Why UFC 259 Was The Best Fight Card In Recent History
(Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC) via bleacherreport
Where do I even begin? UFC 259 was easily the best UFC event in recent years thanks to THREE championship fights on a single card.
Amanda Nunes defended her featherweight belt against the ghost of Megan Anderson, Aljamain Sterling became the new bantamweight world champion after a blatantly illegal knee to the head from Petr Yan(fuck you Yan), and last but not least Jan Blachowicz handed Israel Adesanya his first career loss en route to retaining his Light Heavyweight title.
This was the best card of my relatively short time as an avid UFC fan, so there is a lot to unpack from these fights. There were some awesome fights before the main event even started. My personal favorite was seeing Dominick Cruz get back in the win column after a two-fight skid in the bantamweight division.
Cruz beat Casey Kenney in a split decision fight to cap off the prelims. Before the championship fights got going, Aleksander Rakic proved his worth with a dominant unanimous-decision win against Thiago Santos to kick off the main event.
Leading up to the big three, Islam Makhachev put on a grappling clinic against rising youngster Drew Dober submitting him via arm triangle in the third round. Islam, who is also teammates with Khabib Nurmagomedov, is a name to look out for in the lightweight division.
His 19-1 professional record and sensational wrestling skills haven’t been talked about enough -- though it’s tough to get any attention when you train with someone as well-known as Khabib.
Moving on to the big show, let’s start with Nunes vs Anderson. Amanda Nunes has already cemented herself as one of the greatest female fighters of all time, yet she continues to stack up these dominant wins.
My question is: How long will it be until she is unanimously thought of as the GOAT?
Nunes is the third fighter in UFC history to simultaneously retain two championship belts in separate weight classes(featherweight & bantamweight), and doesn’t look like she’ll lose either one anytime soon.
It took her only two minutes to knock Megan Anderson on her ass and trap her in an arm bar for an easy tapout. I won’t lie -- when Anderson was walking into the arena all I could think was “Holy shit this girl is massive.”
I was foolish to believe that a 6’1 figure smothered in tattoos would faze a fighter of Nunes’s caliber, but boy was that fight fun to watch. Anderson looked like a deer in headlights after she got caught by a deadly Nunes jab. It was game over from that point on.
After a quick round 1 ending in the women’s title bout, Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling were up next to decide the bantamweight champion.
I generally have no desire to give my input on this fight, but I’m going to anyway. Fuck Petr Yan. As I mentioned before, Yan was disqualified from the fight and forced to forfeit his bantamweight title to Sterling after a BLATANTLY illegal knee to the head on a downed man.
It’s basically the only rule in the UFC, just don’t try to kill someone while they are defenseless -- seems like common sense to the majority of respectable fighters, but not Yan.
Maybe I’m being tough on the Russian striker because Funk Master happens to be one of my favorites in the UFC, but he is in the wrong nonetheless.
After the fight ended, it was revealed that Yan looked over at his corner asking if he could hit Sterling to which they responded yes. I’m not sure if it was a miscommunication or what happened, because the official told Yan mid-fight “He’s down, he’s down” moments before he threw the brutal knee.
There really isn’t an excuse for Yan’s action. In case you missed it, here is the knee that sent Sterling into a long-lasting daze:
How can you watch that and not think “Fuck Petr Yan?” Maybe I’m soft, but there is a reason that rule is set in place. Only one good thing came from this fiasco -- we will 100% be seeing a Sterling vs Yan rematch in the near future.
Sterling was clearly upset he won the belt via disqualification, as any fighter should, but what happened after the fight really raised some eyebrows. I love Sterling, but he was on some bullshit later that night along with the rest of the bantamweight division it seemed like.
For some reason Funk Master thought it would be a good idea to post a potential next fight on Twitter after a series of shit-talking from fellow bantamweight fighters TJ Dillashaw and Henry Cejudo:
This may be a lot to unpack, but here is a Twitter rundown of all the beef that went down after this fight. So much happened I have no clue how to form any sort of commentary on it, so take a look for yourself:
Safe to say this was a shit show, but my god are the pre-fight pressers for Yan vs Sterling 2 going to be electric. I can’t wait to see the hype videos now that there is truly some bad blood between the two fighters.
Now that I’ve rambled on about Yan vs Sterling for long enough, it’s finally time to dive into the main event -- Israel Adesanya vs Jan Blachowicz for the light heavyweight title.
Adesanya entered this fight with a perfect 20-0 professional record and the sole claim to the middleweight title. Stylebender was striving to become one of the few UFC fighters to hold two belts simultaneously, but Blachowicz executed his game plan and edged the middleweight champ via unanimous decision.
Rounds one through three were anybodys game. By no means am I qualified to score any UFC events, but on my cards I had the fight 29-28 in favor of Izzy through three.
Round four and five is where things went wrong for Adesanya as Blachowicz was able to get two massive takedowns which kept Izzy on the ground for the majority of both rounds. I have to give credit where credit is due, Blachowicz did exactly what he needed to do to take Adesanya out of his element.
I may or may not have had a phat 10+ units on Adesanya to become the next champ-champ, so clearly I was upset watching this fight go down the way it did. From a bettors perspective I was in a world of pain, but from a fan’s perspective that fight was amazing.
Just because Adesanya lost doesn’t mean he is down for the count, Izzy will most likely go back to dominating the middleweight division until he feels he is ready to fight up a weight class again.
I generally don’t see anyone in the 185lb division coming close to taking down the Stylebender anytime soon. Robert Whittaker would probably be the best bet, but then again the champ has beaten him once already.
To wrap things up, this was one hell of a UFC fight card. I am curious to see what the future holds for each of the fighters who competed over the weekend -- especially a potential Yan vs Sterling rematch later this year. Until then, let’s just hope Dana White keeps up the consistency because 2021 has been off to a hot start for the UFC.