UFC 181: Full Results and Biggest Winners from Hendricks vs. Lawler 2 Card
It took a little over a decade, but Robbie Lawler finally reached the top of the mountain in UFC.
Lawler won the welterweight title off Johny Hendricks at UFC 181 on Saturday—the crowning achievement in what's been a less than typical career arc.
The new champion was just one of many fighters to pick up victories inside the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. You can see the full fight card below.
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| Main Card | ||
| Welterweight | Johny Hendricks vs. Robbie Lawler | Lawler wins via split decision |
| Lightweight | Anthony Pettis vs. Gilbert Melendez | Pettis wins via submission, R2 |
| Heavyweight | Travis Browne vs. Brendan Schaub | Browne wins via TKO, R1 |
| Heavyweight | Todd Duffee vs. Anthony Hamilton | Duffee wins via KO, R1 |
| Lightweight | Tony Ferguson vs. Abel Trujillo | Ferguson wins via submission, R2 |
| Fox Sports 1 Preliminaries | ||
| Bantamweight | Urijah Faber vs. Francisco Rivera | Faber wins via submission, R2 |
| Middleweight | Eddie Gordon vs. Josh Samman | Samman wins via KO, R2 |
| Light Heavyweight | Corey Anderson vs. Justin Jones | Anderson wins unanimous decision |
| Women's Bantamweight | Raquel Pennington vs. Ashlee Evans-Smith | Pennington wins via submission, R1 |
| UFC Fight Pass Preliminaries | ||
| Bantamweight | Sergio Pettis vs. Matt Hobar | Pettis wins via unanimous decision |
| Featherweight | Alex White vs. Clay Collard | Collard wins via unanimous decision |
The three fighters listed were among the biggest winners at UFC. They either won or retained gold and/or shocked the world.
Biggest Winners
Anthony Pettis
Ring rust is a concept completely foreign to Anthony Pettis. Prior to Saturday, the last time the 27-year-old saw the inside of the Octagon was Aug. 31, 2013 in a submission victory over Benson Henderson at UFC 164.
Despite that massive layoff, Pettis didn't look the worse for wear, submitting Gilbert Melendez in the second round. It was the first submission defeat in Melendez's career. Fox Sports' Karyn Bryant praised Pettis' performance:
"I just showed the message right there," Pettis said after the fight, per Yahoo Sports' Kevin Iole. "The No. 1 guy in the world [and I finished him in] two rounds."
The ease with which Pettis brushed Melendez aside was the most impressive aspect of the win. The submission didn't come from out of nowhere. The champion landed some nice strikes on Melendez, and when the opportunity presented itself, he went in for the kill.
It's hard see who can stop Pettis right now.
Robbie Lawler
What else needs to be said about Lawler's title win? Back in July 2012, the 32-year-old was fresh off his third loss in four fights, falling to Lorenz Larkin. Larkin went on to lose four of his next five to put that fight into perspective.
Lawler wasn't exactly a long shot against Hendricks, but to witness how far he's come and see him finally capture UFC gold, Saturday night was a special moment. Bleacher Report MMA called it "the greatest UFC comeback in history":
Few can really argue with the result, either. Some may contend that Hendricks lost the fight more than Lawler won it, and that assessment might not be too wide off the mark. The former champion was a bit too tentative, and once it was clear the takedowns weren't coming, Hendricks shouldn't have shifted strategy. Instead, he seemed content to sit back.
Lawler wasn't electrifying, but he did more than enough offensively to prove himself the better fighter. The only question was whether Hendricks would receive the proverbial champion's advantage, which was the only way the judges could have scored the bout in his favor.
CM Punk
Technically, this guy didn't fight, but he's the biggest winner of the night for landing what's almost certainly a multi-million dollar contract in UFC despite being 36 years old and having no mixed martial arts career to speak of.
Arguably the most notable event to come out of UFC 181 was UFC's announcement that it signed CM Punk:
The UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is one of those clamoring to see Punk's UFC debut:
Bleacher Report's Jonathan Snowden was one of the more vocal critics of the move on social media:
"Old guy who's never competed in an athletic competition in his life, even in high school, signs w/ @UFC. Tell me again this is a real sport.
— Jonathan Snowden (@mmaencyclopedia) December 7, 2014"
It's hard to view UFC signing Punk as anything more than an attention-grabbing acquisition in an effort to produce short-term buzz. While Punk has a long and storied professional wrestling career, working in a WWE ring and UFC Octagon are quite different beasts.
Brock Lesnar made the transition from WWE, but that was in large part because he was an NCAA wrestling champion at Minnesota years prior and an athletic marvel. Lesnar's the exception to the rule.
Before the signing of Punk was made official, UFC President Dana White went on the Jim Rome Show to talk about the possibility of Punk working for the company, via MMAJunkie.com's Mike Bohn:
"He's not a guy that we would do what we did with Brock; we threw Brock right to the wolves. Brock started fighting all the top heavyweights in the world because of his wrestling background. CM Punk, we would bring him in just like any regular fighter, and he would fight a guy with a similar record to his, which is 0-0.
"
Again, Punk is 36 with tons of wear and tear on his body from traveling the globe and wrestling nearly every night.
As somebody who's followed Punk's exploits in WWE for years, it's hard to see how this ends well for either party in the long term.
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