Yair Rodriguez and Jeremy Stephens spent the bulk of their training camp preparing for their main event tilt on Saturday night at UFC Mexico.
With their respective fighting styles, a fight of the year candidate was expected at the Mexico City Arena. However, things took an unfortunate turn when Stephens could no longer continue after Rodriguez accidentally poked him in the eye 15 seconds in, with the bout declared a no-contest.
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“I apologize a great deal,” a disappointed Rodriguez said to Michael Bisping in his post-fight interview. “We both trained very hard for this fight. I feel really bad about it. Jeremy will be back. Let’s do this again.”
After the eye poke occurred, referee Herb Dean immediately called for time to make sure Stephens was OK. Because the referee requested a timeout, Stephens was allowed five minutes to try and recover. Stephens, though, couldn’t open his eye, so Dean had the ringside doctor enter the octagon to check on the featherweight contender. The doctor put a flashlight in Stephens’ left eye to see if he would be able to fight on.
After the five-minute time period lapsed, Stephens still couldn’t see out of the eye and Dean waved it off, ending the bout.
Chaos erupted when the fans inside the arena started booing the decision and throwing trash into the octagon. Stephens was still holding his eye when he exited the cage and people were tossing garbage at him.
Looking at the conclusion of the fight would make one think that the UFC should book a rematch as soon as Stephens gets his eye back to 100 percent.
The co-main event of the show featured former women’s strawweight champion Carla Esparza defeating Alexa Grasso by majority decision (28-28, 29-28, 29-28). The story of the first and second rounds was Esparza using her wrestling advantage and taking Grasso down to the mat on four occasions.
Realizing she was down on the scorecards, Grasso let it all hang out in the third round. And the mindset nearly worked as she staggered Esparza with a blistering left hook. Instead of trying to finish Esparza, Grasso took her foot off the gas pedal and let Esparza gather her bearings and recompose herself. Esparza scored another takedown, but this time Grasso found an arm and locked in an armbar. Grasso pulled as hard as she could, but Esparza somehow escaped.
Esparza and Grasso let it all hang out in the final 15 seconds throwing the heavy artillery until the final horn sounded.
UFC Mexico undercard results
Irene Aldana def. Vanessa Melo by unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-26).Steven Peterson def. Martin Bravo via knockout at 1:31 of the second round.Jose Quinonez def. Carlos Huachin by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27).Kyle Nelson def. Marco Polo Reyes via knockout at 1:36 of the first round. Angela Hill def. Ariane Carnelossi by TKO at 1:56 of the third round. Sergio Pettis def. Tyson Nam via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27).Paul Craig def. Vinicius Moreira by submission (rear-naked choke) at 3:19 of the first round.Bethe Correia def. Sijara Eubanks via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28).Claudio Puelles def. Marcos Mariano via unanimous decision (30-25, 30-25, 30-25).