Recap: UFC: Covington v Woodley

 Recap: UFC: Covington v Woodley

Grade For Event: B+

Picks Record For Event: 9-3

Covington v Woodley: Covington proved last night that he is still a top five welterweight in the world with his win over Woodley. He dominated the entire fight. He did seem to slow his normal pace down a couple of notches but he still had high output. The forth round was his best when he took Woodley down and landed some nasty ground and pound that caused a cut on Woodley's head. The fight ended kind of weird with Woodley screaming out in pain because of a rib injury in the fifth. The ghost of Woodley showed up again and looked bad. He looks like he does not want to be in the cage at all. He had low output and could only get one takedown that he didn't even do anything with. Woodley is one of the best welterweights in the history of the UFC, but I think it is time to call it a day. Once he became champ, it seemed like his focus shifted from being 100% invested in fighting to focusing on everything but fighting. He is not young anymore at 38 years old and it does seem like he has slowed down a bit. Does Woodley want to become a gatekeeper for the division? I hope not, he has done more in this sport than 99% of other fighters and there would be no shame in calling it quits now. 

Best of the Rest: Niko Price and Donald Cerrone fought to a majority draw. It was your standard Cerrone fight with him getting off to a slow start and waking up by the end of it. Price did get a point taken away for multiple eye pokes and would have won the fight if not for that. Dana White said after the fight that he wants to talk to Cerrone about his future in the sport. I would love to see him fight one more time and then retire. I told everyone that Chimeav is the real deal and he proved it last night. All he needed was one punch to shut the lights out of Meerschaert. Now we know that he has deadly striking to go with his suffocating ground game. He is suppose to fight Maia next and all I can say to Maia is good luck bud, your going to need it. I'm very excited to see how big he can get in this sport. Johnny Walker knocked Spann out with elbows in the first round. It was a wild fight with both getting cracked a couple of times. Some of the elbows looked illegal to me and Spann's corner was not happy with them either. My biggest takeaway from this fight is that it seems like Walker has a glass chin. Dern looked great in her fight getting the first round submission. She seems to have everything clicking together at this point in her career. We had another Tognoni moment in the Clark/Alpar fight. In the third round, Clark starts teeing off on Alpar against the cage. Alpar drops a little after a strike and gets hit hard with a knee to the face that looked to put her out. The ref stopped the fight and everyone thought it was over but the ref said he stopped it because he thought the knee was illegal. They looked at the replay and saw that it was legal and restarted the fight. Clark goes on to finish her shortly after they fight resumed. I have never seen anything like that before in the UFC. My understanding of the rule was that if they use replay, the fight is over no matter what. The athletic commission need to fix these problems as soon as possible. Finally, Randy Costa knocked Newsom out with a beautiful head kick in the first round. Costa is someone to keep your eye on in the future at 135lbs.   

Fighter Tweet Of The Night:

He may have just retired Maia with that punch too...

— Dan Hardy (@danhardymma) September 20, 2020

Tweet of the Night: 

My dick hard. #UFCVegas11

— MacMally🍀 (@MacMallyMMA) September 20, 2020

Video of the Night: