5 most explosive moments from UFC 271: Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker 2

#4. Kyler Phillips puts a stamp on his victory over Marcelo Rojo

Kyler Phillips impressed by dealing with an overmatched opponent in Marcelo Rojo

Kyler Phillips lost out on a main card slot last night. In the end, he proved that he’s still a dark horse in the UFC’s bantamweight division by completely dominating an overmatched foe in Marcelo Rojo.

Phillips was well on his way to a decision victory as the third round of the clash ticked away but, impressively, he was still able to find a way to finish his opponent. While this didn’t net ‘The Matrix’ one of the event’s $50k bonuses, it should definitely hold him in good stead for his next visit to the octagon.

Essentially, Phillips won this bout in all areas, abusing Rojo’s leg with a steady diet of heavy kicks while also marking him up with jabs, too. While Rojo would probably have hoped for an advantage on the ground, that wasn’t the case at all.

‘The Matrix’ was the man who landed the fight’s takedowns. In the final stanza, he made one pay off. He applied an armbar/triangle choke combination to force his Argentine foe to tap out with just over three minutes remaining on the clock.

Quite how high Phillips’ ceiling in the UFC is remains a question mark, as it’s hard to erase the memories of his poor loss to Raulian Paiva last summer. However, if any UFC fighter wants to get to the top, they’ve got to deal with overmatched opponents. ‘The Matrix’ did just that here, in impressive fashion.

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#3. Douglas Silva de Andrade produces a classic UFC comeback over Sergey Morozov

Douglas Silva de Andrade produced a stirring comeback to defeat Sergey Morozov

UFC 271’s ‘Fight of the Night’ award went to the third bout on the card. Douglas Silva de Andrade produced one of the most stirring comebacks in some time to defeat Sergey Morozov in the second round.

This was an explosive bout from start to finish. After flying out of the blocks, Morozov will probably be wondering quite how he managed to lose.

Despite ‘D’Silva’ showing his trademark aggression, it was Morozov who landed first. He hurt him with a right hand and then dropped the Brazilian with an uppercut in the early going.

From there, after cutting him open badly with some elbows, Morozov continued to land blows. He hurt ‘D’Silva’ over and over before ending the round with a nasty spin kick to the body and more ground-and-pound.

The idea of de Andrade coming back from this felt like a pipe dream. Somehow, he came into the second round fired up, hurt Morozov with an early combination, and then continued to unleash hell despite his Kazakh opponent firing back.

Eventually, ‘D’Silva’ hurt his opponent badly with an elbow. He then threw him to the ground and managed to catch him in a choke variant to leave him completely unconscious.

While this win probably won’t elevate de Andrade back into the top ten at 135lbs, it should be more than enough to keep him on track following a knockout win last October. It was easily enough to earn both he and Morozov an extra $50k.