It wasn’t hard to discern the winners from the losers at Saturday night’s UFC 160—the guy whose hand the ref lifted after the fight won, the guy whose hand he didn’t…well, didn’t.
But not all winners are created equal, and neither are their un-victorious counterparts. UFC, like any fighting sport, is an exercise in context. Each fight sets up the next fight, and that fight the one after that.
Everybody who won on a Pay-Per-View won big, but some of them won very big. Same can be said for the losers.
So, without further ado, here are the biggest winners and losers from UFC 160:
Winner/Loser: Cain Velasquez/Antonio Silva
Hard to mention one without the other after Saturday’s beatdown. And what a beatdown it was.
Silva earned his nickname, in part, because he has vicious knockout power. But on Saturday evening, Cain Velasquez—now an undisputed heavyweight champ of nearly historic proportions—didn’t give him a single chance to attack. He ended the bout before Silva could show off his big foot, his small foot, or either of his fists.
Cain took it to Silva a couple of times early, being denied both times, before landing a left-punch straight-right combo that sent Big Foot to the mat. The fight didn’t end much later, nor much sooner than it began. Cain had retained (re-Cained?) his title for the first time…and he made it look awfully easy.
For Silva, this could mark the end of the beginning of the end. That is, now we’re just screeching toward the prime of the end. He’s now 34 years old and the loser of three of his last five fights.
He earned his fight with Cain last night, but it’s clear—and probably was even before the bout—that they aren’t in the same class of fighter. At least not any more.
Big Foot might be on the road to retirement. Either that or irrelevance.
Winner: Junior Dos Santos
JDS could have played it safe against the “Super Samoan,” using his superior technical skill and experience to wait out his opponent. Mark Hunt likes to punch, and Cigano knew for a fact that he could win if he could get the opposition impatient, or grappled him to oblivion.
But he opted to stand up and box with Hunt, a bold move given his opponent’s strengths, but a confident statement from a man coming off disgrace. JDS isn’t used to getting punked, and he isn’t content with merely winning his next fight. He needs to punk another fighter…reverse the punk polarity.
That’s exactly what he did late in the third round, when a spin kick to Mark Hunt’s face—this is a heavyweight, mind you—sent the Samoan, unconscious, down to the canvas, and forced the fight to be called.
Just how dominant dos Santos was on Saturday night is up for interpretation—after all, he did take a few square punches to the jaw. Personally, I’d give him an 8-out-of-10.
But any time you (likely) earn a title fight—especially a rematch against a man who humiliated you—its hard to be called anything but a winner.
Loser: Gray Maynard
Maynard’s eagerly anticipated return from injury didn’t quite go how he planned, ending in his second career defeat. And boy, was this one ugly.
Bigfoot wasn’t the only prestige fighter to get TKO’d in the first round last night, as T.J. Grant took it to Maynard in similarly quick fashion. “The Bully” went headhunting early, as he’s wont to do, but Grant made him pay in a big way.
He stunned Maynard with a straight right, dropped him moments later with the same punch, then took care of business with a fusillade of hammers on the ground.
Now Maynard, who was staring at another title shot, will have to work his way back up the competitive lightweight rankings.
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