UFC 217 leaves MMA fans with a lot to unpack
NEW YORK — A year ago, Conor McGregor held both the UFC lightweight and featherweight belts above his head at Madison Square Garden and provided MMA with a moment that will be remembered forever.
It felt impossible that the promotion would be able to replicate that on Saturday night, and yet somehow UFC 217 felt just as momentous as that fateful night in 2016.
Georges St-Pierre is middleweight champion. Three UFC titles changed hands. There wasn’t a single boring fight on the entire card.
Saturday night was a great night for the UFC, we know that for sure.
Here are some other takeaways from UFC 217:
The company’s OK
Every time a major star walks away from the UFC, there are worries about whether the promotion can survive.
Every time, it works out OK. Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones and McGregor are all inactive right now, so the UFC went back to one of its stars of yesteryear in St-Pierre.
It was a risk, but the FrenchCanadian delivered with a thrilling performance against Michael Bisping to win the UFC title.
At this point, it’s probably time to stop asking whether the UFC is about to entire some sort of decline.
The company has put in the work to develop a whole host of stars, and it is bigger than any one fighter.
Anything can happen
UFC president Dana White has always said that the sport he’s helped build relies on ‘Holy s---’ moments.
Saturday night provided a lot of them.
In the first of three title fights, the seemingly invincible Joanna Jedrzejczyk was rocked twice by Rose Namajunas before tapping to strikes in the first round. Incredibly, the queen is dead – not really. Long live the queen.
In the very next match, T.J. Dillashaw survived a nasty knock from bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt and finished his opponent in the second round. They’ll meet again, to be sure, but the argument for who is the most dominant bantamweight of his era got a lot more interesting.
Then, St-Pierre did his thing. It was a night that flipped everything we know about the UFC on its head, and that makes the next 12 months way more interesting.
G.O.A.T.
Want to argue that someone other than St-Pierre is the greatest fighter in UFC history? Go ahead, try.
St-Pierre became one of the few fighters in the promotion’s history to win titles in two divisions on Saturday, and he did it with an arsenal of weapons we didn’t know he had.
History tends to forget the context in which fights are fought, so it might not be remembered that St-Pierre was given little chance against Bisping.
But few experts thought GSP had a realistic chance of finishing Bisping. He did, and you can put his record up against any other great champion who has fought in the UFC.
He’s fought better fighters, and he’s won. He’s also never gotten suspended for banned substances, that matters — sorry Jon Jones.
He’s the greatest ever.