The Ultimate Fighting Championship is back tonight, June 3, 2023, for UFC on ESPN 46, after being held at UFC Apex in Enterprise, Nevada.
The event was headlined by the highly anticipated flyweight encounter between no. 3 Kay Kara-France (24-11) and no. 7- Rank Amir Al-Bazai (1-17).
Cara-France, perhaps the highlight of his career’s winning streak, lost his second to current champion Brandon Moreno in his last match in July last year. He went into that fight having won his last three straight rounds over the likes of Rogerio Pontorín (KO), former UFC bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt (TKO), and former ACB flyweight champion Askar Askarov (UD).
Al-Bazi came to UFC In July of 2020 and has since gone 4-0 with victories over Malcolm Gordon (triangle choke), Zalgas Zumagulov (UD), Francisco Figueiredo (rear naked choke) and Alessandro Costa (KO).
Keep reading to see how the main flyweight event of the evening went down:
The official result: Amir El-Bazi won. Kai Kara-France via split decision (47-48, 48-47, 48-47)
Albazi makes a point within the first five minutes to control the octagon, and he does a good job of doing so.
Kara-France can get back into the middle with some combinations, but the first round was relatively uneventful.
Al-Bazi continues to control the center of the octagon in the second. He gets a nice left hook, a fine pass shortly thereafter, and Kara France’s man kicks add up, but neither man has really established his dominance yet within the first 10 minutes.
However, Albazzi extends his dominance in the third round, taking down Kara France, eventually going backwards and almost securing a rear choke. Kara-France is able to walk out of it and end up the opposite of Albazy, finishing the round on top landing heavy punches and elbows.
The fourth round is very close, as close as the first two.
Cara-France rallied together to win the fifth and final round, outpacing Albazzi urgently throughout.
It was not the most eventful of matches, but each man had success and did well for the other. It was a close fight that could go either way, and was definitely Albazzi’s toughest UFC fight to date.
Amir Elbazy ended up victorious, going undefeated inside the Octagon at UFC on ESPN 46.
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I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was browsing channels and landed on Versus, which is where WEC was on TV. Uriah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. This is the first fight I’ve ever seen, and I got addicted to it instantly. Eventually, I started covering the sport in the last quarter of 2018, and since then I’ve started writing about animals as well. If you’d like to see these pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!