The highlight of the night for me was Cowboy Cerrone putting away Alex Hernandez. Hernandez still has a bright future ahead of him, but Cowboy was simply on point and drilled him repeatedly after recovering from Hernandez' early surge. I wasn't surprised Paige Van Zant submitted Rachel Ostovich. Paige gets a lot of grief, but she earned her way to the UFC and spent time off and on as a borderline contender. Rachel by comparison is only in the league as a function of her looks and how shallow 125 is. She's sort of like a Gabe Ruediger in that she's getting attention and fights from something other than her fighting skills. I'd like to see Paige fight the winner of what I consider an interesting fight between Montana De La Rosa and Nadia Kassem next month in OZ. Kassem hasn't fought in almost 1.5 years, but she is dangerous on the feet and has blood thirsty BJJ off her back. On the subject of WMMA, I was sad to see Arianne Lipski lose her promotional debut to JoJo Calderwood. Lipski looks like a fitter version of Mia Khalifa Hopefully we see her back again. Maybe she and Rachel would be comparable in skill. And what a bizarre turn of events with the co-main and main. Totally unimpressed with Greg Hardy seeing him for the first time. And I don't know what to think about Henry TKOing TJ so quickly. Terrible lapse in judgement by TJ charging in like that. How much of that was the weight cut? Hard to say, because Henry could probably knock plenty of guys out a 135. On one hand I want to see a rematch at 135, both because Henry deserves it if he wants it based on the result tonight, and because it would clear up the mystery. But on the other hand, Marlon Moraes and Rafael Assuncao are meeting in a #1 contender fight and imho both guys are already due for the title shot, but the division is constipated from the TJ-Cody rematch and now from this fight. If the winner of Moraes vs. Assuncao 2 doesn't get an immediate title shot, that's honestly pretty ridiculous.
was decent card and better then the ufc 234 ppv there promoting... theey need to cut the ppv's down tthey don't got the star power for so many.
The 1st UFC event on ESPN will likely be remembered as having a big main event that ended up being an anti-climactic 1st round blowout for the underdog Cejudo, which was similar to the 1st event on FOX in 2011 that had the big heavyweight title fight when champ and betting favourite Cain Velasquez got blown out by Junior Dos Santos in the 1st round. Edit-Also congrats to former top 10 featherweight Dennis Bermudez who retired after his win yesterday,seemed like a solid guy who put on some exciting fights and had some good wins over the likes of Max Holloway.
The Bermudez retirement was a feel good moment, sort of like when Mark Munoz dipped out a few years ago. Both guys had looked like potential championship material at one point and then fallen on hard times with some losing streaks, and then a win and retirement.
https://www.mmafighting.com/2019/1/...ew-customers-saturday-for-its-first-ufc-event The Henry Cejudo vs. T.J. Dillashaw fight Saturday night was a huge success for ESPN, and particular the ESPN+ streaming service. ESPN+ signed up 525,000 new subscribers on Saturday, easily the biggest day in the service’s history. For a comparison purpose, that was significantly better than WWE has done for any single day WrestleMania or that UFC Fight Pass ever did with a live event. They had also signed up 43,000 subscribers on Friday, most of which has been attributed to the show. In addition, the four prelim fights that aired on ESPN, headlined by Donald Cerrone vs. Alexander Hernandez, averaged a 1.4 rating in the major metered markets. That number would be ahead of what most FOX shows did for main cards in recent years. It would be the highest for prelims for non-pay-per-view show dating back at least five years. It would likely be a higher viewing audience than any main card on cable in three years, since the Dillashaw vs. Dominick Cruz FS 1 show on January 17, 2016 averaged 2.28 million viewers.
