UFC 195 Results: The Real Winners and Losers from Lawler vs. Condit Fight Card
Hi, kids. Do you like violence?
With Eminem's famous opening line (Warning: NFSW language)—so simple, so, I don't know, fraught?—we welcome you to UFC 195. Come one, come all.
MMA is always violent. Why, on this Saturday in Las Vegas, was the violence different from other days?
Because Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit fought each other, with the former's welterweight championship on the line. With a whopping 35 knockout victories between them, you don't need a treasure map to discover the game plan.
Don't make the mistake, though, of assuming these two are mindless lunks. Lawler, the champ, might have the heaviest right hand and some of the best defensive skills in the world, and he used both to majestic effect in his last fight, a win over Rory MacDonald that was probably the most stirring contest of 2015.
In the other corner, Condit is a whirling muay thai dervish with a penchant for bloodshed. But he's a cerebral game-planner, too, working alongside the likes of Jon Jones and Holly Holm at the vaunted Jackson-Winkeljohn camp in New Mexico.
The 31-year-old challenger and the 33-year-old champion are at the absolute peaks of their games. Those peaks are stained red, and not from the picturesque desert sunset. Who would add a flash of gold to his scene with the welterweight strap?
Violence was a recurring theme throughout the night, from the Fight Pass prelims to finale. So sit back, break a resolution or two and ring in the new year with these—the real winners and losers from UFC 195.
As always, full card results appear on the final slide.
Winner: Robbie Lawler
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And still.
After five rounds of scintillating, highest-level-possible sort of MMA action, Robbie Lawler came on late to inflict greater damage and take a split decision on the judges' scorecards.
According to unofficial preliminary statistics from official UFC stat keeper FightMetric, Lawler landed 92 of 177 significant strikes, while Condit landed 176 of 495. This volume edge played out in each round, with cardio superhero Condit repeatedly working his signature punch-kick combinations to great effect.
Lawler didn't land nearly as much, but what he did land went a long way.
Lawler floored Condit in the second round and, knowing he needed something big, hammered the challenger in the fifth. How Condit survived that and stayed upright is a mystery that will have to be left alongside Stonehenge and Easter Island.
As the final horn sounded, both men immediately went to the cage fence and threw their arms over the top of the cage wall, totally spent. Neither man could move any further for some time.
Though it lacked the overall bloodiness of, say, Lawler's 2015 classic with Rory MacDonald, this was still one for the ages. Even though Lawler isn't the most aggressive fighter, he does bring a sense of impending doom and self-confidence that carries him through every contest and is manifested through his incredible power.
The fight, ultimately, could have gone either way. This one went to Lawler. Because at the end of the day, to be the man, you have to beat the man. We learned that a long time ago.
But Lawler was magnanimous in victory.
"There was two winners tonight," Lawler, famously a man of few words, said to broadcaster Joe Rogan in the cage after the fight. "And still, but let's do it again."
Let's do.
Winner: Carlos Condit
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"I felt like I had three rounds in the bag," Condit told Rogan in the cage after the fight. "But that's why you don't leave it in the hands of the judges."
Indeed. But give credit to Condit: He emptied his bag of tricks to try to avoid that result.
The signature combinations were in full effect. So was the spinning stuff. Ditto the clinch knees. This was vintage Condit at the absolute apex of his career and his sport.
In the end, the judges deferred to Lawler's right hand over Condit's indefatigable output.
Condit had his highlight moments, too, most notably a clean knockdown in the first. As Lawler adjusted—say, by timing and countering Condit's entries into the pocket—so did the challenger, for example, by kicking from the perimeter and lowering his chin as he moved forward.
Someone had to lose in the end, and that's all this was. Condit felt he won, and it would have been hard to argue with that outcome. It's equally as hard to argue with the other side.
Winner: Stipe Miocic
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"Give me my shot!"
It wasn't hard to read Stipe Miocic's lips after a right hand found Andrei Arlovski's fall-down button after less than one minute of action in the evening's co-main event.
Champion Fabricio Werdum defends his belt against Cain Velasquez at the next big event, UFC 196 on Feb. 6. Should Miocic get the winner of that fight?
As clear, quick and clean as his win was Saturday over a streaking (if weak-chinned) fighter in Arlovski, it's as easy to say yes as it was to read those lips.
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Loser: Albert Tumenov's Leg
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In the end, the judges got this one right. It was a close fight, but Russian up-and-comer Albert Tumenov took a split-decision win over Lorenz Larkin.
With two strikers of this caliber, hardcore fans expected a technical stand-up gem. They got it, too, with each man working at a steady pace and finding homes for crisp strikes time and again. This one didn't go to the ground.
From the beginning, Larkin's strategy was clear: spam the leg kick. Of the 155 significant strikes he threw, 59 were low kicks, according to preliminary stats from FightMetric.
The strategy worked because it hurt Tumenov. Of those 59 leg kicks, 47 landed, and the blood-red welts on Tumenov's lead leg were evidence of that.
Still, Tumenov threw and landed more blows, and the final score was a testament to that, even if his body wore more damage in the end.
"I have a nickname: Einstein," Tumenov told Rogan in the cage after the fight. "And there's a reason for that. I knew what he was going to do."
Well, if you saw it coming, maybe next time learn how to stop it.
Winner: Michael McDonald
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That look on Michael McDonald's face says everything.
After losing to Urijah Faber and then missing more than two years of action because of various injuries, the former phenom finally re-entered the cage at UFC 195. In the first round, he looked like a man in need of an oil can. Masanori Kanehara pushed him against the fence, fought through an ineffectual guillotine attempt and hammer-locked McDonald's arm for some unfettered ground-and-pound.
The second round looked similar to the first, until McDonald came out of nowhere from underneath, whipped around to take Kanehara's back and cinched in a deep rear-naked choke. In seconds, Kanehara tapped.
Hence, McDonald's cat-who-ate-the-canary expression.
But good on McDonald for snatching victory out of the jaws of ring rust. He's still only 24, so if he can stay healthy and keep knocking off rust, good days could be here again for the young bantamweight.
"When he had me in the head and arm choke, I was losing air so quickly that I knew I was either going to pass out or explode through," McDonald said of the fight-ending sequence, according to a statement released to reporters by the UFC. "Luckily, the last-ditch effort worked, and I was able to reverse him into the choke. He made a very slight mistake in the defense and it got me the 'W' tonight."
Loser: Justine Kish
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No offense to a tough competitor in Justine Kish, but we like to try to right the wrongs around here, to the extent such a thing is possible.
Kish was effective in this fight, in her way. That way was aggression. In her women's strawweight bout with Nina Ansaroff, she relentlessly plowed forward, swinging with arms and legs and little regard for her own well-being, much less that of Ansaroff.
Ansaroff was more measured in her approach, though she was also not what anyone would call a technical marvel. The back-and-forth bout was sloppy but packed with action. After it was done, according to unofficial stats posted immediately after the fight on FightMetric, Kish landed 72 of 135 significant strikes during the bout. Not bad, until you see that Ansaroff landed 92 of 174.
So it was a little odd, then, that Kish was declared the winner.
Stats aren't everything in MMA, but the numbers do help provide context. The fight was close, but it was a surprise to observers when two of the three judges scored the bout 30-27 for Kish, with the other marking it 29-28 for the winner.
The latter score could be explained. The two who had it three rounds to zip for Kish? Maybe a clerical error?
As Luke Thomas of MMA Fighting noted on Twitter after the scorecards were read, "30-27 Kish is indefensible, but indefensible scorecards are common. So, yeah."
Yeah.
Winner: Dustin Poirier
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Dustin Poirier is 3-0 since returning to the lightweight division. Two of those were by knockout, and one was Saturday's convincing unanimous-decision win over Irishman Joe Duffy.
There was a bit of interesting MMA math on the table coming into this one. Poirier's last bout down at featherweight was a loss to Conor McGregor, who is now the champ at 145 pounds but is pondering a move up to lightweight. Meanwhile, Duffy is the last man to defeat McGregor, a submission win that came at lightweight back in 2010.
Poirier muddled the equation when he bested Duffy over three punishing rounds. The Louisiana native pushed through a broken nose and some sharp boxing from Duffy to control his man on the ground and score big damage with some painful-looking elbows.
Poirier is no longer drained from a big cut down to featherweight. Now that he has full energy and is free to devote his full training camp to, you know, training, he looks better than ever.
Big things could be ahead for the 26-year-old. A bout with McGregor probably isn't in the immediate cards, but a large step up the proverbial ladder almost certainly is.
UFC 195 Full Card Results
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Main Card
- Robbie Lawler def. Carlos Condit by split decision
- Stipe Miocic def. Andrei Arlovski by TKO, 0:54, Rd. 1
- Albert Tumenov def. Lorenz Larkin by split decision
- Brian Ortega def. Diego Brandao by submission (triangle choke), 1:37, Rd. 3
- Abel Trujillo def. Tony Sims by submission (guillotine choke), 3:08, Rd. 1
Preliminary Card
- Michael McDonald def. Masanori Kanehara by submission (rear-naked choke), 2:09, Rd. 2
- Alex Morono def. Kyle Noke by split decision
- Justine Kish def. Nina Ansaroff by unanimous decision
- Drew Dober def. Scott Holtzman by unanimous decision
- Dustin Poirier def. Joe Duffy by unanimous decision
- Michinori Tanaka def. Joe Soto by split decision
- Sheldon Westcott def. Edgar Garcia by TKO, 3:12, Rd. 1
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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