The best and worst from UFC on ESPN: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards
After looking like it would be a real slog to sit through – with nine straight decisions to open the card – UFC on ESPN: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards turned into a pretty decent night of fights with plenty of talking points. Strangely enough though, most of those talking points didn’t stem from the main event.
The fight saw Leon Edwards largely outwork Rafael Dos Anjos to take a clear decision win, but while the victory goes down as one of the biggest in the career of ‘Rocky’, he likely didn’t do enough in terms of what you’d call highlight-reel moments to secure a title shot, not when both Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington are likely ahead of him in the queue. So in a likely first in this series, the main event won’t be mentioned as one of the best – or worst – moments of the night.
Here are the real best and worst moments from UFC on ESPN: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards.
#1 Best: Harris seals his ‘ticket’ to the big time
Heavyweight Walt Harris has been kicking around the UFC for some time now – since 2013 to be exact – and while he’s always shown a lot of athletic potential, he’d never really demonstrated anything to suggest he could become an elite-level fighter, particularly when we saw Fabricio Werdum deal with him so easily. That all changed last night when ‘The Big Ticket’ flatlined the tough veteran Aleksei Oleinik in the space of around 12 seconds.
A quick combination was followed by a jumping knee, and Harris followed that with a clean left hook that left the Ukrainian fighter face down, unconscious. It was a scary KO too as Oleinik was down for some time post-fight and was left twitching due to the sheer force of Harris’s strikes. Given most fans, myself included, figured Oleinik would weather an early storm before submitting Harris, this was a landmark win for the big man.
Harris now has two wins in a row – and would have 4 had he not tested positive for a PED caused by a questionable supplement after his win over Andrei Arlovski. At 36 years, old time isn’t on his side – you can’t really call him a prospect per say – so the UFC probably needs to push him up the ladder quickly to see whether he can sink or swim this time. And after last night, it’d be hard to claim he doesn’t deserve a shot.