UFC 300 was supposed to be good, but even then it exceed the expectations I had for it. Every fight from the early prelims all the way to the main events had me locked into the screen because I never knew what was going to happen. The matchup’s were all entertaining and had the potential to make or break many fighters careers going forward. With that being said lets get into the fight recaps.
The first fight of the night was between Sodiq Yussuf and Diego Lopes. As I said in my prediction I am officially on the Diego Lopes hype train and that looks as if it has no signs of slowing down anytime soon. In a fight with Sodiq Yussuf who many people believed would give Lopes issues on the feet, he in reality had no trouble at all handling business. Lopes continued his streak of utter first round dominance in just one minute and twenty nine seconds, when he caught Yussuf with a right uppercut that sent him stumbling onto the canvas and went on to finish the fight with a nasty ground and pound securing him the victory. Now unfortunately I guessed that Lopes would win by submission but I still predicted Lopes to win so it counts!
The next fight was between the highly anticipated Kayla Harrison and the veteran Holly Holm. This fight also ended up going almost identical to my prediction. Kayla Harrison is a force to be reckoned with in this Women’s Bantamweight division as she is just so big and powerful for this weight. Her superior grappling was on display throughout the whole fight and Holm just looked like she didn’t know how to deal with the new addition to the division. Harrison would submit Holm one minute and forty seven seconds into the second round, and then go on to call out the champion. Now it might seem crazy to call out the champion after your first fight in the UFC but after making the number 5 ranked Holly Holm look easy, this may only be one fight away for Harrison.
Now in what ended up being quite the boring fight was Aljamain Sterling vs. Calvin Kattar. This was Sterling’s debut fight in the Featherweight class after just moving up from Bantamweight. Just like I predicted Sterling came out and dominated Kattar and there was genuinely not much he could do about it. In the fifteen minute fight Sterling raked up a whopping ten minutes and forty three seconds of control time which allowed Kattar to only land 19 total strikes the entire fight, as opposed to Sterling’s 89 strikes. In the end Sterling won by a unanimous decision but unfortunately the fight mostly consisted of him just laying on top of Kattar which is why this fight ended up being slightly disappointing to me.
The last fight of the Prelims was bound to be legendary as Jiri Prochazka took on Aleksander Rakic. This fight had some good back and forth action for the first portion of the fight with both fighters landing some good strikes on one another. Prochazka did eat a huge shot from Rakic that he made look like nothing when in reality I think it would have knocked down 90% of the weight class. Jiri pushed through Rakic’s attacks catching him with great combos and keeping the pressure on, to end up finishing the fight by knockout three minutes and seventeen seconds into round two.
All in all on the prelims I was a perfect 4/4 on my predictions. A great start to a great card.
