One of the great things about MMA is its athletic purity. Not to get all purple on you, but nothing else strips physical competition down to bare wood like fighting.
The same goes for the mind and spirit. If you’re not properly prepared or girded, a fight will expose that posthaste.
All of these tenets were on full display Saturday in the main event of UFC on Fox 18, which went down from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Said main event featured a stylistic matchup as old as organized combat itself. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, the favorite, is a knockout artist, with 14 of his 20 professional wins arriving at the ends of his heavy fists and feet. He has also been dogged by a tendency throughout his career to tire and flag in later rounds.
As it happens, Ryan Bader, the underdog, was an All-American wrestler in college, more of a grinder who, the assumptions went, would try to control and outlast the dangerous striker on the mat. But a game plan is only as good as the person executing it, and Bader has historically struggled to perform in big fights, like this one.
The main event was only one of the 13 bouts on Saturday’s docket. In the co-main event, bruising heavyweights Josh Barnett and Ben Rothwell met, and the meeting had implications for the top end of that division.
Oh, and there was that Sage Northcutt guy, too.
As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. Here are the real winners and losers from UFC on Fox 18.