I was really excited about this past pay-per-view event in Salt Lake City and the card was absolutely stacked even though one of the fights had to be abandoned because one of the fighters missed weight.
Normally big events will go on for hours and hours, sometimes a bit too long but this one was over in just 2.5 hours and that includes all the time that happens between events with promos for other events and commentary about things that happened in the past. Only one of the fights went the distance and the two of the fights lasted much less time than I think most people would have liked, the BMF bout in general was a bit of a letdown but come on, no one can take a shin to the head and stay standing.
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The fight was pretty even going into the 2nd round with both guys landing stiff shots to the point where at least where I was no one could really make a call on who won the first round. It was at the time that we kind of started thinking that the judges at that point kind of just flip a coin to decide who gets the 10 or at least that is the way it has seemed in the past.
The crazy way about how the fight ended was that Poirier was doing just fine and his game plan seemed to be working. He even partially blocked the head kick but that's the thing about legs to the head, there is so much power in them that if someone puts full force into one, even though you are blocking it the sheer power behind it is enough to KO almost anyone including greats like Dustin Poirier.
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)It was kind of funny to see in the replay about how Herb Dead did a slide in to stop the fight in a way that I have never seen a ref do before and the way in which he connected with Dustin had some people saying that it was "The People's Elbow" which is a move that was made famous by "The Rock" in WWE. It is ironic because although I don't think he had much to do with the fight this time around Dwayne Johnson was actually heavily involved in the first BMF match.
When Gaetje won, he was handed the BMF belt and since I hate that this belt exists I was kind of happy that he immediately handed it away to one of his team. It appeared as though he didn't want it but someone in the executive office like Dana White probably forced him to put it over his shoulder during the post fight interview.
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Other fights that ended much faster than anticipated Derrick Lewis KO'd Marcos Rogerio de Lima with a surprise flying knee at the opening bell. This was not blocked and I don't care how tough you are, if a guy that weighs 265 lbs makes contact with your face with a flying knee, you are going down.
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Lewis isn't known for his agility and I don't think anyone thought he would do something like this. In the post-fight interview Joe Rogan asked him if it was his gameplan to do the flying knee and Lewis responded "hell no!"
Of the 5 fights on the main card, 4 of them didn't go the distance and two of those were ended in the first round.
I can't say that I was disappointed with any of the fights and none of them were boring at all. I would have liked to have seen Gaetje and Poirier duke it out a bit longer but no one can say that the fight was at all boring.
Conor McGregor had to put his 2 cents in dissing Gaetje by saying "Justin, I'll slap you around." It appeared on the screen while Justin was celebrating his win so Conor definitely doesn't waste any time talking trash. Gaetje calmly responded to this tweet in another interview saying "Conor has turned me down for a fight 6 times I think, you have to lose in order to face Conor, so I don't even know what is going on."
Now what I would really like to see is the retirement of the BMF belt altogether because ok, Justin Gaetje is the BMF belt holder now, but he isn't the champion in his own weight class. That kind of takes the "B" out of "BMF" now doesn't it?