What did we learn after UFC 273
UFC 273 took place in Jacksonville, Florida with a very stacked ppv card, headlined by two title fights. Alexander Volkanovski successfully retained his Featherweight belt against the Korean Zombie in a TKO victory in the fourth round. Volk showed why there are levels to this game and proved why he is one of the top pound for pound fighters in the world, is was a master performance as he made it look like Zombie didn't belong in the same octagon as him. Volks speed and power was too much for Zombie the entire fight, and now moves his attention to a possible third fight against Max Holloway, as that was the original fight that was suppose to happen but Max had to pull out the fight. Volkanovski has seemingly cleaned out the Featherweight division, in his interview after the fight called out for the division to get their shit together and come see him. Would it be time to potentially see Volkanovski move up a weight class and possibly fight for the Lightweight belt.
Another championship that was on the line was the Bantamweight belt as Aljamain Sterling defended it against the former champ Petr Yan, the first fight ended with a bit of a head scratcher as Sterling won the fight and won the belt due to an illegal knee while being a downed opponent, so coming into this fight their was alot of tension. So finally after 13 months the time had come to finally settle the beef, Sterling said coming into this fight this would be a completely different fight and he was right as he was successfully able to take Yan down to the ground and control him for over 6 minutes combined in the second and third round, the fourth and fifth rounds went to Yan as he came out a little more aggressive and applied the pressure so Sterling wasn't able to take him down. Yan even managed to get over five minutes of control time between those two rounds. The first round was the only questionable round that could of gone either way, I personally thought the refs would have given it to Yan for the reason he applied the pressure and was moving forward the entire round, but two judges gave the round to Sterling. Sterling successfully defended his belt and proved why the first fight was a completely different fight, after the fight he focused his attention on Tj Dillashaw which was in attendance for the fight.
Gilbert Burns vs Khamzat Chimaev who took fight of the night and well deserved stole the show as Chimaev a very high prospect and superstar in the making was coming into this fight ranked the number 11th fighter in the welterweight division and Burns who was ranked number two. Chimaev was coming into this fight on a 4 fight win streak in the UFC where he has been very dominant and made easy work of his opponents, between the four fights he's only absorbed one strike. Many believed Chimaev would make easy work of Burns. Chimaev was finally tested in his career and even lost a round which hasn't happened. Burns stood and banged it out with Chimaev even rocking him towards the end of the second round, but Chimaev's chin was proven to withstand the fury of Burns punches. Chimaev started to find his groove in the third and the punches started landing. After the fight Chimaev seemed to have been humbled a bit as he knew Burns was a tough opponent because all Brazilian fighters are tough, this fight tested Chimaev and took him into deep waters against the number two ranked opponent. It showed us that Chimaev is human after all as he absorbed well over a hundred punches, now the attention moves onto a potential ABC headlining fight against Colby Covington. Some big fights are ahead of us and some questions about what the next move will be for such a dominant champion at 145 pounds
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