by It was a night of 15 fights, and the UFC closed out Fight Island in style.
In the main event, it was a back and forth struggle that could have went either way. In the end, all three judges did see Robert Whittaker doing just enough to edge out Darren Till 48-47 across the board.
The 3rd loss in 4 fights for Darren Till who seems far away from the guy who once challenged Tyron Woodley for the UFC Welterweight Championship.
As for Whittaker, he will now start his road back to the UFC Middleweight Championship. A belt he lost back in October to current champion Israel Adesanya after winning 9 straight.
The main card started off with Khamzat Chimaev winning his second fight in the UFC in just 10 days. This time with a barrage of small punches on the ground that opponent Rhys McKee couldn’t defend. They weren’t flashy or overly powerful but they got the job done. Chimaev is now 8-0.
Alex Oliveira is now a 40-fight veteran, and a winner of 21 big fights. Tonight, it was him using his skill to outpoint Peter Sobotta. Alex took every round on every card for a 30-27 sweep across the board.
It was UFC fight 10 of the career of Paul Craig and he wasted no time picking up his 13th career victory in MMA with a triangle choke. His victim tonight was Gadzhimurad Antigulov who dropped his third straight fight. His record is now 13-7 while Craig improved to 13-4-1.
Carla Esparza was supposed to walk through Marina Rodriguez but it was anything but easy. The fight could have went both ways and the judges saw it that way too, with a split decision.
Esparza escaped with the SD victory. Esparza has now won four straight, but two of them by split, and one by majority. She needs to start finishing fights to move up on cards.
Alexander Gustafsson may be regretting his choice to come out of retirement as he barely showed up in a bad loss to Fabricio Werdum tonight. It took less than 3 minutes for Fabricio to take him down, go to work and sink in the armbar.
For the former champ Fabricio, this big win ends a two-fight losing skid and gets him back in the title picture. For Gustafsson, he has not won a fight since May of 2017 and may be headed back into retirement shortly. Losing his last three fights by TKO and Submission.
The 39 fight veteran Mauricio Rua has now won 5 of his last 7, and appears to be sticking around for a while longer after a slow but effective attack tonight against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. It was a slow and steady fight with very little action. It ended in a split for Rua, sending Lil Nog into retirement at 23-10 in his career.
For Lil Nog, his career finished up with some big wins on his resume. He will hang up the gloves with victories over the likes of Guy Mezger, Alistair Overeem twice, Dan Henderson, Tito Ortiz, Rashad Evans and Edwin Dewees. He finishes up however, going 0-3 against Rua.
The show started off with four straight lopsided decisions as it was
Nathaniel Wood over John Castaneda
Ramazan Emeev over Niklas Stoize
Pannie Kianzad over Bethe Correia
Movsar Evloev over Mike Grundy
After that, things got a little spicy with some fireworks to close out the undercard
Tanner Boser over Raphael Pessoa by TKO in the second round.
Tom Aspinall over Jake Collier at just 45 seconds into the fight.
Jesse Ronson submitted Nicolas Dalby by rear naked choke at 2:28 of the opening round.
Francisco Trinaldo via TKO over Jai Herbert in the 3rd and final round.
