Sean O'Malley And the Real Winners and Losers from UFC 299

There are fight cards. And then there are big fight cards.

The UFC's visit to Miami for a Saturday night pay-per-view show at the Kaseya Center near the banks of Biscayne Bay was certainly an example of the latter.

The 14-bout show was laden with familiar names from top to bottom, particularly in the five-bout main portion packaged at UFC 299.

Bantamweight champ and rising "it" guy Sean O'Malley defended the title he won last summer, and the man he met just happened to be Ecuadorian favorite Marlon "Chito" Vera, who handed O'Malley his only pro loss when they met five years ago at UFC 252.

"Suga" Sean was 5-0 with 4 KOs since the lone competitive blemish while Vera was 5-2 over the same stretch and arrived after a scorecard defeat of Pedro Munhoz at UFC 292.

Each of the other fights on the main show had at least one ranked contender, including the co-main that matched octagonal stalwart and No. 3 lightweight Dustin Poirier with 12th-ranked Benoit Saint Denis, who had won five straight since losing his UFC debut in 2021.

The B/R combat team is in the house in Miami to take in all the action and produce a real-time list of the show's definitive winners and losers. Take a look at what we come up with and drop a thought or two of your own in the comments.

Sean O'Malley is a lot of things to a lot of people.

He's a drawing card. He's an "it" guy. He's a phenomenon. He's a champion.

Turns out on Saturday that the 29-year-old from Arizona was something else, too:

A fighter.

Faced with a rematch against the only foe to beat him as a pro, O'Malley put on a clinic of precision striking from the outside, inside and all points in between while winning a unanimous decision over fifth-ranked contender Marlon "Chito" Vera in his first bantamweight title defense.

All three judges scored a shutout for O'Malley, with a pair of 50-45 tallies and one 50-44.

It was comprehensive dominance for the "Suga" man, who controlled each round with speed and accuracy and was particularly devastating in the second round when he landed a right knee to Vera's face that left his rival's face instantly bloody and swollen.

"I felt something in his face break," O'Malley said. "Chito is as tough as it gets, and it feels nice getting that one back. I guess we can agree I'm undefeated still."

Indeed, the fourth round was the only incidence of even minor peril for the champion, who was hit with a knee near the fence and took a few punches in a follow-up flurry. But he was able to spin out of danger and had regained control by the end of the round.

It was his first five-round fight, and he was still as active at the end as at the beginning, landing a fight-high 62 significant strikes across the final five minutes.

"That was your finest performance inside the octagon," Joe Rogan told him afterward.

O'Malley went off script after the fight by suggesting he'd like a chance to climb to featherweight to challenge new champ Ilia Topuria, but said he'd stay at 135 if the people wanted it.

"Get me a jet to Spain," he said. "(Topuria) is a scary f—king dude.

"But if you want me to knock out (top contender) Merab (Dvalishvili), I can do that, too."

For Vera, it was the eighth loss in 23 UFC fights and his first try at a championship.

"This isn't it for me," he said. "We talked a lot of sh-t to each other, but I always thought he was a great fighter."

Suddenly, you could see the change.

Though Benoît Saint Denis had things mostly his own way through the first seven minutes of the co-main event against Dustin Poirier, there was an instant where the look on the Frenchman's face shifted.

From one of confident dominance to one of "holy cow, what is this guy still doing here?"

And not long afterward, Poirier took over.

The Louisiana-born "Diamond" endured strikes, takedowns and submission attempts but was still around to get his shots in, which he did decisively with a right hook that left Saint-Denis in a semi-conscious heap and yielded one of the signature wins of the 13-year octagonal veteran's career.

The end came at 2:32 of Round 2.

"I was getting beat up and rolled out by this guy," Poirier said. "But I got him at the end."

It was a resurrection of sorts after a stretch of two losses in three fights for the 35-year-old, who's ranked third at lightweight but chose to take the fight with a man ranked nine spots beneath him.

Yet Poirier was considered a sizable betting underdog, which he told Bleacher Report during fight week was particularly motivating.

"It's a chance for people who support me and believe in me to make a lot of money," he said.

Joe Rogan gushed about the finishing shot, suggesting the fight was the sort that makes people love Poirier and calling the right hand "one of the most picture perfect (punches) anyone has ever thrown in the octagon."

"I took this fight because he finished his last five opponents and he's dangerous," Poirier said. "It's my position to lose. That's the nature of the beast. That's what we do."

If you haven't been able to watch MMA since Anderson Silva faded away, take heart.

Though no one ought to suggest Michael Page will have the career that the man among the greatest middleweights of all time did, it wasn't hard to be reminded of the Brazilian on Saturday night.

Page made his UFC debut after a successful multi-year run in the Bellator promotion and provided his own take on Silva's athletic, improvisational style on the way to a unanimous three-round nod over popular welterweight gatekeeper Kevin Holland.

Long and lanky at 6'3" and 170 pounds, Page flitted around the cage with his hands at his sides while frequently leaping in with punches and kicks from all angles. He was particularly effective with overhand rights, which he seemed to land at will, though they never had truly decisive impact.

Holland tried vainly to get the fight to the floor and keep it there, but he was unable to capitalize on takedown tries and Page simply refused to take the bait when Holland went to the floor and wanted to stay horizontal after being hit with a shot or missing one of his own.

As a result, the actual combat was intermittent at best and the crowd was booing at the final horn, which preceded the official announcement that Page had won by unanimous decision.

The scores were 29-28 across the board for the London-based winner, who'll be 37 in April.

"(Holland's) a tough guy," Page said. "I've got a little more work to do. A lot more work to do. But this is where I'm supposed to be."

It didn't look good for Jack Della Maddalena.

The Aussie had perhaps split the initial two rounds, but was taken to the mat early in the third by relentless veteran opponent Gilbert Burns and was having a hard time getting up.

But once he did, things changed quickly.

The 27-year-old finally rolled his way out of Burns' back control and backed up a few steps before coming forward with a right knee that landed flush to the Brazilian's head and left him defenseless to a series of two dozen ground strikes before referee Dan Miragliotta intervened.

The official time was 3:43 of Round 3. The official result was a career-defining KO.

It was his 17th straight win since beginning his pro career with two straight losses in 2016. He's won all seven of his outings in the UFC, one by submission, two by decision and now four by KO.

It was Burns' second straight loss and seventh in 22 UFC fights.

Della Maddalena had been ranked 11th, seven spots beneath Burns, a former title challenger, at No. 4. But that'll change come Monday's updates and the winner was already prepared for another challenge of a higher-ranked rival—No. 3 contender Shavkat Rakhmonov.

"There's some scary people in this division," he said, "but I'm the f--king scariest."

Just when it looked safe to shovel dirt on Petr Yan's championship aspirations, it's not.

The 31-year-old ex-king of the bantamweights didn't look so impressive while losing the first round to a younger, faster and presumably more hungry Song Yadong in the main card opener, but he drew on years of elite-level experience to rally in the final 10 minutes for a status-saving win.

It was his first victory since October 2021, in fact, and ended a skid that had yielded split-decision losses to Aljamain Sterling and Sean O'Malley before a unanimous defeat to top contender Merab Dvalishvili in his most recent appearance on a Fight Night show a year ago.

Yadong, meanwhile, had won two straight and was 10-2 with a no contest while lowering the number alongside his name to seven, three spots below Yan's place at fourth.

All three judges scored it 29-28, giving Yan the final two rounds after Yadong won the first.

Yadong landed 54 percent of his significant strike attempts and the round's lone takedown in the initial five minutes, but Yan outlanded his foe in each of the final two rounds while landing two of four takedown attempts compared to an 0-for-6 finish for Yadong.

"It's a very, very important win for me," Yan said. "I'm back."

Sometimes the endings are so sudden they defy explanation.

That was the case with the main prelim between single-digit heavyweight contenders Curtis Blaydes and Jailton Almeida, who engaged in five minutes of first-round grappling and didn't exactly thrill a capacity crowd in Miami that spent much of the initial session groaning and booing.

So Blaydes, who'd arrived as the division's No. 5 man, pivoted to violence.

The 33-year-old sprawled to avoid Almeida's takedown attempt to start the second round, pushed his head toward the mat and proceeded to throw nearly two dozen unfettered hammer fists to the unguarded left side of the Brazilian's head. Ultimately, Almeida wilted and rolled to his side, prompting referee Mike Beltran to intervene after just 36 seconds of the round.

It was a sequence repeated in nearly every fight where one man seeks frequent takedowns, but Blaydes' success was rooted in executing on a subtle game plan.

"When he shoots, we noticed he shoots with his head down," he said, "and where the body goes where the head goes. I made him put his head down and he couldn't get up. I'm a little heavier than he is, and I know how to anchor."

It was Almeida's first loss after an impressive six-fight start to his UFC run, which had yielded three submissions, two KOs and a unanimous decision. Blaydes, meanwhile, earned his first victory since a first-round of injury stoppage of Tom Aspinall, who's since risen to interim champion status.

Not surprisingly, that's who the winner has on his mind.

"Aspinall. We have unfinished business," he said. "That's got to be my next fight."

Kyler Phillips did everything a "Matrix" would do.

He punched. He kicked. He moved. He spun.

The only mystery after 10 minutes of his preliminary card opener against bantamweight veteran Pedro Munhoz was whether the 27-year-old could carry his frenetic energy to the finish line against a clearly durable and increasingly desperate foe.

Turns out he could. And in doing so he gave the 135-pound division a new attention-getter.

Though he spent much of the final session avoiding damage rather than inflicting it, Phillips nevertheless had his hand raised via a unanimous decision in which all three judges gave him all three rounds.

It was the sixth win in seven UFC fights and the third in a row for Phillips, who reached the radar with a one-round win on Dana White's Contender Series in 2017 and officially debuted in 2020. He fought five times through February 2022 then spent 18 months on the shelf before beating Raoni Barcelos last August.

It'll probably get him a rankings number, too, considering Munhoz arrived at No. 13 in the weight class before losing for the second straight time and sixth time in eight UFC fights after an 8-3 start.

Phillips dominated statistically, finishing with 114 significant strikes to Munhoz's 52 and defended seven of the older man's eight takedown tries. Munhoz wasn't able to do much of anything the one time he did get Phillips to the floor in the first round, compiling just 24 seconds of control time, and never was close to landing another attempt.

The mid-card was not kind to the old guard.

One fight after 37-year-old ranked bantamweight Pedro Munhoz was outhustled and outstruck by a man 10 years younger, former lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos, now 39, suffered a similar fate when he was simply smothered by Polish grappling ace Mateusz Gamrot across 15 minutes.

The three scores, 29-28 twice and 30-27 once, in Gamrot's favor were academic after the bout, which saw the 33-year-old elude the Brazilian's efforts to turn it into a striking match and instead get in close to take dos Anjos to mat twice in the first round, five times in the second and four more in the third.

He racked up 7:01 of control time in all and dos Anjos managed just 39 strikes overall while staying stalled at 21 UFC victories, which is tied for seventh in the promotion's history.

It was his second straight loss and third in four fights since a five-round defeat of Renato Moicano at UFC 272 in Las Vegas. He'd arrived 11th at 155 pounds to Gamrot's sixth, and it was the higher-ranked fighter doing the calling out in the aftermath—mentioning lightweight champ Islam Makhachev by name,

"It was a thrill to fight Rafael dos Anjos," he said. "I watched him when I was young.

"I want a top fight right now."

Robelis Despaigne's debut in the UFC was treated like the premiere of a monster movie.

And when it came time to unleash sudden octagonal devastation, the Cuban-born Olympic bronze medalist was ready for his close-up.

A towering heavyweight at 6'7" and 265 pounds who's armed, literally, with an imposing 87-inch reach, Despaigne showed what Joe Rogan labeled "terrifying power" in dispatching veteran Josh Parisian.

Remarkably, though it was his fifth pro fight since debuting with the Titan FC promotion two years ago, its 18-second duration made it the second-longest of the 35-year-old's career.

His first victory came six seconds before the end of a five-minute round but the three subsequent wins before Saturday had lasted 12, three and four seconds, respectively.

So, in five fights, he's fought a total of 5 minutes, and 31 seconds.

Saturday's final sequence came when he slipped to the floor while sending a right kick toward Parisian's head. Parisian sensed an opportunity and charged forward as Despaigne reeled backward off balance, but in doing so he walked into a precise right-left-right combination that landed flush and dropped him dizzily to the floor.

Two ground strikes prompted a quick intervention from referee Andrew Glenn, but the beaten fighter did not complain about the stoppage, which dropped him to 2-5 in the company and was his third straight loss.

"I've had this dream since 2019, to fight in the UFC," Despaigne said, "and thanks to God I'm realizing my dream."

Joanne Wood wanted to go out in style.

She'd announced before Saturday's card that her rematch with Maryna Moroz would be her last fight, but just how much she'd savor the night was unclear until the last of their 15 minutes together.

It was then, with the result in the balance, that she leaned heavily on violence.

Wood spun and connected flush with a right fist/forearm to the right side of her opponent's jaw, sending her reeling backward into the fence and enabling the closing flurry that let Wood escape with a split decision in the opener at a still-cavernous Kaseya Center.

She wound up winning by 29-28 margins (two rounds to one) on two scorecards while the other gave it to Moroz by the same score. B/R agreed with the dissenter after giving Moroz the first two rounds, but it was hard to argue the sentiment as Wood fought off tears during an interview with Joe Rogan.

Moroz and Wood met in the latter's official UFC debut in 2015 after she'd scored a victory on The Ultimate Fighter show in 2014. Moroz won by armbar submission in 90 seconds.

"I should have done that the first time," Wood said, "and then maybe things would have been different."

As it stands, she exits with a 17-8 pro record and an 8-8 mark in the octagon after winning her final two at UFC 286 in London and then in Miami.

Main Card

Sean O'Malley def. Marlon Vera by unanimous decision (50-45, 50-45, 50-44)

Dustin Poirier def. Benoît Saint Denis by KO (strikes), 2:32, Round 2

Michael Page def. Kevin Holland by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Jack Della Maddalena def. Gilbert Burns by KO (strikes), 3:43, Round 3

Petr Yan def. Song Yadong by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Preliminary Card

Curtis Blaydes def. Jailton Almeida by TKO (strikes), 0:36, Round 2

Maycee Barber def. Katlyn Cerminara by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)

Mateusz Gamrot def. Rafael Dos Anjos by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27)

Kyler Phillips def. Pedro Munhoz by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Early Preliminary Card

Philipe Lins def. Ion Cutelaba by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Michel Pereira def. Michal Oleksiejczuk by submission (rear-naked choke), 1:01, Round 1

Robelis Despaigne def. Josh Parisian by KO (strikes), 0:18, Round 1

Asu Almabayev def. CJ Vergara by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Joanne Wood def. Maryna Moroz by split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28)