The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns tonight, April 15, 2023, for UFC on ESPN 44, coming down live from the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
The event topped the competition among the featherweight contenders, with former champion Max Holloway (24-7) not facing off. Ranked 4 Arnold Allen (19-2) in the main event of the evening.
The co-title of the event was also the featherweight contest, this one between Edson Barboza (23-11) and Billy Quarantillo (17-5).
Back to our main event:
Holloway has gone 2-3 over the last five, and all three losses have come to current champion Aleksander Volkanovski, while Allen has been perfect so far in his UFC tenure, winning all 10 of the promotion’s fights so far.
Read on to see how this 145-pound main event dropped for the evening:
Official result: Max Holloway defeated. Arnold Allen via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 48-47)
We had a competitive opening round between these two showing that every man had a hit, even though Holloway supposedly won due to the strike count being 24-10 in his favour.
Allen landed some good leg kicks early on as well as a powerful volley that Holloway had just left, and Holloway landed nice three- to four-punch combinations at a few points. Both talents look incredibly sharp tonight.
Allen has a better run, as he keeps landing that bad arm he’s had all along. He’s able to follow some up with right hooks too, and he’s made serious adjustment after opening stretch.
Although Allen maintains the pace through the third round, Holloway is very flashy and difficult to cut.
Allen fought well in the first round of his career, landing twice more heavyweights and not slowing down, although he did take a beating, eating some bad body kicks from Holloway.
Allen comes out with a blistering pace in the fifth and final round, and keeps it up through the final five minutes, just unloading combinations in combinations. Holloway landed early with a badly rotating back elbow, but Allen remained unfazed and continued to push him down.
The fifth round was his best in the fight, as he landed a number of heavy punches throughout. He also landed several head kicks throughout this fight, not landing one cleanly until the fifth where he landed two in a row.
This decision was not as severe as it seemed, Allen won both the second and fifth rounds, but Holloway’s strikes in the first, third and fourth rounds were too varied for him.
Arnold Allen really showed up tonight and made a one fight stand.
Max Holloway, on the other hand, is returning to his winning ways by beating someone who was 10-0 in the UFC and 19-1 as a pro. What a performance tonight at UFC on ESPN 44.
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I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed on Versus, which is where WEC was televised. Uriah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. This is the first fight I saw, and the fight that got me hooked on the sport. Since then, the sport has grown very quickly, and my goal is to make everyone aware of what is going on in the sport today.