The first live professional sporting event amid the CoronaVirus pandemic took place on Saturday night. The highly anticipated UFC 249 with no fans was held at the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.
The two main event matches featured a bantamweight title bout between Henry Cejudo and Dominick Cruz, with the top billed match being a light heavyweight championship showdown between Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson. A total of 11 matches made up the fight card on the night. Originally UFC 249 was scheduled for April 18 at the Barclays Center in New York, but had to be cancelled due to the city being shut down by the pandemic. It was announced on April 21 that the event would be moved to Jacksonville, Florida with no fans allowed to be in attendance.
In the two main event fights, Cejudo retained his bantamweight belt by defeating Cruz after the tilt was stopped in the second round. After the match ended, Cejudo (17-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) announced his retirement. Cruz saw his record drop to 22-4, 5-3 in his first action since December 2016. In the final fight, Gaethje (23-2) recorded a standing count TKO in the fifth round to claim part of the light heavyweight title by defeating Ferguson (25-5). This match was originally supposed to be between Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov and Ferguson, but that was blocked by UFC President Dana White because of fears surrounding COVID-19 and Nurmagomedov having to come in from Russia to be part of the event. A match possibly later this year between Gaethje and Nurmagomedov will decide who is the undisputed champion. Below is the results of the other nine fights:
-Ryan Spann defeated Sam Alvey via split decision (light heavyweight)
-Bryce Mitchell def Charles Rosa via split decision (featherweight)
-Vicente Luque def Niko Price by third round TKO (welterweight)
-Carla Esparza def Michelle Waterson via split decision (women’s strawweight)
-Aleksei Oleinik def Fabricio Werdum via split decision (heavyweight)
-Anthony Pettis def Donald Cerrone via unanimous decision (welterweight)
-Former NFL star Greg Hardy def Yorgan De Castro via unanimous decision (heavyweight)
-Calvin Kattar def Jeremy Stephens by second round knockout (catchweight)
-Francis Ngannou def Jair Rozenstruik by first round TKO (heavyweight)
