Stevenson gets quick win
Joe Stevenson and Melvin Guillard sat on the mat inside the octagon after their Ultimate Fighting Championship match Thursday night at The Pearl in the Palms, holding a brief conversation.
But as short as the conversation was, it outlasted the match.
Guillard was unable to back up his lofty prefight boasts and wound up submitting to a guillotine choke just 27 seconds into their lightweight bout.
Guillard had accused Stevenson of using human growth hormone, said he was the better-looking and more popular fighter and predicted he would knock out the Las Vegas resident in the first round.
Stevenson responded by saying that Guillard is not a main event fighter but was in the main event simply by virtue of being matched against him.
“He apologized to me for everything he said and I apologized and told him I shouldn’t have said what I did and that he’s a main event fighter, too,” Stevenson said.
That conversation, which took place as the crowd sat stunned, having difficulty believing the action had ended so quickly, took far longer than the fight.
Guillard, known as a powerful puncher, came out aggressively, befitting his prefight talk. He threw a jab and a hard right hand, both of which were short.
But they allowed Stevenson, a wrestler and submissions expert, to get his hands on Guillard and bring the fight to the mat.
Once there, it was only seconds before it was over. Stevenson tried to apply a leg lock, but Guillard was able to counter. Guillard exposed his neck, though, and Stevenson clamped on the choke, quickly forcing the submission.
“I wanted the leg lock and he was right to defend that,” Stevenson said. “I had to change up the game plan. He gave me the head and I had to take it. It was right there.”
The win probably will put Stevenson in the title mix in the lightweight division, where a number of fighters have a legitimate claim to a shot against champion Sean Sherk.
One of those, Kenny Florian, was nearly submitted in a fight he was dominating before roaring back and winning on a choke of his own.
Florian was in command of his fight with Dokonjonosuke Mishima through two rounds and the early stages of the final period. But Mishima applied a knee bar and had Florian on the verge of submitting.
“I was close. I was close,” Florian said of being forced to submit. “I was waiting, basically, for my knee to touch my (butt), and then I was going to tap.
“But I thought, I’m not going to tap just like that. He’s really going to have to break my leg. I worked too hard.”
Once he survived, Florian didn’t let Mishima catch him again. He quickly got into position and grabbed Mishima’s neck, applying the choke and forcing the submission at 3:57 of the final round.
Welterweight Drew Fickett survived two illegal elbows, one to the face and one to the top of the head, while he was down in the second round of his match with Keita Nakamura and went on to win a unanimous decision victory.
Fickett was woozy after the elbows and it appeared for a while as if he’d be unable to continue. Referee Steve Mazzagatti penalized Nakamura a point and Fickett used the entire five-minute recovery time allotted to him before resuming.
But he controlled the third round and won the fight on all three cards.
