There was a slew of events that stood out across the increasingly wide MMA landscape in 2022.
Bellator returned to Honolulu for back-to-back events, the first of which was strictly for military members and first responders. ONE Championship started a new era with a broadcast partnership with Amazon Prime. The PFL crowned six first-time $1 million winners in a single night.
The UFC touched down in Paris for the first time with a memorable show, and its return to Madison Square Garden in November for UFC 281 featured a record-tying 11 finishes in 14 fights – seven of which came in the first round, which also tied a record. Or how ’bout UFC on ESPN 40 in August, which had a 100 percent finish rate to tie a longstanding record?
But while those and others were cards worthy of discussion, another was just ahead of the pack.
UFC Fight Night 204, which took place March 19 at The O2 in London, is MMA Junkie’s Event of the Year for 2022.
The anticipation for the UFC’s return to London was at a level seldom seen, largely thanks to the time that had built up since the promotion’s previous show in the city. A March 2020 card was scheduled, but scrapped due to the pandemic. And a planned return in September 2021 was moved to Las Vegas. It had been three years since London fans had a UFC show to look forward to.
It would have been hard for UFC London to start out better than it did. Flyweight Muhammad Mokaev was born in Russia, but moved to England as a child and wrestled for England’s national team. It took him just 58 seconds to stay unbeaten in his promotional debut – a submission of Cody Durden to set the pace.
If the expectations for the rest of the night were tempered in The O2 after decision wins in the next two fights, it would be understandable. But after those first three bouts, things got positively nuts.
The rest of the way, eight of the final nine fights on the card ended with stoppages, including six in the first round. With nine finishes in a dozen fights, UFC president Dana White was so overwhelmed by the choices for post-fight bonus awards that he had little choice but to open up the coffers a little bit. Every one of the nine fighters who got a finish went home with an extra $50,000 Performance of the Night check.
Those bonus winners were happy with their extra pay, no doubt. But they also made the British fans plenty happy most of the time, too.
In the main event, England’s own Tom Aspinall submitted former Bellator heavyweight champion Alexander Volkov with a first-round armbar. Just before that, fan favorite and featherweight contender Arnold Allen kept his unbeaten UFC record intact with a TKO of Dan Hooker.
But perhaps the most memorable finishes came from Liverpool-based teammates Paddy Pimblett and Molly McCann. In a women’s flyweight bout on the main card, McCann landed a Knockout of the Year candidate when she drilled Luana Carolina with a spinning back elbow in the third round and put her out cold. Not long after that, she was cageside to watch Pimblett take out Kazula Vargas with a first-round rear-naked choke.
McCann and Pimblett crossed over to officially become fan darlings with those wins and their post-fight speeches, and in the process they became the faces of an event that set the bar for the rest of the pack in the first quarter of the year.
But, the argument will go, other events had a ton of finishes, too. What about UFC 281 in New York, which had 11 finishes in 14 fights and two title changes? It had more finishes, and with arguably bigger names attached. True. But UFC Fight Night 204 had one thing that puts it over the top.
The atmosphere was electric enough at The O2, and the finish-heavy results were exciting enough that White said immediately after the event that the UFC was going to rearrange its calendar for a return to London much quicker than originally planned. The UFC had been hitting the city once a year around March for several years before the pandemic. But instead of waiting until March 2023, the UFC returned just four months later with another card headlined by Aspinall.
For its anticipation, for its electricity, for its nine finishes in 12 fights, for its star-making performances and for the way it was big enough that the members of the UFC brass had to go back to work to try to catch lightning in a bottle twice, UFC Fight Night 204 in London is our 2022 Event of the Year.
