Fight Night: UFC 297 Recap

Unfortunately, I was not able to make any fight predictions for UFC 297 as we were fresh off of break and I was recapping UFC 296! However, regardless I still will be recapping UFC 297 for you so that you know what somewhat went down throughout the night. I also will be discussing and giving my thoughts on the Main Event of the night which seems to be a controversial hot topic right now.

In the first fight of the night, Movsar Evloev defeated Arnold Allen by decision after a dominant performance. Allen looked well prepared for what Evloev brought to the fight, but he simply could not stop it. Evloev landed big punches at range on Allen while mixing in high-pressure takedowns. However, Allen shortly threatened Evloev with a choke in the third round, but Evloev eventually worked out of it cruising to a victory.

The next fight was Chris Curtis vs. Marc-Andre Barriault. Curtis picked up the victory by a split decision in an extremely close fight. Neither fighter gained a certain advantage over the other throughout any of the rounds, but in the end, Curtis was the more effective fighter. He landed many heavy blows in the final minutes of the fight that appeared to start getting to Barriault tiring him out and that is what I believe effectively won him the fight.

The third fight on this card was between Neil Magny and Mike Malott. Throughout this fight, it appeared Magny was going to get steamrolled by Malott as for the first 14 minutes Magny was being utterly defeated and broken down with a steady stream of lower leg kicks and takedowns. I was sure the fight was going to go to a decision until the last minute of the round when Magny secured a slam takedown that put Malott on the canvas and Magny above him which led to a flurry of punches from the mount from Magny, until the referee ultimately jumped in with just 15 seconds left giving Magny the victory by TKO in one of the most surprising finishes to a UFC fight I have ever seen.

The Co-Main event was for the Women’s bantamweight championship in which it was Raquel Pennington vs. Mayra Bueno Silva. Pennington was able to secure the win by Unanimous decision mostly on her feet following a nasty jab that was landing all night. The fight was extremely slow at times but outside of a few submission attempts Pennington dominated the fight to become just the sixth women’s bantamweight champion ever.

Now for the highly anticipated main event, Sean Strickland vs. Driscus Du Plessis. Now there is a lot of controversy around the judging of this fight in which Du Plessis was named the winner by split-decision. This fight was a bloody back and forth battle between two absolute warriors. Strickland had a lot of success early in the fight with his nasty jab that looks almost automatic. Du Plessis not only struggled to defend it, but had trouble getting off his own attacks due to that. In the fourth round, Du Plessis turned things in his favor cutting Strickland near on his eye and hurting him with a big right hand. Strickland closed strong however with a brutal fifth round in which I would slightly give the edge to Strickland. The main thing that Du Plessis had going for him that I believe won him the fight was seven takedowns, but he was not able to effectively hold Strickland down scoring only just over two minutes of control time.

I believe Strickland deserved to win the fight as he did more damage outside of the cut on his eye but overall it was a very close exciting fight to round out a generally boring card filled with decision victories.