If you slumbered on UFC on Fox 23, you missed a title eliminator bout, one of the best action fights possible in the welterweight division and the most exciting prospect in the heavyweight division.
You also missed Bruce Leeroy and The Kid.
A lot…
If you slumbered on UFC on Fox 23, you missed a title eliminator bout, one of the best action fights possible in the welterweight division and the most exciting prospect in the heavyweight division.
You also missed Bruce Leeroy and The Kid.
A lot was going on Saturday night on this UFC card in Denver, wedged into Pro Bowl weekend. In the main event, Valentina Shevchenko and Julianna Pena, respectively the first- and second-ranked women’s bantamweights on the UFC roster, did battle to see who would face champion Amanda Nunes.
In the co-main event, dynamic welterweights Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Jorge Masvidal faced each other. If that doesn’t sell itself, you don’t buy much of anything in MMA.
Later on the main card, heavyweight up-and-comer Francis Ngannou tried to get over against veteran Andrei Arlovski.
And those are only three of the evening’s 12 fights. As usual, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from UFC on Fox 23.
This evening’s (Sat., January 28, 2017) UFC on FOX 23 is in the books from the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. Top-ranked women’s bantamweight Valentina Shevchenko met second-ranked Julianna Pena for pivotal title positioning in the main event, with ‘Bullet’ submitting the brash TUF 18 winner with a picture-perfect armbar in the second round. In
This evening’s (Sat., January 28, 2017) UFC on FOX 23 is in the books from the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
Top-ranked women’s bantamweight Valentina Shevchenko met second-ranked Julianna Pena for pivotal title positioning in the main event, with ‘Bullet’ submitting the brash TUF 18 winner with a picture-perfect armbar in the second round.
In the co-main event, hometown favorite Donald Cerrone met veteran Jorge Masvidal in an exciting welterweight scrap where ‘Gamebred’ shocked the crowd by running through ‘Cowboy’ early in the second round after badly rocking him at the end of the first.
Elsewhere on the main card, quickly rising heavyweight prospect Francis Ngannou got by far the biggest win of his young UFC career by starching former champ Andrei Arlovski in the first round, and featherweight prospect Jason Knight picked up his biggest win as well, defeating The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) competitor Alex Caceres with a second-round rear-naked choke.
Check out the event’s post-fight press conference starting shortly after the main card right here:
Donald Cerrone’s Cinderella march through the welterweight division encountered its first bit of adversity Saturday at UFC on Fox 23.
Jorge Masvidal dashed Cerrone’s four-fight winning streak at 170 pounds, stopping the popular Cowboy via s…
Donald Cerrone’s Cinderella march through the welterweight division encountered its first bit of adversity Saturday at UFC on Fox 23.
Jorge Masvidal dashed Cerrone’s four-fight winning streak at 170 pounds, stopping the popular Cowboy via second-round TKO during their co-main event bout at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
Cerrone came into their bout ranked No. 5 in the UFC’s official welterweight rankings, and it was thought this bout shaped up as a good chance for him to make his case as one of the weight class’ top contenders.
Instead, it was Masvidal who made the emphatic statement.
“I’m excited man, but back to business,” Masvidal told UFC color commentator Brian Stann on Fox in the cage when it was over. “The real is back. There’s lot of fake media out there, a lot of BS going on. I’m a real fighter. I don’t take pictures on social media and all that, that’s why my name ain’t out there, but I kick ass. If you like watching people that kick ass, tune in.”
Masvidal also offered to put up $200,000 in a bet against UFC President Dana White, arguing that White couldn’t find a welterweight fighter who can beat him.
Suffice to say, this was an eye-opening turn of events for the 170-pound pecking order.
Masvidal came into the bout on the heels of two straight wins, and adding a stoppage victory against the surging Cerrone could see him rocketing up the 170-pound rankings.
We already know welterweight champion TyronWoodley will rematch with Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson at UFC 209 on March 4. The winner of that bout will likely take on a challenge from a wide-open field of contenders that could include former champ Robbie Lawler, longtime contender Demian Maia or even a wild card like Nick Diaz.
Cerrone had been hoping to throw his own name in with that group, after moving up to welterweight at the start of 2016. He’d been on an absolute tear, winning four fights in a row last year, most recently stopping perennial contender Matt Brown via third-round KO at UFC 206.
That bout went down on Dec. 10, and Cerrone made a quick turnaround to fight Masvidal in his hometown of Denver this weekend.
Unfortunately, the gamble didn’t pay off.
Cerrone began the bout looking patient, scoring with low kicks and body kicks against the 32-year-old Florida native. Masvidal also scored with some hard punches, but Cerrone appeared to dictate the early action, countering well with kicks on the occasions that Masvidal was able to get off first.
During the final two minutes, however, Masvidal began to turn the tide. He warded off a takedown attempt from Cerrone and scored with a hard spinning backfist. Cerrone fired back with a head kick of his own, but Masvidal weathered it and started to find a home for his harder shots.
The potential game-changer came just before the bell, when Masvidal dropped Cerrone with a counter right-left combo and then poured on more shots as Cerrone fell to the canvas.
As referee Herb Dean stepped in at the end of the round, it appeared as if Cerrone may have been saved by the bell.
Masvidal started aggressively in the second, capitalizing on a still-dazed Cerrone. He scored with kicks and knees, ultimately dropping Cerrone again with an overhand right. Cerrone worked his way back to his feet, but could do nothing besides cover up against Masvidal’s punches until Dean stepped in to stop the fight just one minute into the second stanza.
The victory puts Masvidal on a three-fight winning streak and offers him the opportunity to finally become a real player in the UFC welterweight division.
Meanwhile, Cerrone goes back to the drawing board.
Going into their bout tonight (Jan. 28) at UFC on FOX 23, Donald Cerrone (32-8, 1 NC) and Jorge Masvidal (32-11) had a combined 83 professional mixed martial arts (MMA) bouts. If you put the number of finishes they have achieved, you’d get 38. Make that 39 finishes, with Masvidal dishing out the punishment. The
Going into their bout tonight (Jan. 28) at UFC on FOX 23, Donald Cerrone (32-8, 1 NC) and Jorge Masvidal (32-11) had a combined 83 professional mixed martial arts (MMA) bouts. If you put the number of finishes they have achieved, you’d get 38.
Make that 39 finishes, with Masvidal dishing out the punishment.
The Denver crowd was red hot for their hero, “Cowboy.” Cerrone got in a jab. A body kick was there for Cerrone. A jab found the mark for “Gamebred.” Cerrone connected with a counter left hand. Masvidal’s lead leg was already bruised. Masvidal looked to complain of an eye poke, but time wasn’t called.
Blood trickled from the nose of Cerrone. He went for a takedown attempt, but it wasn’t there. A spinning backfist landed for Masvidal. “Gamebred’s” mouth saw a bit of blood. Masvidal landed two right hands. Masvidal dropped Cerrone and “Cowboy” was wobbly getting up. The fight was not stopped, but rather the round was over.
Cerrone looked like he was out on the replay, but the fight was still on.
Cerrone threw a lunging right hand and didn’t look all there in the second round. Masvidal dropped Cerrone again and pieced him up some more before referee Herb Dean stopped the fight.
Final Result: Jorge Masvidal def. Donald Cerrone via TKO (strikes) – Round 2, 1:00
UFC on FOX 23 will go down live from Denver, Colorado tonight (Sat. January 28, 2017), and what a card the UFC has in store for us today. In our main event of the evening the top contenders in the women’s bantamweight division will do battle, as No. 1-ranked Valentina Shevchenko takes on No. 2-ranked
UFC on FOX 23 will go down live from Denver, Colorado tonight (Sat. January 28, 2017), and what a card the UFC has in store for us today.
In our main event of the evening the top contenders in the women’s bantamweight division will do battle, as No. 1-ranked Valentina Shevchenko takes on No. 2-ranked Julianna Pena. Our co-main event will see hometown hero Donald Cerrone take on Jorge Masvidal in a pivotal welterweight contest.
Also on the main card is a fight between former heavyweight champ Andrei Arlovski and surging prospect Francis Ngannou, and a featherweight scrap featuring Alex Caceres and Jason Knight.
It should be a fun night of fights inside the Octagon from Denver’s Pepsi Center, and you can check out the full fight card for the event here:
Main Card (FOX, 8 PM ET)
Women’s Bantamweight: Valentina Shevchenko vs. Julianna Pena
Welterweight: Donald Cerrone vs. Jorge Masvidal
Heavyweight: Andrei Arlovski vs. Francis Ngannou
Featherweight: Alex Caceres vs. Jason Knight
Preliminary Card (FS1, 5PM ET)
Middleweight: Sam Alvey vs. Nate Marquardt
Bantamweight: Raphael Assuncao vs. Aljamain Sterling
Welterweight: Li Jingliang vs. Bobby Nash
Light Heavyweight: Luis Henrique da Silva vs. Jordan Johnson
Middleweight: Alessio Di Chirico vs. Eric Spicely
Catchweight (209.5): Jeremy Kimball vs. Marcos Rogerio de Lima **De Lima missed weight**
Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass, 4PM ET)
Flyweight: Alexandre Pantoja vs. Eric Shelton
Lightweight: J.C. Cottrell vs. Jason Gonzalez
Make sure to keep it locked with LowKick for coverage of tonight’s UFC on FOX 23 event, and follow along with us on Twitter as the action takes place @LowKick_MMA.
At any point in their respective careers, people would have been happy to see Donald Cerrone and Jorge Masvidal square off. They’re two of the more aggressive action fighters in the game, wild men of competing backgrounds and lifestyles who have …
At any point in their respective careers, people would have been happy to see Donald Cerrone and Jorge Masvidal square off. They’re two of the more aggressive action fighters in the game, wild men of competing backgrounds and lifestyles who have been anywhere between respected and beloved for the better part of a decade.
Cerrone is a former UFC title contender who was also one of the hottest commodities in the WEC back in the day, where he fought for a world title on three occasions. People love that he’s either windsurfing or whooping opponents and that he’s pretty much in a permanent state of readiness to throw down.
Masvidal is, for all intents and purposes, Kimbo Slice without the beard. He was game-bred in Florida backyards, where he learned to ply his trade against some of the toughest guys you’ve never heard of. He’s done well in Sengoku and put together a little tournament run back when Bellator was into that kind of thing, and he fought for titles in almost every promotion that’s ever booked him.
And all of that, for both guys, happened at 155 pounds.
That’s pretty remarkable.
Each man’s resume is sparkling overall, but particularly excellent in the lightweight division. In the UFC alone they’ve combined to vanquish 20 foes in the class—twenty. It’s that combined excellence that made a move north for each man so surprising.
After a late-2015 loss to Rafael dos Anjos, Cerrone bounced back within a couple of months by taking a welterweight fight and winning it handily with a triangle choke over Alex Oliveira. He racked up three more wins in 2016—all by (T)KO—over notoriously durable tough outs Patrick Cote, Rick Story and Matt Brown.
Almost nobody stops any of those guys, and Cerrone stopped all of them, in a row, within a few months of one another.
Similarly, after a frustrating split-decision loss to lightweight-turned-realtor Al Iaquinta in 2015, Masvidal headed up to 170. He, perhaps surprisingly, obliterated hulking welterweight CezarFerreira and has also taken wins over Ross Pearson and Jake Ellenberger.
Though he’s dropped a couple of fights, to Benson Henderson and Lorenz Larkin, both were narrow split decisions against top-10 opponents—hardly the type of losses to force a man into irrelevance.
Cerrone is 4-0 at his new weight and Masvidal, with a couple of bounces, could be 5-0 there. These men are undeniably the welterweight elite, but for much of the time they were known they were known as lightweights.
It speaks to the nature of the sport that athletes find a weight class and become obsessed with the number on the scale instead of the number in the win column, but more directly it speaks to how good a fighter can be when s/he ignores convention and focuses on challenges and testing their skills.
Neither Cerrone nor Masvidal is the biggest welterweight out there, and neither has been in on title discussions. TyronWoodleyhas called outConorMcGregor, Nick Diaz and Georges St-Pierre while signing on to fight Stephen Thompson, and Demian Maia is lurking in the shadows for a crack at the belt, but through gumption and performances to back it up, they’ve become beyond ignoring.
Would it be overly surprising if WME-IMG chose to give the winner of this fight a title shot? Cerrone is as marketable and popular as anyone in the sport, and Masvidal is the type of nasty, streetwise trash-talker who might just lip his way into the mix if he dispatches Cerrone convincingly and says the right things with a mic in front of him.
It’s pretty clear UFC ownership is interested in making money at the behest of competitive merit these days, and it’s a safe bet that either of these guys is going to sell harder than the kindly, respectable Maia.
And were it to come, that opportunity—just as the opportunity to co-headline this weekend’s Fox event—came only because two very good lightweights were tired of being lost in the shuffle at 155 and turned their attentions to a new challenge.
Not everyone would do that. Not everyone is cut out to take on all comers, fighting bigger opponents on any amount of notice just to get in the cage and perform.
These guys are, and it’s serving everyone interested with a bounty of rewards, entertainment and possibilities as a result.
