The best and worst from UFC Fight Night 155: De Randamie vs. Ladd
The UFC presented its latest show last night in Sacramento, California, and after a pretty slow beginning, things erupted into life in the last three fights, as we got three first-round knockouts to electrify the crowd. Well, kind of – more on that in a second.
Overall, I felt this was a decent effort from the UFC; a couple of the prelims were slow but on the main card, only Karl Roberson vs. Wellington Turman was largely forgettable. And while things ended in controversy, I don’t think anyone could say the show was boring.
Here are the best and worst moments from UFC Fight Night 155: De Randamie vs. Ladd.
#1 Best: Faber is back!
Returns from retirement in MMA usually don’t work out, and the list of names who’ve crashed and burned after coming back – BJ Penn, Carlos Condit, Chuck Liddell, etc – is pretty exhaustive.
I wasn’t too worried about Urijah Faber getting flatlined in his comeback last night given opponent Ricky Simon was neither a red-hot prospect or a top contender right now, but I certainly didn’t expect things to go quite so well for ‘The California Kid’.
Sure, Faber was wobbled by a stiff left hand from Simon in the opening exchange, but moments later he absolutely levelled his opponent with a crushing overhand right that sent him crashing down, and finished things off on the ground with incredible ferocity, literally having to be pulled off by the referee. Simon wasn’t quite unconscious but I’d class it as a good stoppage myself.
Where Faber goes from here is a question mark, but for now at least this was an awesome comeback; the Sacramento crowd understandably went wild for him, giving him one of the biggest crowd pops of the year, and he certainly didn’t look 40 years old.
A fight with Henry Cejudo would be ridiculous right now given there are other fighters ahead of him in the queue and he’s been gone since 2016, but you know what? Cejudo’s out for a while so if the UFC were to match Faber with Aljamain Sterling or Petr Yan with the winner facing the champ? I’d be down with that.