Renan Barao earned a quick TKO victory over Urijah Faber in the main event of UFC 169 tonight, but a slightly premature stoppage took a little of the sheen off an otherwise impressive display from the champion.
Round One:
The main event is underway. Barao tries a push kick that misses and Faber presses back with a short flurry of punches.
Barao tries a kick and Faber catches it, thinking about a takedown, but then opting for punches instead.
Faber waits his moment and then charges forward with another flurry, but so far Barao is seeing them coming and getting out of the way for the most part.
Kick from Faber and he loses his balance which results in Barao throwing a cobmination of bunches as he gets back up. They grin and get back to the action.
Faber lands a nice punch. Soon after Barao connects with one of his own though. Leg kick from Barao and thenhe blasts him with a right hand that drops Faber to the canvas.
Faber down on the mat and eating ground and pound shots from Barao, but there’s no quit in him and he manages to get back up and tries to get off some strikes of his own to turn the tide.
Barao is not going to let him off the hook though and continues to move forward throwing punches. Faber eats another hard shot and is on wobbly legs.
He drops to the mat again after one more punch and Barao swarms him with a barrage of blows on the ground.
Faber is turtled up on his knees now, but has a hold of Barao’s legs and looks to be preparing to try to get back up, but he won’t have a chance to as referee Herb Dean has decided that he’s seen enough and he awards Barao the TKO victory with 3.42mins on the clock.
Faber immediately protests, telling the referee that he was giving him a thumbs up signal that he was ok, but it’s too late and the fight is over.
It’s an unfortunate end and on reflection did appear to be a premature one, though be in no doubt, Barao was very much in the ascendacy and had Faber in all sorts of trouble in the relatively short space of time the fight lasted.
