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#2. Jared Gooden – UFC welterweight
While UFC president Dana White likes to brag about the fact that his promotion has done an excellent job during the COVID-19 pandemic when it comes to putting on shows, it’s also fair to say that plenty of cost-cutting has also been done.
Namely, countless fighters have been cut by the UFC in the past 18 months, meaning that unless you’re a big name or a hot prospect, your job with the promotion isn’t safe when you’re not winning.
And prior to last night, Jared Gooden hadn’t been winning, he’d lost his only two visits to the octagon, although he hadn’t been finished in either. A third loss probably would’ve been the end of his run in the UFC.
But Gooden took a big risk in taking a last-minute fight with Niklas Stolze last night and somehow pulled off a tremendous performance to knock the German out in the opening round. It looked like he decided to throw caution to the wind entirely, and it definitely worked.
Gooden may well lose his next fight and wind up out of the UFC if that happens, but for now at least, he’s bought himself some valuable time and may well end up surprising everyone with a run of wins yet.
#1. Sean Strickland – UFC middleweight
The only fight on the card at UFC Vegas 33 with any kind of potential title implications was the main event between Uriah Hall and Sean Strickland. The two middleweights had been on impressive winning runs coming into the event, and both men were looking to climb into the upper echelon of the UFC’s rankings.
But while Hall was ranked above Strickland, it was ‘Tarzan’ who came out on top of what was a surprisingly one-sided fight.
Strickland wasn’t able to finish Hall, although he did come close in an extremely dominant third round that saw him hurt ‘Prime Time’ with a series of heavy strikes. But that was more down to Hall’s durability than anything else, and overall it was clear that Strickland deserved the win in the end.
Strickland is an interesting fighter in that he’s been in the UFC for almost a decade now, but he’s still only 30 years old. More to the point, he’s got just two losses to his name since mid-2015, and one of them came at the hands of the current pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, Kamaru Usman.
So can ‘Tarzan’ really climb into title contention at 185 pounds? Given that Marvin Vettori was able to, then it’s definitely possible. And this victory should put him in the top ten at least, meaning he was UFC Vegas 33’s biggest winner.
