Oliveira a champion without a title, a sad end for Ferguson and a controversial title for Esparza. What did UFC 274 look like?

The UFC has another big tournament under its belt, this time with the number 274 card. Fans were particularly interested in the main card, which featured many big names and featured two title fights. What did the star-studded gala look like?

Prelims

If anyone expected the early prelims and prelims cards to go quickly, they were sorely mistaken. In the nine matches before the anticipated main card, the crowd saw only two early finishes.

The first came from Portugal’s Andre Fialho, who scored a first-round TKO victory over Cameron Vancamp.

Brandon Royval and Matt Schnell didn’t spend long in the cage either. The former put his opponent in a guillotine and quickly tightened it up to a winning finish.

Then in the early prelims, Journey Newson defeated Fernie Garcia, Ariane Carnelossi couldn’t keep up with Loopy Godinez, CJ Vergara won over Kleydson Rodrigues, and Tracy Cortez handled Melissa Gatto.

The middle card featured a heavyweight bout, with Blagoy Ivanov winning over Marcos Rogerio De Lima, Macy Chiasson winning a split decision against Norma Dumont, and veteran Francisco Trinalo taking on Danny Roberts

Main Card

The main card of the tournament was to be opened by veteran Donald Cerrone, one of the best fighters to never win a title. Unfortunately, he suffered food poisoning and his fight with Joe Lauzon was postponed.

That left Randy Brown’s bout with Khaos Williams on the main card, which was definitely something to watch. The entire fight was staged except for a momentary passage after one stand-up knockdown, both fighters showed that they can give a punch but also take one.

Brown won on a split decision, with two of the three judges seeing his 29:28 win, while the third judge saw Williams win.

The fight pitting Mauricio Rua and Ovince Saint Preaux against each other was not as entertaining. Not too much activity and booing from the fans, that’s a short summary of the duel. Saint Preaux won narrowly on points.

The sad return of Ferguson

A spectacular return. This was to be Tony Ferguson, who was facing a huge challenge in the form of Michael Chandler. Both had a losing streak behind them, however it was Ferguson who was no longer much to be reckoned with.

For Ferguson, it was also very personal. Despite a streak of 12 wins in a row, he had never fought for a regular title, while Chandler only needed one win after coming to the UFC for a title fight. So before the fight, “El Cucuy” had some harsh words for both the UFC and Chandler.

Then when the fight came, Ferguson was greeted passionately. As soon as the fight started, the entire arena chanted the name of the UFC legend. And the start of the first round was really good. Ferguson was able to hit Chandler, even land a knockdown.

Chandler, however, took the fight to the ground midway through the round, where Ferguson showed a very active defense despite his dominance. It was expected how long it would take for Chandler to take the fight to the ground in the second round.

It just didn’t happen. After a few seconds, Chandler hit Ferguson with a fantastic front kick and made the fans see Ferguson like they had never seen him before. The seasoned veteran went down and collected himself for several minutes. Chandler will definitely be in the running for KO of the Year.

The UFC has a new champion

Rose Namajunas had another tough fight ahead of her. And with an opponent who beat her eight years ago. Carla Esparza was going into a title fight for the first time in a long time. It was more or less a battle of two styles. While Namajunas is more complex, Esparza is an excellent wrestler and it was through wrestling that she defeated Namajunas in their first match.

The defending champion had a lot of respect for her opponent’s wrestling, which is one of the reasons why she was more or less completely passive for the first two rounds. So she played it safe and kept her distance, not rushing into her strikes too much, rather trying to hit ones to prevent any takedowns.

The remaining three rounds she was a bit more active, but it wasn’t a hit parade. More or less only the fourth round had a convincing winner, that was Esparza. When the fight was over, Namajunas was expected to retain the title and score a takedown.

But the opposite was true and the UFC has a new champion. On social media, not only the fight itself, but also the outcome of the fight came under fire from critics. The unwritten rule says that the challenger should beat the champion more noticeably, which certainly didn’t happen in this case.

Namajunas thus paid the price for a passive performance. However, Esparza was not any more active during the match. Namajunas had more strikes, and she was more accurate. On takedowns, Esparza won 2:1.

Esparza has worked her way to the title after a long 2612 days. It’s been a long time since anyone expected to regain the title.

Incredible main event! Too bad it was so short

The main event of the night lived up to its status on the card. The title match pitting Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje against each other had a very interesting prelims. Because of it, only Gaethje, for whom this was his second title fight in the UFC, fought for the title.

Oliveira failed to make the weight limit, which not only caused him to lose the title, but he couldn’t even get it back in his fight with the American fighter.

The Brazilian was the slight favorite for the fight, despite his weight problems. There were two scenarios in particular. Oliveira wins on a submission, or Gaethje manages to deliver a KO. And the first scenario came true, moreover in the first round. But it was worth it!

Gaethje was able to hit Oliveira hard several times, and the Brazilian then tried to get the American to follow him to the ground, but to no avail. So there was nothing to do but to get Gaethje to the ground, which he did.

Oliveira too was hitting his opponent well and after a knockdown the fight went to the ground, where although Gaethje resisted the set up submissions for a few seconds, eventually the Brazilian caught the choke and with a minute and 40 seconds left in the first round Gaethje gave up.

The fight was truly worth it. Oliveira proved that he is a champion without the belt and that he can, barring weight issues, dominate the lightweight division for a long time.

Source: UFC, Twitter