The UFC’s first foray into Saudi Arabia came with a mixed bag of fights. With the loss of Khamzat Chimaev, the UFC scrambled to put together a series of fights that would excite the Saudi fans. So what was the next best option? Why the only man who lost to Khamzat Chimaev, of course. Enter Ikram Aliskerov. For a cram, it was a massive jump in the rankings for him to take on Robert Whittaker, former champion and legend of the sport. And that experience clearly showed as Robert Whittaker dispatched Ikram within two minutes of the first round. It was an emphatic finish for the former champion as he looked to extend his winning streak after a win against Paulo Costa. Whittaker delivered a violent finish, as expected of someone of his rank and calibre. He drew out reactions with feints from Aliskerov. When he noticed that Ikram was following the same patterns, he unleashed a right hand from hell that caught him square in the jaw and wobbled the former Dagestani Sambo world champion. From then on he stalked Ikram all across the Octagon, and unleashed the fight-ending sequence with a beautiful uppercut that floored Aliskerov. This was Whittaker’s best performance to date and he came in looking like a man possessed. He had to win this fight emphatically and he did exactly that by knocking out Ikram Aliskerov. So what’s next for the middleweight champion? We assume that he’d get the winner of Israel and Dricus. But who knows what the UFC will go with, they could even try to remake the Khamzat fight.
Volkov Shines
The co-main event saw Sergey Pavlovich take on Alexander Volkov in what was a relatively uneventful fight. The two big men stalked each other all across the Octagon, with Pavlovich looking to knock out Volkov and Volkov using his six-foot-nine frame to hold Pavlovich back. Volkov used a nice combination of jabs, body kicks, teeps, leg kicks and straight punches to really put Pavlovich on notice. By the end of the fight, Volkov had Pavlovich looking like a stuck pig. Volkov probably broke his nose and gave him a bad bruise under the eye and left Pavlovich bloodied after a three-round war. It was a great win for Volkov, who showed that he still belonged at the top of the division, taking out the #3 ranked heavyweight in the world with relative ease. Where he goes from here is a mystery but there is no one above him to fight really, apart from Curtis Blades and Tommy Aspinall who are fighting each other in September. His callout of Jon Jones made just about as much sense as Jon fighting Stipe. So hey, why not just make that fight, right?
Filipe Lima is the real deal, crushes Naimov
Further down the card, Shara Bullet picked up a TKO win over a slightly overmatched Antonio Tricoli. Even though he scored the TKO in the third round, it was very clear that a fence grabbed in the second allowed Shara Bullet to stay on his feet and not be taken down. We have still not seen his ground skills yet, so if it’s an elite wrestler he’s fighting who can consistently shoot takedowns, it might be trouble for the Dagestani native. His style doesn’t revolve around wrestling or grappling and he has a primarily kickboxing style, and even his hands don’t look as good as as his kicks do. I don’t really see the hype behind Shara Bullet, and I think once he reaches the upper echelon of the spot, he’ll have a lot of trouble with guys who’ve got decent grappling and the ability to keep their opponents on the ground. In one of the better fights of the card, Mohammed Naimov took on Felipe Lima, who was called up on short notice and fought a weight class above his natural weight at 145 lbs. It was a furiously paced fight which saw both competitors exchanging strikes with Felipe Lima getting the better of the first few clashes. With a rousing speech by coach Andreas in Lima’s corner. It really fired the Brazilian up, who came in the third round, took Naimov down, took his back and sunk in a beautiful rear-naked choke for the victory. This was a bittersweet moment for a lot of MMA fans as Naimov basically got away with kicking Nathaniel Wood three times in the groin in his last fight. So many saw it as some sort of comeuppance or universal karma or something like that. But in the words of Max Holloway, it is what it is.
Johhny Walker was subjected to another brutal KO loss at the hands of Volkan Ozdemir. The Brazilian madman does not wear damage well and with a huge puncher like Volkan, it was a quick night for the Swiss bomber.
So all in all, it was a relatively mid-level fight card that the UFC put together for Saudi Arabia. It’s not really their fault as most of the fights fell through. But it goes to show that when they really put their mind to it, the UFC are able to put together a fight card on essentially a day’s notice and kind of save the event. Maybe in the future, they’ll have a better card planned for Saudi Arabia, but for right now, this is all we’ve got.
