Fight Night: UFC 296 Recap

Sorry for the long wait on this recap but it was winter break!  I know this card happened a good while ago but UFC 296 was incredible. The fights throughout this card were all insane and there was many phenomenal highlights. About a month ago I wrote a story talking about who I believed would win and my predictions for the fights so before you read this go check that out! Now we can get into the fights and how I did on my predictions.

The night opened up with Josh Emmett vs. Bryce Mitchell. Now I did not make a prediction for this fight because at the time I did my predictions this fight was not yet confirmed. However I feel a need to cover this fight as it ended with one of the scariest knockouts I have ever seen. Josh Emmett landed a picture perfect overhand on Bryce Mitchell crumpling him to the canvas almost immediately, giving Mitchell a seizure and leaving him down for a very extended period of time. Mitchell was a good sport about everything after the fact however and thanked Emmett for not doing unnecessary damage after the knockout.

Now into the fights I predicted. It started with Tony Ferguson vs. Paddy Pimblett This fight was fun to watch as itbeing an old legend of a fighter in Tony versus a newer up and coming fighter in Paddy. I predicted that it would be a somewhat good fight but Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett would end up getting the job done. Now although it wasn’t the best fight it was solid, but also hard to watch. Paddy outclassed Ferguson the entirety of the fight making me 1 for 1 on predictions picking up the win. And, although I thought Ferguson would retire if he lost he announced he will continue fighting whether that’s for better or for worse we will have to see.

The third fight of the night was one I was very excited for being Shavkat Rakhmonov (5) vs. Stephen Thompson (6). In this fight I predicted that Shavkat Rakhmonov would keep his undefeated record and I even said that he would continue his streak of finishing his opponents as well. The fight was fun to watch and was kept interesting but in the final seconds of the second round Rahkmonov was able to find the back of “Wonderboy” Thompson and snake his arm around his neck for a rear naked choke, forcing the legend to tap out for the first time in his UFC career.

The co-main event of the night was a matchup between Alexandre Pantoja (C) vs. Brandon Royval (2). I predicted this to be an all out dogfight with both men going 100% the whole time. I thought Pantoja had the edge and would win based off his grappling ability, cardio, and chin of steel. These factors all played into the fight, and although Royval but up a great fight and took Pantoja into deep waters, it wasn’t enough and Pantoja retained as the UFC featherweight champion.

The Main Event was the highly anticipated matchup between the huge trash talkers of the UFC in Leon Edwards (C) vs. Colby Covington (3). Now this fight didn’t play out anything like I thought it would. Colby Covington just ended up looking extremely flat while Leon was dominant for nearly the entire fight. It was a somewhat boring fight but I got my prediction right where I said Leon Edwards will be able to pick Covington apart from range to add another defense to his resume. That is kind of what happened, with Leon scoring a win by decision at the end of the five rounds.

Overall, I went a perfect 4/4 on my predictions bringing my total to 8/9! I will be back for UFC 297 where I will hope to have perfect predictions again in the next exciting fight night.