History was the theme of Saturday evening’s co-main event between Anderson Silva and Derek Brunson.
The 41-year-old Silva is the greatest champion in UFC history, and he won for the first time in five years thanks to some extremely questionable judging.
For much of UFC 208 fight, Brunson seemed to have the upper hand and landed the harder shots when Silva went in for his patented Muay Thai clinch. Silva, ever the wily veteran, did pull off some flashy footwork — including some capoeira in the second round that he turned into a flurry of pitter-patter punches.
At the end of the fight, however, it was impossible to deny that Brunson was robbed. He landed the bigger, cleaner shots, proved that Silva has lost the power behind his normally precision strikes, and hurt Silva whenever the former champion got in his favorite positions.
“Everyone is telling me that I won. I feel terrible,” Brunson said. “I took this fight on short notice and, to have this happen, is just crazy to me. I take this seriously. This is my job. I put everything into this and I got robbed.”
UFC 208 started out slowly but finally clicked into gear when Belal Muhammad (12-2) took down local boy Randy Brown (9-2) in the featured fight of the prelims.
Smaller and slower than his opponent, Muhammad seemed like he was in trouble in the first round as the towering, 6-foot-4 Brown peppered him with stiff jabs.
With the crowd at his back, Brown, who fights out of Queens, confidently danced around the Octagon, but Muhammad kept his cool and stuck to his game plan. He walked through Brown’s long limbs, pounded the bigger man from the inside, and then got a huge takedown at the end of the round.
Muhammad was clearly the more comfortable man on the ground. Early in the third round he shot in on Brown’s legs and once again got him to the mat. The Chicago man ground and pounded the tiring Brown, who could do nothing but throw up desperate submission attempts that went nowhere.
After 15 closely contested minutes, Muhammad came out with the unanimous decision and was promptly met with a round of boos from the crowd. They thought Brown had done enough to win, but Muhammad’s takedowns proved to be too much.
The win was an important one for Muhammad, who took the fight on short notice after George Sullivan dropped out. Muhammad was a middling 1-2 in his last three fights and got knocked out by Vicente Luque at UFC 205 at Madison Square Garden back in November.
Now Muhammad has got his career back on track while Brown must go back to the drawing board. Brown was found on Dana White’s internet reality show “Looking for a Fight” and has flown under the radar as other finds from the show like Sage Northcutt and Mickey Gall grabbed headlines with high-profile wins over the likes of WWE star turned MMA punching bag CM Punk.
Brown was clearly the better fighter on the feet on Saturday night, but he’ll have to improve his grappling and ground games if he wants to start climbing the welterweight ladder again.
Here’s what happened in the other UFC 208 prelims:
- In the first fight of the night, Long Island’s own Ryan LeFlare had an impressive return to the Octagon after being out of action for over a year. LeFlare forced veteran Roan Carneiro against the cage and connected with a few big left hands, but in the end had to settle for a resounding unanimous decision victory.
- Rick Glenn versus Philipe Nover was the least anticipated fight on the card for a reason. In a fight lacking any action to speak of, Glenn came out victorious.
- Conor McGregor wasn’t in the building, but his presence was still felt. Standing in the ring with Joe Rogan after a beyond boring, grind-it-out grappling win over Nik Lentz, Islam Makhachev stole from the Irishman’s playbook and bellowed, “Hey Dana! I want a money fight! Give me Mayweather! Woo!”
- Title contender Wilson Reis was pushed harder than expected by huge underdog Ulka Sasaki, who was clearly the superior striker. Reis’ wrestling, however, won the day as he took a closer-than-expected unanimous 29-28 decision.