#ufc299

God, you can see the blood fly out of BSD's nose on that KO.

For as much success as BSD was having, a lot of it was kind of self inflicted by Poirier. This man jumped for 4 guillotines in the span of 6 minutes and all of them were with his back to the cage. Saint Denis has a surprisingly punishing clinch game he was going to in the first round, getting in some good licks in between takedown attempts. When Poirier got just a little bit of space though, everything he was throwing landed. He just likes fighting with his back to the fence. Always has. So BSD was using that to shoot. I don't think it was a manageable pace for Denis though. The takedowns were getting sloppier and his defense standing just did not exist. Poirier switched from jumping the guillotine to using it to threaten BSD so he could work off the fence.

Once BSD started trying to just crash the pocket, it was over. Poirier started landing really clean shots. Landed a brilliant uppercut off the left hand that seriously rocked BSD. He shot, got threatened with the guilly into backing off and then got caught again with a left hand. A right hook ends the night for BSD as he goes down and honestly probably didn't need any GnP.

Dull fight. Page was able to frustrate Holland for most of the 15 minutes by being way out at range. He was able to leap in with long rangy crosses while also forcing Holland to come forward, a thing he's never really been comfortable doing. Only success for Holland was he landed some of those Lima style inside leg kicks and got a takedown in the 2nd where he got off some elbows form top control.

First, that was a fantastic performance from Sean O'Malley. Controlled the vast vast majority of the fight with his footwork. His jab was on point. The boxing was on point. It wasn't a super varied plan of attack but his 1-2 kept Vera off him for most of the fight while racking up damage and possibly being the first time I've ever seen Vera actually hurt. That knee he landed in the 2nd round was a thing of beauty. Just complete control of initiative and pace all the way through. Despite not getting to his favorite counter (countering opponents who reach out over their feet with the rear hand, from open guard), O'Malley really got everything he wanted when he threw. And he was delivering with shots to the body too.

That said, part of that is on Chito. In a lot of ways, a typical Chito performance. Man waited til the fourth round to start stitching punches together. For as much as O'Malley was able to dictate the range the fight was fought at, Vera also just kind of had no answers to any offense. He'd shell up with the high guard and then back away. When he did eventually starting coming forward behind the jab and using it to shift into combos to close range, he was really hurting O'Malley. He started grabbing the head and trying to throw the knee. Hell, the last strike of the fight was Vera finally landing the knee ot the body and O'Malley had to go sit down after the fight because that shit hurt him. It just wasn't enough to win rounds. You can't have a your turn, my turn style of offense when you're fighting a guy with the speed, power, and range of an O'Malley. It sucks cause this wasn't a fight Chito was supposed to get anyway.

Welp, Glory was a let down.