A lot of knockouts, a Polish legend sadly ends his career and Procházka is the new champion. This is what UFC 275 looked like!

Singapore hosted its first ever UFC tournament on Saturday night, this time with the number 275. In the main event, Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira battled it out for the title, but we also witnessed a title defense by the legendary Valentina Shevchenko and the return of Joanna Jedrzejczyk. What did UFC 275 look like?

Early prelims and prelims

Before the main card, as is tradition, several fighters were featured on the early prelims and prelims cards. The entire UFC 275 tournament opened with two women’s fights and we didn’t wait too long for the first KO.

Still in the first bout Joselyne Edwards defeated Ramona Pascual by unanimous points, however the second bout didn’t even last a minute and a half when Silvana Gomez Juarez managed to send Liang Na down with two hard punches.

There were two more duels to wait for another early finish, as Kyung Ho Kang defeated Batgerela Danao by unanimous points, and Brendan Allen did the same as expected against Jacob Malkoun.

In the next duel, Maheshate was already in office, needing only one minute and 14 seconds to win against Steve Garcia, as he took care of a beautiful shutdown of his opponent.

In the last bout before the main card, Sengwoo Choi and Josh Culibao wowed the fans in style and although their fight ended on points, there were some tough exchanges and the match was definitely entertaining. Culibao won on a split decision.

The main card

Just as the prelims card ended in style, the main card was off to a great start. Jack Della Maddalena was able to defeat Ramazan Emeev after two and a half minutes, however he didn’t have it easy at all. In fact, at one point it looked like he was going to have to tap out to a well-taken choke. However, he managed to get out of it and turned the fight around to end it.

The second main card bout didn’t have to be decided by the judges’ scorecards either, as Jake Matthews took care of that, scoring his first clean KO in the UFC, even though he’s already fought 16 fights in the organization. It was Andre Fialho who is used to handing out knockouts in the first place.

Matthews was the better fighter throughout the fight, landing the better shots, and while Fialho tried to put pressure on him, he couldn’t get as close to his opponent as he needed to, and when he did, he could only regret it. In the second round, Matthews landed some great shots and finished Fialho.

The rematch of the best women’s duel in history was well worth it!

In the next bout, the legendary Joanna Jedrzejczyk returned to action in a rematch of the best women’s fight in history as she faced Weili Zhang again. Sadly though, just like in 2020, she lost, but this time without as much damage to her face and not on points.

The first round was clearly directed by the Chinese fighter, who showed a huge improvement in her wrestling. The Pole was wary of any shoves on the ground in the second round, however Zhang was threatening in the stand-up as well and finished Jedrzejczyk with a great spinning kick.

Zhang now faces a title bout with Carla Esparza. Meanwhile, the Polish fighter announced the end of her career after the loss and put her gloves on the cage floor. “I want to be a mother, I want to be a businesswoman,” she let her voice be heard immediately after the fight.

Title fights

Valentina Shevchenko and Taila Santos provided the first title bout of the evening. In terms of expectations and odds, there was virtually no bigger favourite in the entire tournament than the legendary champions from Kyrgyzstan. However, the Brazilian fighter proved to be the toughest challenger so far.

Santos got on her opponent’s back on more than one occasion in the fight, attempting to set up chokes and managing to roll her shots to the ground, but even when Shevchenko was down on her back, she was more active than the Brazilian in terms of strikes and submission attempts. Thus, she was able to defend her title again on split-decision.

The most anticipated bout, however, came from Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira, who put on an infectious five-round battle full of twists and turns, shootouts, ground battles, submission attempts and, most importantly, two warrior hearts.

Both Procházka and Teixeira endured a lot, and both managed to get out of very troublesome positions, virtually all the rounds were up and down, but before the fifth round the Brazilian was winning on points. Luckily the Moravian fighter managed to catch Teixeira and put him in a rear-naked choke.

The Czech Republic has its first ever UFC champion. And apparently it will be even better!

Source: UFC