UFC Fight Night 111 happened in Singapore’s Indoor Stadium last night. I waddled through the doors at 7pm to catch the last 2 of the pre-lim fights then the four major fights on the cards.

I fell into UFC a couple of years ago and went on a rampage trying to find every episode of UFC’s main events from 1 through to the most recent ones in the 200s. I remember teeth and blood and some fat dude pummeling a small dude in UFC 1. Nasty stuff. You wouldn’t see it on the streets of Dublin of an evening. Well maybe…
Of course as an Irish person I always tune into Conor McGregor’s fights as it’s pure mayhem, entertainment, and foighting words all the way in the run up and through his fights. I also tune in for the big ones; including the Ronda Roussey v Holly Holm fight a few years ago. Which brings us to tonight….

Holm and Beth Correia were the main draw on this fight card with a couple of other “names” in there for good measure namely Rafael Dos Anjos and Andrei Arlovski. Here’s how the fights went through my noobish eyes.

Cyril Asker vs. Walt Harris
I barely had time to get annoyed by the people around me and this fight was over. Some tentative engagements then Harris got Asker on his back and started bashing his face in with a not soft flurry of elbows. The referee stepped in before Asker forgot his hotel room number.

Takanori Gomi vs. Jon Tuck
The last of the prelim matches also went by in the blink of a swollen eye in the first round. Tuck got on Gomi’s back and flipped him around, got his arm around his neck, squeezed Gomi like an orange, and Gomi tapped out. Next.

Rafael dos Anjos vs. Tarec Saffiedine
This one went the full three rounds and dos Anjos did just enough in a pretty tit-for-tat affair of grappling and wrestling. Nothing too exciting and I wasn’t too impressed with dos Anjos at all. I started chatting to the usher during this bout; this would re-occur during the night. He was lonely and I needed some stimuli.

Colby Covington vs. Dong Hyun Kim
This sucked. I started thinking about American politics during this. It was stagnant and lacklustre. Covington just harried and hassled Kim and Kim really didn’t do anything to counter-attack throughout. Covington won on decision. If I were Covington I wouldn’t be optimistic I could fight anyone better than Kim in the future.

Andrei Arlovski vs. Marcin Tybura
Arlovski is a fan favourite. Tybura didn’t care and he got the upper hand in the grappling throughout. He won by unanimous decision and it definitely showed. Arlovski knew it when it was all over and it showed on his bruised face.

Holly Holm vs. Bethe Correia
What everyone was waiting for. Then everyone forgot that and started booing the very very ultra defensive and cautious approach by both fighters. There were two rounds of absolutely nothing to remember. I started chatting to my old usher friend again. I started getting more annoyed by the peopl around me. A Kiwi couple behind me got more courageous with each drink they had. “Come on Holms” was cried out from behind me throughout and in response to all the boos “Do you even know MMA brahhh!”. I could have corrected her name calling but left her to wallow in her own decaying orbit. Round three comes around and Correia thought it would be a good idea to taunt Holm to come and get it. Seconds later Holm did; by kicking Correia in the face and upper cutting her chin when she was down just to make sure she would feel more pain in the morning over pancakes and tea. It was embarrassing. It was beautiful.

And with that final kick it brought back to me why I like this sport so much and I’m hoping to keep in touch with the big events going forward.

A quick word on the Indoor Stadium; they really need to sort out toilets locations. Everyone has to gown medieval stairwells to reach them and the queues end up clogging up the stairwells…much like the toilets therein. That is all.