“Don’t mind the stoppage,” Francis Ngannou, BJ Penn and more react to Alexander Volkov’s knockout victory of Jairzinho Rozenstruik at UFC Vegas 56
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Alexander Volkov & Herb Dean at UFC Vegas 56
UFC heavyweight Alexander Volkov just shut his doubters up in case they were thinking he is past his best days as a fighter. The Russian mixed-martial artist just went on to bounce back from his first-round loss, only to have a spectacular first-round win as he technically knocks out Jairzinho Rozenstruik at the main event of UFC Vegas 56. Volkov is now 4-2 in his last 6 fights and Rozenstruik is on a 2-fight skid.
This was Volkov’s 23rd knockout victory adding to his legacy of being a former M-1 Global heavyweight champion as well as the former Bellator MMA heavyweight champion. The Twitter world is however questioning that even though Volkov’s victory was legit, was the stoppage by referee Herb Dean too early? Look out for the tweets in the next section to infer from the various perspectives on the situation.
Alexander Volkov gets the MMA community’s respect regardless of the referee’s timing to stop the fight
UFC Heavyweight Champion Francis Ngannou has opened up with his Tweet as an opportunity for the fans to debate whether it was an early stoppage or not. Sports journalist Luke Thomas gives a detailed view of the fight and why the call was early yet right. As per Thomas, “Rozenstruik showed his back while stumbling and appearing out of it. Don’t mind the stoppage at all. More to the point, Rozenstruik has relied on counterstriking as a UFC strategy. That actually can be valuable, but not against the better parts of the division.“
Continuing with a third tweet in the same thread, Thomas concluded “Fantastic performance for Volkov after a bad showing against Aspinall. He stayed busy, largely defined the range of the fight and when the bout called for higher intensity, he met the moment. Solid win.”
Global scoring platform VERDICT MMA revealed the percentage of people out of its entire audience predicting Alexander Volkov to win via first-round KO. The numbers are shockingly few in quantity, considering many people thought that opening round knockout should be in Rozenstruik’s favour.
Finally, Aaron Bronsteter from The Sports Network says “That’s a judgment call by the ref. Volkov was putting it on Rozenstruik, but a tough call to make with Rozenstruik never going down. Either way, Volkov looked great, weathered the storm from Rozenstruik and turned the tables on him.”
What are your thoughts about the main event? Do you think Rozenstruik could’ve changed the course of the fight if not for the stoppage? Where do you think both the winner and loser of the main event of UFC Vegas 56 go from here in their respective careers? Where do you put Alexander Volkov amongst one of the best heavyweights of this era?
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Abhai Singh Tanwar
(1386 Articles Published)