In Sydney, Australia, on Friday evening America time, a cadre of UFC fighters banded together to show fans and one another what their sport can do when all of its cylinders are firing. Eleven fights featured 11 stoppages—seven knockouts and four submissions—with five native Australians and New Zealanders ending the night with their hands in the air.
And the crowd goes wild, as do the viewers watching at home on UFC Fight Pass, the company’s streaming service. For that level of a fight card, that’s as literally as good as it can get.
But that was merely the first leg of the marathon. On Saturday evening, 8,500 miles from the sands of Sydney, could another set of fighters replicate the experience? Well, if we’re being honest, it didn’t look so good, especially after an important and flashy co-main event in the flyweight division was a late scrap due to illness.
Without Ian McCall and John Lineker as the insurance policy, a ragtag collection of prospects, veterans and street food vendors slouched into Uberlandia, Brazil to hold down the reputation of the greatest combat-fighting nation on the planet.
In fact, a full 75 percent of those competing at Fight Night 56 were doing so for only the first or second time in the Octagon. That’s not a good number.
But fear not! We still had Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, the living legend whose career evolved right alongside the sport and reached untold glory in countries all around this Earth. Did a green ex-football player have what it takes to challenge Shogun? Did this card give us any chance of a repeat performance from Australia?
As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. Here are the real top winners and losers from these two UFC weekend cards. Check it out.