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#5. Jordan Espinosa vs. Mark De La Rosa
Heading into his bantamweight encounter with Mark De La Rosa at UFC Fight Night 172, Jordan Espinosa knew he required a win in the column desperately and come fight night, he showed up with a dominant performance.
Coming off a couple of disappointing losses on the trot, Espinosa knew what he had to do and he went about it with much elan, punishing De La Rosa throughout the three scheduled rounds and earning a lopsided unanimous decision win. Two judges scored the fight 30-27 in favor of Espinosa and the other scored it 30-26 in his favor.
Post the win, Espinosa expressed his relief at finally getting a win in the column after back to back defeats.
"I feel freaking great. My last two fights barely went two and half minutes total so I think this is the kind of performance I needed.”
Espinosa looked the hungrier of the two fighters from the beginning of the fight as he got to work with the jabs during the early exchanges. The stiff jabs started to visibly hurt De La Rosa as his head snapped back from the connection, time and time again. De La Rosa was left with no other choice but to shoot for the takedown but his plans backfired completely as Espinosa unleashed a barrage of nasty elbows on the former's head.
As the fight progressed, Espinosa assumed full control and started landing combinations vicious on his opponent at will. De La Rosa tried to mount some kind of an offense but couldn't as he was unable to enter Espinosa’s range.
In the third and final round, Espinosa changed his gameplan and decided to take the fight to the mat and landed some nasty ground and pound on a defeated De La Rosa who knew he had already lost the fight by then. However, De La Rosa showed great heart to stay in the fight till the end of the three scheduled rounds.
Espinosa revealed that he is looking for a quick turnaround and wants to compete again as soon as July.
“I’m trying to get ‘Fight Island. I’ve never even been overseas before. I’m down to get on the July 25. Tyson Nam just got a knockout. I’d be down to fight him.”
