance against Allen, who was red-hot coming into the event. Indeed, “Almighty” was on a 12-fight win streak, 10 of those wins coming inside the Octagon. For Holloway, it’s his first win since losing to Alexander Volkanovski for the third time. Now, “Blessed” finds himself in an interesting position because if Volkanovski defeats interim champion, Yair Rodriguez, in their looming title unification bout, it is going to be a hard sell for UFC to book a fourth fight between “Blessed” and “The Great.” On that note, should Rodriguez upset Volkanovski then Holloway has a great chance of getting the next title fight in the 145-pound division since he has a win over “El Pantera” already. All Holloway can do at the moment is sit back and wait.

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Biggest Loser: Chris Gutierrez

I didn’t like the fight between Gutierrez and Pedro Munhoz from the jump, but not from a competitive standpoint, but rather for business. Gutierrez’s business, to be exact. That’s because he was coming in unbeaten in eight fights inside the Octagon, while Munhoz came into the event with a horrible record of 1-4-1 in his last six fights with his last win coming more than two years ago. To me, the match screamed high risk, low reward for Gutierrez based on Munhoz’s recent woes. Had he won, he would’ve defeated a fighter who, I get is ranked four spots ahead of him at the moment, but is struggling. Critics would have also possibly downplayed the win by saying he scored a victory over a man on the decline. That’s why I didn’t see a ton of upside for Gutierrez. Instead, he loses and gives Munhoz a new breath of life in his combat career, while he will have to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. Next time I hope he and his team think a bit longer about taking a fight like this again.

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For complete UFC Kansas City: “Holloway vs. Allen” results and play-by-play, click HERE.