One of the most exciting fights of this season was held at the Prudential Center in Newark between Luke Rockhold and Lyoto Machida. The results of this anticipated match were exciting too; the fight lasted for a couple of rounds but Rockhold made Lyoto tap out in the 2:31 minute of the second round. This victory over Lyoto Machida made Rockhold the number one contender of the middleweight category in Ultimate Fighting Championship. The match was broadcasted live on Fox 15.
Rockhold managed to defeat Lyoto in this nail biting competition after a very interesting fight, and by defeating Lyoto;Rockhold claims to be the third person who have stopped Lyoto from winning the middleweight title. After the end of this match Lyoto ranked at the 5th position in the World rankings, he failed in winning the title last year in the month of July loosing against Chris Weidman.
Throughout the fight,Lyoto was treated like a mid-card fighter; the moves shown by Rockhold were equivalent to the moves of any top class fighter. Lyoto was crushed by the rear-naked choke; it does not seem at any spot during the match that Lyoto is a world-class player that has won the lightweight championship once and he has been the runners up for the middleweight category once.
Lyoto seemed to be badly bruised by the end of first round when Rockhold managed to put him down with punches and elbows. These speedy punches and elbows resulted as nippyswelling on the face of Lyoto, particularly in the area near his right eye.
When Weidman was asked on a post match show that what he would like to say about the results of this recent UFC match he answered in a very polite way, “I need to focus on my title defense match against Victor Belfort who is the man who handed the first loss to Rockhold 2 years ago.” The interesting match between Belfort and Weidman is likely to be on 23rd May at UFC 187, the winner of this match is likely to face Rockhold.
To summarize the match results for the readers, we can say that 30 year old Rockhold managed to defeat the Brazilian opponent by dominating the fight from the first round, barely letting the Brazilian make any sort of attack. Lyoto was unable to stand on its own by the end of first round; as the second round began Rockhold soon managed to finish the game.
