UFC Fight Night 90 Results: Real Winners and Losers from Dos Anjos vs. Alvarez
UFC Fight Night 90 went down Thursday night in the long and lengthening shadow of UFC 200.
But as many fans fixated on the ongoing drama around Jon Jones' potential doping violation, Brock Lesnar and more, a darn good fight card happened Thursday on UFC Fight Pass, the company's subscription streaming service.
In the main event, the best MMA fighter no normal person has heard of, Rafael Dos Anjos, defended his UFC lightweight title against Eddie Alvarez, the well-traveled former Bellator champ who just finished beating Anthony Pettis.
Are things like "technique" and "excellence" not your thing? Well, then, feast your eyes on the co-main event, which featured two of the sport's most powerful strikers. In one corner, 40-year-old veteran Roy Nelson tried to maintain his perch in the main-card portion of the heavyweight division, while fellow fan favorite Derrick Lewis attempted to unseat him with extreme prejudice.
As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from UFC Fight Night 90.
Winner: Eddie Alvarez
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We have a new UFC lightweight champion, and his name is Eddie Alvarez.
It was an open-and-shut case, really. Dos Anjos pressed forward as most observers knew he would. Alvarez stood his ground and flashed his hands, and it worked to great effect. Alvarez was quick and tight like a drum, landing a right hand that floored the champ.
Quickly but carefully, Alvarez swarmed in and started landing shots, but Dos Anjos managed to stay in the fight somehow and return to his feet. Alvarez followed, banging home crosses and uppercuts the whole way.
Outside of a brief choke attempt early in the fight, Dos Anjos wasn't able to mount any offense at all. This was all Alvarez, and referee Herb Dean stopped the contest as Alvarez slammed home unanswered strikes along the fence.
"I had him hurt. I had to empty the gas tank," Alvarez told broadcaster Jon Anik in the cage after the fight. "I told him, 'Don't bring the dog out of me! Don't bring the dog out!'"
I guess he brought the dog out. It was over in a tick under four minutes, and the Philly kid is now atop the UFC's toughest division.
Speaking of which, his next challenge will surely be stiff. Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson lead a scary pack of contenders. Buckle your seatbelts. For now, though, Eddie Alvarez is driving the train.
Loser: Jon Jones
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If any broadcaster uttered the name of Jon Jones Thursday night, I didn't hear it.
You could almost hear the sigh of relief all the way from Las Vegas when aging legend Anderson Silva—in Vegas, in shape and in the mood for a fight, apparently—stepped in to face Daniel Cormier at Saturday's UFC 200.
This salvages that slot on a major card, and it does so with a ton of name recognition—if, perhaps, not a massive challenge—on the opposite side from the light heavyweight champion.
No, it won't be Jones-Cormier 2. But nothing will be after Jones' potential doping violation, which abruptly slammed the brakes on that affair. It may have also slammed the brakes (again) on Jones' (latest) comeback, the prime of Jones' career and Jones' budding legacy as the consensus greatest MMA fighter to date.
It also had to sting to see one of the few other claimants to the GOAT mantle, Mr. Silva, step in to take his place.
Good on the 41-year-old Silva for being in the right place at the right time, and for stepping up and putting himself in the right situation. In a UFC 200 context, he was the perfect anti-Jones, and he was what UFC 200 needed to heal itself. It won't be so easy for Jones himself.
Winner: Derrick Lewis
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You know how sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words? This is one of those times.
Derrick Lewis showed some poor grappling acumen and a shallow (if predictably shallow) gas tank, but when it really mattered, in the final 90 seconds, Lewis dug deep and got the biggest win of his career by beating Roy Nelson in the co-main event.
The strength for Lewis was what we thought it was. He might be the hardest hitter in MMA.
The opening round saw him land punches to the head and some vicious knees to the stomach of Nelson. The second was slower, with Nelson beginning to work his wrestling and get some takedowns. It wasn't fun or interesting, but it was the smart decision.
It was more of the same in the third, until Lewis found the extra gear when it mattered. The capper was an absolutely titanic right hand that landed flush across the point of Nelson's chin with approximately 10 seconds remaining. Nelson, with one of the toughest chins in MMA history, withstood the blow, but it still might have swung the pendulum for Lewis.
After the fight, Lewis told Anik he'd like a rematch with Nelson. But how about Ben Rothwell or, depending on what happens Saturday at UFC 200, Mark Hunt? With four straight wins and six knockouts now in seven UFC appearances, it's time to bump The Black Beast up.
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Winner: UFC Fight Pass
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Credit where it's due: UFC Fight Pass is upping its game.
Under the leadership of Eric Winter, who joined the UFC last year after a career as an executive with Yahoo, Fight Pass is a different animal now than it was when it launched in 2013.
The look and feel, for one, are much improved after a recent update. Ditto for the search function. But perhaps the most notable change is the UFC's investment in the actual product available on the subscription streaming service. For evidence of that, look no further than a certain UFC Fight Night 90.
The entire kit and kaboodle aired on Fight Pass, including Dos Anjos-Alvarez, which was the first men's title bout to air on the service.
"The UFC is investing a lot on it and it has everything to grow, and I believe that putting me on Fight Pass shows that they believe I will bring more people to Fight Pass," Dos Anjos told MMA Fighting before the bout.
It's hard to tell how long the pay-per-view model will stay around, given the large migration away from cable in general and toward online content delivery. The better Fight Pass is now, the better the UFC will be positioned in the future. Thursday marked a healthy step in the right direction.
Loser: Throats and Extremities
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Maybe the highlight was Joe Duffy, who scored the fourth-fastest submission in UFC lightweight division history when he tapped Mitch Clarke in 25 seconds.
Including Duffy, there were six submissions on the night. Vicente Luque, Marco Beltran, Gilbert Burns, Felipe Arantes, Pedro Munhoz also nabbed a tap Thursday evening. The first five fights on the card ended that way.
In fact, if you haven't already gotten the message, just go ahead and give it up for this entire card. With the Jon Jones-Daniel Cormier heartache and headache still hanging over the MMA community, UFC Fight Night 90 was a great reminder of all the fascinating, scintillating things people love about this sport.
Winner: Belal Muhammad
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Forget Fight of the Night. This goes on the preliminary Fight of the Year list.
Easy for me to say, of course, and it was the right call to pass out the $50,000 performance bonus to Alan Jouban and Belal Muhammad.
Jouban took the fight by unanimous decision, and rightly so. He used his excellent muay thai and a sharp right hand to keep Muhammad on his heels, or on the ground.
That brings me to the reason Muhammad is, in my book, also a winner. He took not one, but two knockdowns in the first round, calling for many observers, including Bloody Elbow writer Nick Baldwin, to score it a 10-8 round thanks to, as Baldwin put it, "devastating, devastating stuff."
But referee Herb Dean held off on calling a stoppage, and he gets an assist here, because Muhammad, while hurt, never stopped intelligently defending or attempting to improve his position.
Muhammad rewarded that forbearance, staving off additional attacks from Jouban and staging a legitimate comeback in the final minutes of the fight. Jouban ended the fight nearly as battered as Muhammad.
Whatever Muhammad's chin is made of, his fists are made of that, too. So is that fighting spirit. Good on both Jouban and Muhammad; they both raised their stock Thursday.
Loser: Anthony Birchak
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Anthony Birchak evened his UFC record at 2-2 when he dispatched Brazilian prospect Dileno Lopes. It was a close fight and long grind, and in the end, two of the three judges saw it for Birchak in a split-decision win.
So why is he a loser?
Maybe it wasn't so obvious in the cage, but it became evident after the fight in a picture tweeted by fan Kevin Nicholson. It's a compound finger fracture. It's NSFW. It's available for viewing here, if you dare.
UFC Fight Night 90 Full Card Results
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Main Card
Eddie Alvarez def. Rafael Dos Anjos by TKO, 3:49, Rd. 1 (becomes new UFC lightweight champion)
Derrick Lewis def. Roy Nelson by split decision
Alan Jouban def. Belal Muhammad by unanimous decision
Joseph Duffy def. Mitch Clarke by submission (rear-naked choke), 0:25, Rd. 1
Primary Card
Alberto Mina def. Mike Pyle by KO, 1:17, Rd. 2
John Makdessi def. Mehdi Baghdad by split decision
Anthony Birchak def. Dileno Lopes by split decision
Pedro Munhoz def. Russell Doane by submission (guillotine choke), 2:08, Rd. 1
Felipe Arantes def. Jerrod Sanders by submission (armbar), 1:39, Rd. 2
Gilbert Burns def. Lukasz Sajewski by submission (armbar), 4:57, Rd. 1
Marco Beltran def. Reginaldo Vieira by submission (rear-naked choke), 3:04, Rd. 2
Vicente Luque def. Alvaro Herrera by submission (D'arce choke), 3:52, Rd. 2
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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