Several times, Pantoja was on the verge of a title shot only to have an untimely loss. Given flyweights tend to have a shorter shelf life than other weight divisions, this win kind of reminds me of Michael Bisping’s title victory.

Even more impressive, I don’t know a person who believed Pantoja would be the one with his hand raised if the fight went the full 25. Providing one of the guttiest performances we’ve ever seen, Pantoja scratched and clawed his way to a split decision victory over Moreno. While I’m not going to complain about the quality of that quadrilogy, Pantoja proved why I was so keen on seeing them square off earlier. Instead, we got two more fights with Deiveson Figueiredo. I wanted to see Pantoja fight Moreno for the third time when Moreno first claimed the flyweight title. I’ll limit it to three in each category, doing my best to avoid having the same combatants of a contest in both categories. I’ll give you the lowdown on who the biggest winners and losers of the event were. Just like not all wins are created equal, not all losses are either. Same with those who didn’t get their hand raised. Outside of that, there were four sub-minute finishes in the card and a candidate for FOTY in the co-main event between Alexandre Pantoja and Brandon Moreno.īut who were the real winners and losers of the event? Sure, 13 UFC fighters officially had their hand raised in victory, but that doesn’t always mean they are the true winners of the night. The only thing holding it back from taking that title in an indisputable manner was the lack of drama in the main event, which saw Alexander Volkanovski extinguish Yair Rodriguez in the third round. In fact, it was arguably the event of 2023 thus far. UFC 290 has come and gone and it proved to be one of the better cards of the year.

Fuck your champion edit rape button