UFC Wichita: Final Results
The UFC’s first event in Kansas got a memorable main event on Saturday, with former world champion Junior Dos Santos stopping Derrick Lewis in the second round of a wild heavyweight battle to up his current winning streak to three at Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita.
Lewis was active with his kicks in the early going, and Dos Santos tried to answer every strike from his foe, but when he got over aggressive in the second minute, Lewis cracked him hard with a punch upstairs. The two proceeded to rock each other with right hands, igniting the crowd, but both recovered quickly. In the final minute, a spinning back kick to the body doubled Lewis over, but as “Cigano” rushed in, Lewis swung back with a haymaker, apparently playing possum. But as the action resumed, Lewis doubled over again, still hurt to the body.
After that wild first round, it was going to be interesting to see if Lewis would recover, and a few hard kicks from the Texan showed him to be back in business as the second began. But Dos Santos patiently waited for his opportunity to strike, and after hurting Lewis with a right hand, he went on the attack. Lewis fell to the mat under the barrage, and after some unanswered ground strikes, referee Herb Dean stepped in and stopped the fight at 1:58 of round two.
With the win, the No. 8-ranked Dos Santos improves to 21-5. The No. 3-ranked Lewis falls to 21-7 with 1 NC.
UFC Wichita: Live Results
ESPN+ Prelims, 5pm/2pm ETPT
Alex White vs Dan Moret
Alex Morono vs Zak Ottow
Louis Smolka vs Matt Schnell
Maurice Greene vs Jeff Hughes
Grant Dawson vs Julian Erosa
Marion Reneau vs Yana Kunitskaya
Rocco Martin vs Sergio Moraes
ESPN+ Main Card, 8pm/5pm ETPT
Tim Boetsch vs Omari Akhmedov
Beneil Dariush vs Drew Dober
Blagoy Ivanov vs Ben Rothwell
Tim Means vs Niko Price
Elizeu dos Santos vs Curtis Millender
Main Event
Derrick Lewis vs Junior Dos Santos
Romero vs Souza 2 Main Event For UFC Ft Lauderdale
South Florida will host the UFC Octagon on April 27, as a stacked card heads to the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida with a highly-anticipated rematch between top five middleweights Yoel Romero and „Jacare“ Souza.
Fresh from a knockout of former world champion Chris Weidman, Souza is eager to even the score with Romero by avenging his 2015 split decision loss to the 2000 Olympic silver medalist.
Plus, former NFL star Greg Hardy seeks his first UFC win against Dmitrii Smoliakov, light heavyweight contenders Glover Teixeira and Ion Cutelaba collide, and Andrei Arlovski tests Brazilian up and comer Augusto Sakai.
Vengeance On Greene’s Mind
On Saturday in Wichita, another Moe Greene, Minnesota heavyweight Maurice Greene, gets to reverse things and settle his own family business when he fights Jeff Hughes.
“It’s so I can move on to bigger and better things,” said Greene, who lost a five-round decision to Hughes in their first fight in April 2018.
That LFA title fight, which snapped a four-fight winning streak and dropped Greene’s pro record to 5-2, could have been a crushing blow, but instead, it opened the door for “The Crochet Boss” to go on season 28 of The Ultimate Fighter while Hughes earned a spot on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series that ultimately earned him a UFC contract.
So where would Greene be right now if he beat Hughes last year?
“I still think I follow the same path, to be honest with you,” he said. “That (TUF) would have been my path or I would have got on the Contender Series, which would have been cool, but I don’t think it would have done as much as The Ultimate Fighter did for my career.”
And here’s where we continue the settling family business theme. Once on TUF, Greene worked hard but also knew that being a personality plays a big role in building a fan base and a career. So he became a polarizing figure on the show, which wasn’t exactly how he planned it, but it did get him noticed and got him a fight on the finale event against former Olympian Michel Batista. Greene knew he had one night to get it right, and he did, submitting Batista in a little over two minutes.
“It’s not a surprise to me that I was able to finish by triangle choke; that’s one of my go-tos,” said Greene. “But once that fight was over, that chapter of The Ultimate Fighter, that young, hungry guy trying to get to the UFC, that chapter’s closed.”
As for the next one, Greene got his pen out and started writing when Daniel Spitz was forced out of Saturday’s bout with Hughes due to injury. It was the perfect opportunity to cross another item off his list and settle an old score.
“I saw it (the Batista fight) as a job interview and I had to go out and get the job,” he said. “Well, I got the job and I feel like this is my UFC debut. I did enough to impress my employers to say, ‘You know what, give this guy a shot and let’s see what he has.’ But this fight’s my debut and it means more to me because this one I want back. In so many ways I lost that fight myself – I played into his distance and played into his game for five rounds. So I have to go out there and show myself in a different light and show everybody I can strike and not try to make it a wrestling match like I did before.
“This chapter is called staying in the UFC and trying to slowly cement a legacy for myself and my family and things like that,” Greene continues. “There’s still a lot of work to be done and still much more to prove. There’s not a number by my name; I’m not ranked, so there’s still work to be done, but some of the pressure is over. It’s kind of like (Francis) Ngannou said – they put too much pressure on him and it made him freeze and he said I’m just gonna go out there and have fun and fight.”
And while Greene wants to get some get back from his opponent this weekend, this isn’t one of those bad blood matchups. Yeah, we’ll go back to The Godfather and say that this is business, not personal.
“I like the chess match of what we do,” Greene said. “I don’t have to be mad to fight somebody. This is my job. This is two guys going out putting their application in for a job. You’re gonna say all the right things to get that job, and I’m gonna say the right things too. The only thing we’re doing is using our tools – our fists, our knees, our elbows – to get those jobs.”
If TUF or his first win in the Octagon didn’t convince you, the 33-year-old is willing to put in the work and deliver the performances to prove that he is the future of the heavyweight division, and eventually, he plans on leaving no doubts. In the meantime, it’s like TUF; just tune in and see what Maurice Greene does next.
That’s an offer we can’t refuse.
“I’ve got to go out and prove that not only am I a big heavyweight but I can go out and win fights against tough opponents,” said the 6-foot-7 Greene. “And to be that star, you have to be more than a good fighter. But that’s natural for me and I can do that all day. So for me, it’s just getting in there and mixing it up and using all my tools and showing that not only is this guy someone that they can market, but he may be one of the greats.”
