One way or another, UFC 209 was supposed to bring closure for Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson. Coming to a draw after 25 minutes in the cage last November, the two spent the past few months sniping at each other over the merits of a rematch until the UFC made it official.
While an immediate do-over didn’t excite Woodley, he came into the fight with the full knowledge that in the eyes of many MMA observers, he needed a decisive win to put Thompson behind him and legitimize his welterweight title reign.
Well, about that...
It wasn’t exactly mission accomplished for Woodley.
Yes, he achieved his primary objective. He retained his welterweight championship belt. But as UFC announcer Bruce Buffer began reading the judges’ scorecards, no one in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena or watching on pay-per-view could have felt confident in predicting a winner.
As it turned out, it was a scrape job, a pair of 48-47 scores to go with one 47-47 draw.
If there was any silver lining for Woodley, it was his performance in the final moments of the fight, with the result hanging in the balance.
As the clock ticked down past its final minute, Woodley finally breached the distance that had flummoxed him for long, long, long stretches of the match and crash-landed a pair of heavy right hands to Thompson’s head, flooring the challenger before nearly finishing him with a barrage against the cage.
Thompson survived it and got back to his feet before the closing bell, but in a bout with little sustained action, it felt like an eruption, and it sealed the pivotal final round.
“It’s tough when you fight someone a second time,” Woodley said on the Fox Sports 1 post-fight show. “He was keeping me at bay so it was tough to get in. It was really awkward, but it was my first rematch. I was hesitant, but we were both hesitant. The last round i knew I needed to go for the kill, and I got it done.”
Sort of.
To be sure, MMA is a hellaciously difficult endeavor; "chess with blood" is among the most apt descriptions of the sport ever uttered.
Factor in Thompson’s singular style—which is essentially a retrofitting of karate for MMA—and sprinkle in Woodley’s height and reach disadvantages, and the recipe for awkwardness was always there.
This time around, it manifested itself from the beginning, starting with a slog-like first round that featured only 11 combined strikes, according to FightMetric numbers.
The level of caution set, neither man could break through the other’s invisible forcefield for any length of time, igniting a series of boos that echoed throughout the entirety of the match. As UFC title fights go, it will not go down in the vault of greatness.
“I thought I threw and landed the better strikes, but you can’t leave it in the judges’ hands,” Thompson said.
For the record, Woodley scored his own performance a C-minus.
For the champion, it was a fight with little upside from the beginning. By virtue of a draw, he had technically defended his belt and quickly stated he was ready to move on to something greater. By his reasoning, Thompson had five rounds to wrest the belt from him and hadn’t been able to do so. More than that, Woodley had become the first UFC opponent to outland Thompson over the course of a fight—he did it again Saturday, edging him 70-66, per FightMetric—and he’d been the one to create the closest near-finish, nearly knocking “Wonderboy” out during a fifth-round mauling that surprisingly led to only one 10-8 judges’ scorecard.
While Woodley campaigned for the returning Georges St-Pierre or Nick Diaz—in other words, a money fight—the UFC chose differently.
On the money line, Thompson went off as a slim favorite, with those swinging his way believing he had more room for adjustments with his unorthodox striking style.
That thinking proved somewhat correct, as Woodley’s tentativeness put rounds up for grabs, but Thompson also couldn’t find the moments of aggression he needed to seal the majority.
“I could have thrown a little bit more,” he said on the Fox Sports 1 post-fight show. “Going in, you say, ‘I want to be aggressive, but when you’re out there versus Tyron, he’s so powerful. He’s great in the clinch position and has a great right hand, so you have to be cautious.”
The South Carolinian can take solace in the relative shallowness of the division. A Demian Maia win over Jorge Masvidal will almost certainly result in a Maia title shot. That’s about the closest thing to a guarantee in a wild division, though. Rounding out the top five, Robbie Lawler is coming off a loss, Carlos Condit is semi-retired, and Neil Magny won his last fight, but just prior to that, he was knocked out in the first round by Lorenz Larkin.
So it’s not a long road back to the top for Thompson with another win or two.
Then again, it is a matchup the fight world probably won’t mind waiting for.
After 10 rounds, almost nothing was settled. As MMA goes, that’s a pretty healthy sample size, but after 50 minutes, all we can say is that we may have no clear winner, but we’ve had enough.
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