The best and worst from UFC on ESPN: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards

#2 Worst: Was Adams stopped early?

Greg Hardy's fight with Juan Adams appeared to have been stopped early

Perhaps the most controversial moment of the night happened in the fight between Greg Hardy and Juan Adams. After some early exchanges, Adams shot in for a single leg only for Hardy to stuff it and begin landing punches to the head. Adams kept trying to get the takedown but Hardy defended well and continued to punch, and somehow that was enough for referee Dan Miragliotta to stop the fight. And unfortunately, despite Dominick Cruz suggesting otherwise on commentary, Adams seemed fine and protested the stoppage afterwards.

Referees have to err on the side of caution – I didn’t have an issue with the Urijah Faber/Ricky Simon stoppage last week for instance – but this looked weird to me purely because we’ve seen on tons of occasions (Robbie Lawler/Johny Hendricks and Phil Baroni/Matt Lindland immediately came to mind for me) that punching a fighter who’s going for a takedown isn’t enough to earn a stoppage unless the fighter goes unconscious, which Adams didn’t.

You could maybe argue that ‘The Kraken’ wasn’t driving forward enough, but even that’s questionable. At the end of the day, this was an early stoppage and it robbed Adams of his chance of victory. And as a consequence, the Greg Hardy push goes on. I just hope Adams isn’t punished for his post-fight actions, as he threw his mouthpiece into the crowd. That’d just be plain unfair.