The best and worst from UFC Fight Night 163: Magomedsharipov vs. Kattar

#2 Worst: The Hardy hype train ends with a whimper and not a bang

Try as he might, Alexander Volkov just couldn't stop Greg Hardy

Okay, so it’d be unfair to criticise the performance of Alexander Volkov tonight. Faced with a very different opponent to the one he was initially matched with, ‘Drago’ fought a smart fight and largely picked apart former NFL linebacker Greg Hardy over three rounds with some clean, varied striking. Sure, he ate a couple of shots from ‘The Prince of War’, but realistically he never let the fight leave his control.

However, it was still a little sad to see Hardy’s run of wins in the UFC end with him losing a decision rather than being knocked out or submitted. It’s no secret that Hardy is not exactly a likeable character; his history of domestic violence prior to his UFC career naturally leaves a sour taste in the mouth and he’s not done a lot to endear himself to MMA fans since, whether it’s down to his penchant for in-cage controversy (see his fights with Allen Crowder and Ben Sosoli) or his very unfair shots at Derrick Lewis’s past in interviews.

When he was matched with a monster like Volkov then, it felt like every anti-Hardy fight fan’s dream. Surely a fighter who’d taken out Fabricio Werdum and Stefan Struve in violent fashion would be able to put Hardy away? Well, it turned out that he couldn’t. So while it was nice to see him pick up a strong win, this was probably one of the lower points of this show.