- In Saturday’s main event Curtis Blaydes dominated Alexander Volkov to earn his fourth consecutive victory, winning by a unanimous decision.
- After a commanding win, Blaydes kept his comment simple: “I’m the best wrestler in the division. I just can’t wait to go home and hug my daughter.”
- In the co-main event, Josh Emmett gained his third win in a row by handing Shane Burgos his first unanimous decision defeat.
- The fight of the night winner, Emmet commented: “I was so close in 2018, I was ranked fourth in the world, I had a small hiccup and had to reset, restart and work my way back up. I was right there before in the top five, I was ranked number four, one shot away from the title. I feel like I’m there right now, I feel like my next fight could be for a title eliminator, get a big win there and then I’ll fight for the title. That’s what I’m gunning for, I want to fight one more time this year at least and then really make a run at that title in early ‘21, unless with the crazy pandemic and everything that’s going on, now if something happened, hey they know me, I’ve never turned down a fight.
I said I’m willing to go through anything just to get my hand raised, and I mean it. I think a lot of people in my position, what I just experienced, would have just quit. In the first like 45 seconds, I think I blew my ACL and it was just giving out, I’ve never experienced anything like that. It was painful, but the first thing in my mind was I just have to adapt to it and fight on one leg. I’m not going home with half a check, so I’m going to bite down on my mouthpiece, dig deep and that’s exactly what I did. I just felt like I kinda stood there, you watch a lot of my fights, I use a lot of movement and lateral movement, I felt like I just couldn’t so I hand to stand there and play sock ‘em rock ‘em robots.”
- In a must win match-up Marc Andre Barriault gained his first UFC win by beating Oskar Piechota with a TKO in the second round.
- Working hard to finally secure his first win, Barriault said: “It means a lot man, just to liberate myself with everything going on right now. I did it for me, first of all, for my fans, for my team, for my family, for everybody, but for me it’s a good feeling, it’s amazing and of course I will enjoy it very good this summer. Because the last year and everything was overwhelming, all the experience for my UFC year. Like I said before, during all this crazy time, I just work on myself, I reconnect with my old route, so here I am with my old team, the best version of me, so tonight you saw everything.
I worked a lot on my mindset, just to reconnect my body and my mind. Just to be me during the moment, just float with everything, not thinking too much, just all action. I felt he was strong during the first round, so he hit me with a couple of good shots, but I stayed composed and I just worked the game plan. The game plan was just to let everything loose, be confident, just work the timing and let the hands go, so that’s what I did. If the UFC gives me this type of guy, of opponent, I will put on a very good show. My past three fights, those guys were kind of, they taste my power right away so they just wrestle me. Right now, I want to fight, I want more, let’s go.“
