UFC 207 Results: The Real Winners and Losers from Rousey vs. Nunes Fight Card
There are always plenty of lessons following any fight card, but the learning curve is not usually as steep as it was for UFC 207 on Friday night from Las Vegas.
That's mainly because a certain fighter, name of Ronda Rousey, chose to severely limit her public interactions in the run-up to her main event with women's bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes. No one has seen Rousey so much as spar for any significant length of time since she lost her title a year ago to Holly Holm.
Anyone who told you they knew how Rousey would look in this bout might also have some swampland in Arizona to show you.
Nunes, having only won the title five months ago and never having defended it, is far from a known quantity herself, at least in this context. The second round is a bit of a mystery, too; Nunes has only left the first twice in seven UFC contests.
In the co-main event, men's bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz took on hard-hitting youngster Cody Garbrandt in a big-time grudge match.
Cruz was so far inside Garbrandt's head he could see Garbrandt's childhood. Cruz is also one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. But Garbrandt has a great equalizer: a devastating right hand that has ended nine of the fights on his 10-0 record. Could he land it clean against Cruz's inimitable movement?
Those were only a few of the mysteries on the 10-fight card. We know a lot more now than we did a few hours ago, and as always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. Here are the real winners and losers from UFC 207.
For the literal-minded among us, full card results appear on the final slide.
Winner: Amanda Nunes
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Wow.
That was a flawless, and I mean flawless, victory. All it took was 48 seconds. Amanda Nunes used her jab, opened up laser-guided punch combinations and beat the great Ronda Rousey with perhaps the most dominant title-fight performance in the UFC this year.
There isn't much else to say. Rousey had no defense and no answer. Nunes came forward relentlessly, undaunted by the spotlight.
"I knew I was going to beat the s--t out of Ronda Rousey," Nunes told broadcaster Joe Rogan in the cage after the fight. "I'm the best on the planet. ... Now she's gonna retire and go do movies. Come on."
The crowd was against the 28-year-old Nunes (14-4), but it didn't matter. She's the champ, and she's the first person to successfully defend the UFC women's bantamweight title in more than a year. The last one to do it was Rousey, but it looks like this is the Nunes era now.
"Before I walked out, we talked about my moments," Nunes told Rogan. "She had her time, she had her moments. Thank you, Ronda Rousey. ... [But] I'm the champion here, the lioness."
Loser: Ronda Rousey
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This might be the end for Ronda Rousey.
This was an unequivocal butt-kicking. Whether you think Rousey walks on water or is a spawn of Hades, she got her butt kicked Friday night.
A quick one-two combination was all it took to send her defense flying open. Many more combinations followed. Rousey, who didn't answer questions after the bout, is rich and famous. She was fighting for pride—and $3 million—in this contest. She got the $3 million. Her pride went in the opposite direction.
As Bleacher Report's Jonathan Snowden documented, among others, Rousey's camp under Edmond Tarverdyan is fueled by raw emotion and not much else. For the great judoka and the greatest fighter in women's MMA history, that's not enough. At least not anymore.
Winner: Cody Garbrandt
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We have a new champion in the UFC men's bantamweight division.
How about that for a learning curve? Garbrandt appeared to be all kinds of psyched out heading into his bout with Cruz. It didn't turn out that way. Garbrandt punched, mocked and wagged his way to a convincing and extremely impressive unanimous-decision win over grudge-rival Cruz.
Garbrandt and his cinderblock right hand were not to be denied. He made it look deceptively easy, walking a straight line directly through Cruz's dancy defenses to land repeated heavy fists. Despite his reputation as an early stopper, Garbrandt got stronger as the rounds went on, hammering Cruz repeatedly.
In the fourth round, he dropped Cruz several times, each time pointing and posing instead of following up. If follow-ups had happened, he might have earned a stoppage. But then again, I'm not the bantamweight champion of the world, so what the hell do I know?
"It's been a great journey," Garbrandt said after the fight. "TJ Dillashaw, come try me, motherf--ker."
More on that in the next slide...
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Winner: TJ Dillashaw
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Sometimes, you turn on the TV and see a masterwork. That's what viewers got Friday from TJ Dillashaw, who took the fight to a dangerous John Lineker and came out with three 30-26 scorecards for his troubles.
Dillashaw made a statement against Lineker, one of the hardest hitters on the UFC roster. Dillashaw mixed impeccably timed takedowns, outstanding footwork and rock-solid ground-and-pound to thoroughly dominate a fighter who had never been dominated before.
In so doing, Dillashaw exposed a key Lineker weakness: defense. Lineker has a chin of stone to go along with his hands, and he relied on it to carry him through. A few more tools in the box would have served him well, particularly as Dillashaw hammered him from the top for extended minutes and across all three rounds.
After the fight, Dillashaw called for a bantamweight title shot. If I'm a UFC matchmaker, I give it to him and I don't blink.
Winner: Ray Borg
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Ray Borg made himself a statement in Friday night's pay-per-view opener.
The Jackson-Wink trainee controlled the action on the ground and held off Louis Smolka in scrambles to win an impressive unanimous decision.
Making it all the more impressive, Borg apparently injured his ankle halfway through the fight, telling his corner "I broke my ankle" as they conferred between rounds.
"Yeah, I don't know, man. But about the second round, I couldn't plant on it," Borg told Rogan in the cage after the fight. "So the game plan to move around a little bit and stand on the feet didn't happen."
We'll see what the doctors have to say, but it was probably the biggest win of Borg's career regardless. He missed weight by a healthy 4.5 pounds, but when he makes weight, Borg is now one of the hottest flyweights going.
He'll need some more wins before he's in the title talk for real, but a convincing victory over another well-regarded youngster in Smolka is a solid step forward.
Loser: Neil Magny
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It was a lackluster effort from both Neil Magny and Johny Hendricks. Not the way you want to headline the prelim portion of the card.
For Hendricks, that began during fight week, during which he was unable to cut enough weight to reach the 170-pound welterweight limit (he came in at 173.5). In fact, Hendricks challenged the assembled press to a weight-cutting challenge. Sounds awesome!
Hendricks came out flat. When he did land takedowns, he was inactive from the top, allowing Magny to work an active guard from bottom. That active guard may actually have won Magny the fight; late in the final round, Magny hit a triangle choke and a series of elbows to the top of Hendricks' skull. That's the kind of image that tends to stick with judges.
In any case, Magny emerged with the unanimous decision, 29-28 across the board. So why is he a loser here?
Because he could have made an even stronger statement.
Hendricks was ranked the No. 6 welterweight coming into this fight in the official UFC rankings. Magny sat at No. 8. They may have flip-flopped those rankings, but that might not be enough to land Magny in contender territory.
Time after time, Magny rushed into Hendricks' clinch rather than stay outside where his reach advantage was paying dividends. For extended minutes, Magny lapsed into inactivity of his own rather than pressing the action on a flat opponent.
Yes, he got the result. But he may not have made the impression he needed to vault into main-event territory.
In any case, take the "loser" ranking with a grain of salt. This is his 11th win in his last 13 fights. It just wasn't his most emphatic, probably when he needed it most.
Loser: The Rules
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Tim Means said it was legal.
Joe Rogan said it was legal.
Marc Ratner, the UFC's vice president of regulatory affairs who joins UFC broadcasts to explain rule intricacies, said it was legal.
It wasn't legal.
As Alex Oliveira kneeled on the canvas, Means teed off with knees to the head. Referee Dan Miragliotta stepped in to stop the action. After several minutes of deliberation, Miragliotta ruled the bout a no contest, on the contention the knees were accidental.
They weren't.
In a statement to reporters after the fight, Means said, "I thought I had him in a two-point stance. I threw a knee because he was trying to block my legs. Stop being a baby and come here to fight. Stop playing that hand touching stuff."
That sounds awesome, but the truth of the matter is Means avoided what should have been a disqualification. The Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts consider a downed opponent anyone who has anything other than the soles of the feet touching the ground.
A rule change from earlier this year requires fighters to get two full palms and/or fists on the mat in order to be considered "grounded." But that rule doesn't take effect until January 1 and wouldn't have applied here anyway since it was Oliveira's knees and legs, not his hands, that created the grounding.
So, while Means wanted a TKO victory, he should have received a loss. He's lucky the official result was something in between. He came out a lot luckier than most other people involved in this little train wreck.
UFC 207 Full Card Results
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Main Card
Amanda Nunes def. Ronda Rousey by TKO, 0:48, Rd. 1 (for UFC women's bantamweight championship)
Cody Garbrandt def. Dominick Cruz by unanimous decision (for UFC men's bantamweight championship)
TJ Dillashaw def. John Lineker by unanimous decision
Dong Hyun Kim def. Tarec Saffiedine by split decision
Ray Borg def. Louis Smolka by unanimous decision
Preliminary Card
Neil Magny def. Johny Hendricks by unanimous decision
Antonio Carlos Junior def. Marvin Vettori by unanimous decision
Alex Garcia def. Mike Pyle by KO, 3:34, Rd. 1
Niko Price def. Brandon Thatch by submission (arm-triangle choke), 4:30, Rd. 1
Alex Oliveira vs. Tim Means ruled No Contest (accidental knee strikes)
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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