After a good night’s rest (but not really), it’s hard not to look back on UFC 203 with a raised eyebrow. There was no question that it was a solid event. Jimmie Rivera and Jessica Andrade established themselves as must-watch fighters, Yancy Medeiros picked up a great win and Nik Lentz gained some momentum at 155 pounds. There was a lot of strange stuff on this card.
But there was nothing stranger than the co-main event bout between Fabricio Werdum and Travis Browne.
It was clear right from the get-go that this wasn’t going to be a normal fight. Werdum, whose base is Brazilian jiu-jitsu, began the fight with a flying side kick and would later follow it up with a forward flip kick.
Eventually, things would calm down a bit…until a wild right hand from Werdum ended up breaking Browne’s finger. That led to a weird sequence where Browne called for a timeout in order to reset his finger (which should have resulted in an immediate TKO loss, as was detailed during the broadcast). What fans didn’t see at the time was just how bad the break was, and they’re probably better off for it (Warning: NSFW image):
From there, the fight was a pretty standard affair. Well…pretty standard. Werdum dusted off one of his older, odder tools for this fight: the “lie down and hope the opponent jumps into his guard” technique.
Werdum has a huge advantage on the ground over almost any opponent but lacks the wrestling skills to reliably take things to the mat. One of his ways to compensate for that is trying to bait opponents onto the ground by lying on his back. If it works, it lets Werdum show off his amazing BJJ skills. If not…well, this happens:
Despite the fact that Werdum intentionally spent a good portion of the fight on his back, Browne still struggled to muster up any offense. To his credit, he still found the opportunity to land his go-to eye poke (Warning: NSFW image):
Eventually, the final horn sounded with a fairly clear winner. The action didn’t stop there, however, as Werdum had words with Browne’s coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, and surprised many by actually popping him with a light front kick:
Both corners would be shooed out of the cage and Werdum was declared the winner via unanimous decision.
The fight ended with a chorus of boos due to the lulls in action, but there are plenty of great fights that nobody remembers a month later. This one, though, will live on.
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