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It’s a good time to be a combative woman.
A week before two females will headline a history-making boxing card at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the UFC had several of its own in marquee positions on an 11-bout Fight Night show in Las Vegas.
Tenth-ranked strawweight contender Amanda Lemos and recent bantamweight title challenger Jessica Andrade went head-to-head in an ESPN+ main event at 115 pounds, two fights after flyweights Maycee Barber and Montana De La Rosa had a scheduled three-rounder in which Barber tried to build on her No. 14 ranking.
Blow-by-blow man Brendan Fitzgerald shared the broadcast table with ex-fighters Daniel Cormier and Paul Felder, while teammate Heidi Androl worked the rest of the room for breaking news and feature pieces.
Breaking news actually did occur after three bouts when main-card fighter Chase Sherman was pulled from a scheduled meeting with Alexandr Romanov with a “minor health issue.” A preliminary bout matching Jordan Wright and Marc-Andre Barriault was subsequently lifted to the main card.
The B/R combat sports team was in its customary position as well and took in the five-hour show to come up with a definitive list of winners and losers from the whole card. Take a look at what we came up with and feel free to drop a viewpoint or two in the comments section to let us know how we did.
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Attention 115-pound women: Jessica Andrade is back among you.
And she’s feeling ambitious.
The former UFC strawweight champion returned to her title-winning territory in convincing fashion, recording the first standing arm triangle submission in the promotion’s history against No. 10 contender Amanda Lemos in Saturday’s main-event fight.
The victory tied her with Amanda Nunes for the most among women in UFC history (14) and the stoppage gave her eight in her UFC career, which is second only to Nunes’ 10.
It was Andrade’s first fight at strawweight after a title loss to Valentina Shevchenko at 125 pounds at UFC 261 one year ago. She fought once more in that division in September before dropping back down.
She won a championship at strawweight in May 2019 and lost it three months later.
“I took a little break at flyweight but this is my division,” Andrade said. “I’m ready again to fight for the title. If you give me a shot I’ll be ready. I’m going to get back to the top.”
It certainly seemed like it during a decisive sequence which began when Andrade blocked a front kick from Lemos in the middle of the cage and drove her foe to the fence.
She wrapped her left arm around Lemos’ neck while isolating her left arm and continued to squeeze until referee Keith Peterson intervened at 3:13 of the first.
“We worked a lot on this. We figured out it was something that could work,” Andrade said.
“The more I locked it in, the more my coach was yelling ‘Don’t let it go.’ I started hearing her gurgling and I knew I’d get the submission.”
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Clay Guida had a lot of things to worry about.
Once his bout with Peruvian prince Claudio Puelles got to the mat, the 40-year-old MMA veteran almost immediately had to fight off a guillotine choke that was followed by a triangle choke and an armbar.
He managed to elude each of those submission attempts, but his 26-year-old foe wasn’t done.
Puelles quickly transitioned from the upper torso to the lower, seizing his foe’s left leg to lock in a kneebar that prompted an instant surrender from Guida at 3:01 of the first round.
Guida was fighting for the 34th time in the UFC since 2006, when Puelles was 10 years old.
“I’ve worked hard every day. I changed my life. I moved to America,” Puelles said. “My dream was to be here, but not just for a fight or two, to be here.
“And he’s got like 60 fights and I took him out in the first round.”
It was the third kneebar submission in five UFC wins for Puelles, making him the only fighter in the promotion to win that many times by that method. He was beaten in his debut with the company in November 2016 but has since won five straight and is 13-2 with seven submissions as a pro.
“I don’t practice it at the gym. I just do it because I can hit it,” he said. “I always know I’m ready.”
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Eleven weeks ago, Marc-Andre Barriault was at a low point.
But he had no interest in staying there.
Back in the Octagon after a crushing first-round KO loss in February, the popular Canadian got back on the winning side in equally quick fashion when he scored a submission defeat of Jordan Wright.
The bout was elevated from preliminary to main card about 90 minutes before the first strike and Barriault took a few moments to adjust as Wright came out aggressive and immediately chased a takedown.
He did get Barriault to the floor briefly and was chasing another takedown when Barriault seized his neck from a standing position and dropped to the floor to lock the maneuver in.
Wright tapped within seconds to give Barriault the first submission of a career stretching back to 2014.
It’s his 14th overall victory—nine by KOs—alongside five losses and a no contest.
“Guys don’t want to mess with me and my power, so I wasn’t surprised he attacked,” Barriault said. “My coach told me to just trust my instincts, I heard him say ‘You’ve got a guillotine. Trust, trust and go for it.'”
A second Quebec native made it two in a row for Canada in the next bout, when Charles Jourdain finished Lando Vannata with another guillotine choke at 2:32 of the first round.
Jourdain got Vannata to the floor with a straight left hand and quickly went in to seize the choke.
“When I saw my buddy finish a guy in the first round I had some pressure on me,” Jourdain said. “I’m a black belt. People seem to forget that, but it was a good reminder.”
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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me three times, and there’s a good chance the UFC will stop calling.
That was the place where Philipe Lins found himself heading into Saturday night, having lost both of his fights in the promotion by one-sided results at heavyweight.
So rather than doing the same things and expecting different results, Lins dropped to 205 pounds and found instant success with a unanimous decision over veteran Marcin Prachnio in the card’s second bout.
The 36-year-old Brazilian was on the short end of a 43-15 strike margin in the first round against Prachnio, though he did score the session’s lone takedown in two attempts. It was a precursor to the final 10 minutes, during which Lins added three takedowns and landed 50 significant strikes to his foe’s 44.
All three judges saw Lins a 29-28 winner and boosted his pro record to 15-5 overall.
He’d been a full-time light heavyweight through August 2017 before moving to heavyweight and taking the UFC losses to ex-champion Andrei Arlovski (UD 3) and Tanner Boser (KO 1).
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Literally seconds after the former two-division champ declared there was “no chance” that cage-side officials would award Mike Jackson a disqualification victory over Dean Barry, they did.
The card-opening welterweight bout ended in anticlimactic fashion following a pair of fouls from Barry, a 30-year-old from Ireland, who initially struck Jackson low with a spinning kick and then forced Jackson to bow out after his right eye was impacted by Barry’s illegally probing fingers.
Referee Chis Tognoni stopped the fight at 3:52 of the first and there was a delay before the official verdict was read, during which time Cormier implied officials wouldn’t have “the guts” to make it DQ and instead would rule a no-contest because they’d fought less than a full round.
Ring announcer Joe Martinez spilled the beans, though, providing Jackson his first UFC victory after a loss and a no-contest in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Barry, meanwhile, was making his debut with the promotion after going 4-1 in multiple companies and arriving with three straight wins by finish.
“This isn’t the way I wanted to get it,” said Jackson, who at +700 was the biggest underdog on the card.
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Main Card
Jessica Andrade def. Amanda Lemos by submission (standing arm triangle), 3:13, Round 1
Claudio Puelles def. Clay Guida by submission (kneebar), 3:01, Round 1
Maycee Barber def. Montana De La Rosa by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
Charles Jourdain def. Lando Vannata by submission (guillotine choke), 2:32, Round 1
Marc-Andre Barriault def. Jordan Wright by submission (guillotine choke), 2:36, Round 1
Preliminary Card
Sergey Khandozhko def. Dwight Grant by TKO (strikes), 4:15, Round 2
Tyson Pedro def. Ike Villanueva by TKO (strikes), 4:55, Round 1
Aori Qileng def. Cameron Else by TKO (strikes), 2:48, Round 1
Preston Parsons def. Evan Elder by unanimous decision (30-26, 30-27, 30-27)
Philipe Lins def. Marcin Prachnio by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Mike Jackson def. Dean Barry by disqualification (intentional foul), 3:52, Round 1
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