This is UFC 275 in a few short tweets!
UFC 275 is in the books, and it was arguably the best and wildest event the promotion has put on this year. The main event was an intense war between Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira, which constantly went back-and-forth. This happened up until the final minute, where Prochazka secured a nice rear naked choke without the hooks on to take the belt and become the first Czech UFC champion.
In the second of two title bouts, Valentina Shevchenko was pushed hard for the first time in years, with Taila Santos winning enough ground exchanges to put a scare to the dominant champion. An accidental headbutt possibly turned the tide, but overall it was Shevchenko landed more strikes and she earned a hard fought split decision win to keep her title.
The rematch between Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Weili Zhang started out similar to their 2020 FOTY, but the Chinese former champion made nice adjustments and eventually landed a walk-off spinning backfist knockout. Jedrzejczyk left her gloves in the Octagon and retired after the loss, capping a decorated career for the former longtime strawweight champion.
Below, we analyze the pros and cons of each of the key bouts, with a quick twitter thread that’s short and fitting for people’s social media era attention spans:
DELLA MADDALENA TKOs EMEEV
PROS: Body shot TKOs are relatively rare, and always great. He survived a pretty good anaconda choke attempt right before that too. Singapore crowd had a sizable Australian contingent going crazy.
CONS: What’s that red mark on Emeev’s body? Sunburn?
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
MATTHEWS TKO’s FIALHO
PROS: What a fun fight. Fialho came in with growing hype from two KOs in the last two months, but Matthews just outboxed him. The Aussie looked like a significantly improved fighter that’s now delivering on his potential.
CONS: None!
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
ZHANG FACEPLANTS JOANNA
PROS: Spectacular fight, and nasty finish. Even before that spinning backfist KO, Zhang looked improved and had a smart approach by mixing things up, landing with damage on the mat.
CONS: It’s great that Joanna knew when to retire, but she’ll be missed.
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
SHEVCHENKO HANGS ON TO BELT
PROS: Santos exceeded expectations, winning ground exchanges, kept it very close.
CONS: Headbutt changed the fight. That 4-1 score is bad. I thought she won, but bad decision making from Shevchenko unnecessarily risked a lot. https://t.co/7rwLUOru4C
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
JIRI TAKES BELT IN INSANE WAR
CONS: Both had bad decisions, could’ve finished earlier but it made for a…
PROS: WILD back-and-forth, with both repeatedly getting hurt. Glover still has it at 42, but Jiri’s no hooks RNC got him the belt. ON BRAND for both https://t.co/TgWPkPfqPs
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
#UFC275 OVERALL
PROS: Wildest event of 2022? Jiri-Glover was BONKERS, Shevchenko got pushed, Zhang-Joanna went to war until a backfist faceplant that’ll be in highlight reels forever, plus more KOs. SG crowd was wild, even early in morning!
CONS: Some weird scores, nothing big.
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) June 12, 2022
And that’s about it. For more social media musings, follow me on twitter over at @antontabuena, and of course you should do that for Bloody Elbow’s official twitter account as well.