The best and worst moments from UFC 228

UFC 228 wasn’t the most highly anticipated card of 2018 – especially with the big Khabib/McGregor fight on the horizon – and when became the latest UFC show to lose its co-main event at the weigh-in stage most fans were even more apathetic about the promotion’s latest visit to Texas.

The card was always deeper than some people would’ve liked to claim though – legitimately great fighters from the prelims to the main event – and thankfully, it was one of those cards that delivered massively in execution. Of the nine televised fights, just one went the distance, with the rest featuring some amazing finishes. Here are the best and the worst moments of the night’s action.

#1 Best: Woodley answers his critics in style

Woodley answered his critics by finishing Till off in the second round

Tyron Woodley won the UFC Welterweight title in the best way possible back in 2016 – he knocked incumbent champion Robbie Lawler out cold with one huge right hand and finished him off in the first round. Since then though, he’s become one of the more maligned champions on the UFC’s roster.

‘The Chosen One’ hardly endeared himself to fans when he immediately called for so-called ‘money fights’ with the likes of Nate Diaz, but those fights never materialized and nobody can claim Woodley hasn’t fought the top contenders in his division. But when he did fight those contenders, despite winning, for the most part, the fights were dull outings. Woodley’s last two victories – decisions over Stephen Thompson and Demian Maia – are widely considered as two of the worst title fights in UFC history.

Coming into UFC 228 following over a year on the shelf, the pressure was on Woodley somewhat. Not only to defeat challenger Darren Till but hopefully, do it in a more entertaining way than in his previous fights. And he delivered in spades in both ways; after a relatively uneventful first round, the champion dropped Till with a huge right hand early in the second, and when he couldn’t finish him off with elbows, he took advantage of a mistake from Till – reaching for an underhook from his side – and ended the fight with a D’Arce choke.

Not only was it Woodley’s first submission victory in the UFC – earning his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu in the process – but it was his first finish since the Lawler fight and it should re-energize public interest in his title reign. A job well done by the Chosen One!

#1 Worst: Montano’s weight issues cause another main event cancellation

Nicco Montano's fight with Valentina Shevchenko was scrapped

When it was announced on Friday afternoon that UFC Women’s Flyweight champion Nicco Montano had been hospitalized due to a botched weight cut, thus forcing the UFC to cancel her planned title fight with challenger Valentina Shevchenko – the co-main event of UFC 228 – the first thought in the mind of most fans was “here we go again”.

Perhaps no other year in UFC history has felt quite so cursed as 2018. Thus far we’ve had 9 pay-per-view shows, and 5 of them have seen either the main event or co-main event either canceled or changed at late notice due to injuries or weight-cutting issues. Like July’s UFC 226, there was no replacing Montano vs. Shevchenko and so UFC 228 went on with no true co-main event.

If we’re being frank nobody was really ordering the show to see the fight – it was expected to be a one-sided win for Shevchenko – but the cancellation remains the worst thing about the show because it means that Montano – who’s now been stripped of her title – goes down as yet another UFC champion who couldn’t even manage a single defense of her crown.

The UFC went for years without this – inaugural Middleweight champ Dave Menne was usually considered the de facto “worst” UFC champ of all time – but in comparison to someone like Montano, he now looks fantastic.

Naturally, the division will go on – Shevchenko has been promised a title shot against someone else, maybe top-ranked Sijara Eubanks – but the fact that we lost yet another title fight in 2018 absolutely sucks.

#2 Best: Women’s Strawweight suddenly looks awesome

Jessica Andrade melted Karolina Kowalkiewicz with a vicious overhand right

A year ago, the Women’s Strawweight division was a very different place. Then-champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk had held the UFC title since 2015 and had basically dominated everyone in front of her – turning back the challenge of five consecutive contenders. Rose Namajunas was next in line, but she’d only won one fight leading into the challenge – to some, it felt more like she’d got the shot simply due to there being nobody else left for ‘Joanna Champion’.

That all changed when Namajunas knocked out Jedrzejczyk in the first round of their title fight, and then managed to outpoint her in a rematch. Suddenly – as with Middleweight when Anderson Silva fell in 2013, or at Welterweight when Georges St-Pierre stepped away – the division felt energized as new – and old – contenders started to rise up the ranks.

UFC 228 had two of those contenders on view and both of them delivered hugely. The next title shot simply has to go to Jessica Andrade. ‘Bata Estaca’ had been on a roll coming into the show – winning 5 of 6 fights since moving to 115lbs, but the one criticism was that she hadn’t been finishing her fights.

That changed in Dallas as she stunned Karolina Kowalkiewicz early on, and then finished her with a face-melting overhand right, all in under two minutes. One-punch knockouts like that are a rarity at Strawweight and so Andrade sent a major message last night. This is a serious threat to Namajunas’s title.

But Andrade wasn’t the only impressive fighter at 115lbs. On the prelims, Tatiana Suarez used her Olympic-level wrestling to utterly dominate former champ Carla Esparza – herself a respected grappler – destroying her on the ground throughout the fight en route to a third-round TKO.

Andrade might be the scary contender right now, but Suarez might be even more dangerous as she’s such a specialist with her takedowns and ground domination. If Namajunas manages to turn back the challenge of both of them, she’d surely go down as a true great.

#2 Worst: What was Till’s gameplan?

Darren Till looked overmatched in his loss to Woodley

A hell of a lot of fans – myself included – bought into Darren Till as a genuine title threat to Tyron Woodley’s Welterweight crown going into UFC 228. Some oddsmakers even had him as the favorite going in despite the Brit only having two really great wins – against Donald Cerrone and Stephen Thompson. But to me, he had the style to beat Woodley – the ability to walk the champ down, the size to muscle him off, and the self-confidence and striking power to end his night with a knockout.

But in the end, it looked like the native of Liverpool was simply overmatched. Whether he just got caught up in the moment like a rabbit in the headlights, or Woodley was simply far better, I don’t know. But sadly for Till, he simply didn’t manage to get any significant offense off at all. The stats suggested he scored just two strikes in the first round – realistically he probably only threw one or two more, too – and was then finished in the second.

It’s easy to criticise a fighter from the armchair, that’s true, but if he was going to dethrone Woodley then Till needed to be far more offensive than he was. The case may have been that he was measuring the champ for more offense in the second round, but of course, he never got the chance. In the end, it was just a hugely disappointing title challenge.

Whether ‘The Gorilla’ can bounce back from this is a question mark, too. This was his first career loss and it was in one-sided fashion – the type of loss that can psychologically damage a fighter for some time. Till has repeatedly stated that he’s the greatest fighter in the world, but his loss to Woodley proved emphatically that wasn’t the case – so how does he reconcile himself with that fact? Only time will tell.

#3 Best: Two rare submissions highlight the undercard

Aljamain Sterling delivered one of two rare submissions on the card

It’s hard to narrow down a third ‘best’ moment from a show like UFC 228 as there were so many fun moments – from the brutal knockouts from Geoff Neal, Darren Stewart and Abdul Razak Alhassan, to the surprising returns to form for legends Diego Sanchez and Jim Miller. But in the end, you can’t argue with fun finishes, and super-rare submissions are always up with the best of them.

We’ve only ever seen the move known as the ‘Suloev Stretch’ – a kneebar variant from back control that also targets the hamstring – once in the UFC before, by Kenny Robertson on Brock Jardine way back in 2013 at UFC 157. Somehow though UFC 228 gave us not only one version of the submission hold but two – as if the second fighter to deliver it had been inspired by the first!

Aljamain Sterling – who calls himself a ‘human anaconda’ – delivered first in an exciting preliminary fight that ended up being aired on the pay-per-view main card too. In a back-and-forth match with Cody Stamann that was filled with fun scrambles, ‘Funk Master’ finally bust out the rare hold in the second round – after first attempting what would’ve been a UFC-first full nelson submission. It appeared that Stamann was badly hurt, too – perhaps a case of tapping too late.

And then on the main card, vaunted prospect Zabit Magomedsharipov used essentially the same move to finish off the overmatched Brandon Davis. Davis wasn’t quite as hurt as Stamann was, but aesthetically, Zabit’s variation was somehow even more impressive as he also controlled Davis’s right leg while targeting the left with the submission.

Both moves were a thing of beauty and to see two of them on the same card will probably never happen again. Bravo to both men.

#3 Worst: Rivera and Dodson fail to make their case

John Dodson and Jimmie Rivera put on the night's only dull fight

On a show like UFC 228, filled with solid fights up and down the card, the UFC had to make a difficult decision when it came to which prelim would replace the canceled Montano/Shevchenko fight on the pay-per-view main card. In the end, they decided to go with John Dodson vs. Jimmie Rivera – two top-ten Bantamweights – while leaving the likes of Aljamain Sterling, Tatiana Suarez, and Diego Sanchez lower down the card.

In hindsight, it was a mistake. Dodson vs. Rivera turned out to be the worst fight on the entire card, as neither man appeared to fight with a lot of urgency, and in the end Rivera got his hand raised via decision, managing to outpoint Dodson by landing more leg kicks and punches while avoiding the quick counters of ‘The Magician’.

It was a strong win for Rivera in terms of name value but probably won’t do a lot for his title aspirations given the knockout ability of Marlon Moraes – the man who defeated him in June – and the larger profile of former champ Dominick Cruz. As for Dodson, he has all the tools in his arsenal – but I just wish he’d fight less as a counter-striker and more as the aggressor more often if only to make more excitement in his fights.

With 12 decisions between them in their UFC careers perhaps the powers-that-be should’ve seen this coming, but both men have had fun fights in the past too. This one felt like a bad clash of styles – both men looking to employ an in-and-out gameplan and Rivera able to deliver just a little more – but it left the Dallas fans booing, a rare sound for such an exciting card overall.