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Wooo woo, going to UFC 278 tomorrow. First time I’m going to an event. Looks like there is a chance to meet some fighters, like Justin Gaethje, before the event. I hope the lines aren’t so long that I never get to the front. The only fighter I like a ton on the card is Jose Aldo. I like both Usman and Edwards enough, so I don’t know who I’m going to route for.

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We are live!!!

1884

What an event to have gone to! Rockhold retires, Aldo gets leaned on and Edwards lives up to his nickname!

1885

I was pulling for Edwards, so that finish was great! It looked like Usman was on his was to coast for the win. It took some of the sting out of the Aldo fight. Jose is one of my favorites, so it was sad to watch him lose without really putting out much offense at all. I was also glad Costa won over Rockhold. I’ve never really liked Luke - he kinda seems like a jerk even though I know I don’t really know how he is like. I did gain some respect for him though, because his will to continue and try to win was really impressive. His gas tank was empty, but he still landed some really nice shots.

1886

Even though I lost money on the Edwards win, I was very happy to see it. I would confess I’m not confident he’ll hold it for long if they do the Usman rematch. (I do hate immediate rematches like that - why not just flat out tell him they think it was a fluke and he doesn’t deserve the belt?)

Aldo hurt badly - my old coach trained with him and I’ve been a fan of his muay thai for years. I dared to dream, especially as he’s never really gone away or fallen off - just had some touch match-ups. There always seems to be more fight in him.

Rockhold has always been a dick but suddenly there was his weird face turn before the fight when he started calling out the UFC for fighter pay. I nearly found myself…liking him…? Still kind of sad to see an OG go though. As a few people have pointed out he’s basically the last of the AKA crew that were so dominant for so long.

1887

Yeah, me too. The one hope I have is that Edward’s take down defense was better than I was expecting. I’m not ready for Usman to be champ again. While he has had some very exciting fights - like against Covington , Usman isn’t always very exciting to watch. He is great, but not always entertaining.

Do you mean from his training camp? It seems like since his McGregor fight, he has lost some of the aggressiveness that made him so hard to deal with.

1888

Yes, I trained BJJ under Marcos Escobar in Malaysia for a few years. Escobar went back to Brazil and trained for MMA at Nova.

He has that grinding, wrestle-heavy style which often denotes a long-term champion. GSP, Khabib, DC, all experts at keeping the fight where they wanted it and usually only really being undone by their own mistakes, rather than necessarily skill. (Other than DC with Jon Jones, who was just in a different class).

I just hope they let Leon fight someone else - Khamzat’s a challenge but it would be nice to not have these constant ‘you have to beat the champ twice’ loops that the UFC seems to be absolutely in love with recently. There’s been talk of the Jorge fight reappearing. Leon takes that handily and it would be good to let him actually have a bit of time as champ rather than just feeding him back to Usman.

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And now, sadly, we’ll never see him again. Huge news that he’s retired but really, he had nothing left to prove.

It’s a shame that so many people seem to remember him for the 13 second loss to McGregor. Especially as his late-career run as a much cannier fighter, still able to turn on the aggression when he needed it, was quite amazing.

An all-time great that was never that far out of contention.

1890

I knew it was possible he was going to retire after his last fight but I hadn’t heard yet. He will be missed and was truly an all time great.

1891

Like many, I will always wish that Conor had given him the rematch. I really think he deserved it and it would have been great to see how the fight played out if he hadn’t gotten sloppy.

That was peak Conor when he was a wrecking machine and pretty much peak Aldo.

1892

I would have liked to see that too. I definitely don’t think that fight was representative of who he was and his skills

1893

I completely agree. Whether it’s emotion that got the better of him and he went for it, or just a bit of a blip, it’s such a shame that he didn’t get to perform that night. Of course, not taking anything away from McGregor - he was at the peak of his abilities as a sharpshooter and counter puncher and capitalized perfectly.