UFC 297 - South wins in the north
UFC 297 marked the UFC’s first return to Toronto since UFC 231 in December 2018. And while it wasn’t an all-timer card, we still ended up seing two new champions crowned at the end of the night.
If someone had said at the start of 2023 that Sean Strickland would defend his middleweight title against Dricus Du Plessis in a years time, I think most people would’ve laughed. A couple of big upsets later that is exactly where we ended up. This was Strickland’s first defence of his title since his massive upset win against Israel Adesanya last year, and Du Plessis’ last victory was a TKO of Robert Whittaker who has long been seen as the clear number 2 in the division. Both Strickland and DDP had got here on merit, but it just seemed like a surreal title fight.
The first round was pure Sean Strickland. Great boxing defence, checked a whole lot of leg kicks and controlled the round with his excellent jab and teep. He didn’t have Du Plessis in trouble at any point, but a clear 10-9 for the champion. Both round 2 and 3 were incredibly close, and could honestly go either way. Personally I gave both to Du Plessis, who then subsequently won the 4th round pretty clearly. The general consensus going into the final round was either 39-37 Du Plessis or even at 38-38, which made for a very exciting fifth round. Both men ended up emptying the gas tank, and Sean Strickland came out on top but couldn’t find a finish. I think everyone, including both fighters, knew that the fight was very close, with both of them having a good argument for winning.
Dricus Du Plessis got the nod with a split decision (48-47, 47-48 x2) and became the first South African to win a UFC title. Dana White didn’t seem too eager at an immediate rematch, while Du Plessis himself called out former champion Israel Adesanya. There’s already bad blood between the two African fighters, so there would likely be a very hyped matchup, which I’m sure the UFC would be interested in making.
While I’m very happy for Raquel Pennington becoming the new women’s bantamweight champion, I’m not really sure how much you could say about this title fight. It was a very dull affair between Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva, and not a fight that will be talked a lot about going forward. Bueno Silva started brightly, controlling the octagon, and looking for the clinch and takedowns. She won the first round pretty clearly, and tried to execute the same gameplan in the second round. Pennington managed to make some adjustments though, and at the end of the second round you could see Bueno Silva starting to fade.
The next three rounds basically ended up being Pennington winning on the feet while Bueno Silva tried to find the takedowns and mostly being unsuccessful. Whenever the fight hit the ground it was often Pennington who ended up on top in the later rounds, and she was very close to getting an arm-triangle choke in the fifth round. Bueno Silva survived to see the final bell, but it ended up being a quite comfortable, albeit quite dull and boring, title fight win for Pennington. I don’t really blame Pennington though, as this was quite possibly her last chance at winning a world title, and she did what she had to do in order to win the belt.
On the UFC’s grand return to Toronto, it sadly didn’t go all that well for the Canadians. While the women both picked up wins as Jasmine Jasudavicius brutalised Pricila Cachoeira and Gillian Robertson subbed Polyana Viana, all the men lost their matchups. Malcom Gordon was subbed by Jimmy Flick, Yohan Lainesse also lost by submission at the hands of Sam Patterson, Serhiy Sidey lost a split decision to Ramon Taveras, the same way Charles Jourdain lost to Sean Woodson and Marc-André Barriault lost to Chris Curtis. Adopted Canadian Arnold Allen lost a controversial decision to the undefeated Movsar Evloev, and last but not least, the posterboy for Canadian MMA Mike Malott was stopped in the final seconds of his fight against Neil Magny.
Overall it wasn’t necessarily the most exciting PPV to start the year, but the next few events looks ridiculous. Both UFC 298 featuring Volkanovski vs Topuria and UFC 299 featuring Sean O’Malley vs Chito Vera are incredibly stacked, and then we have the big boy UFC 300 (Where there’s still a main event to be confirmed btw.). The MMA landscape looks good in the first quarter of 2024.