BJ Penn had his way with a bloody Joe Stevenson at UFC 80: Rapid Fire on Saturday, choking him out in the second round to win the lightweight title and become only the second fighter to claim UFC championship belts in two different weight classes.
Penn, a former welterweight champion known as The Prodigy, joins Randy Couture (light-heavyweight and heavyweight) as the only title-holders in multiple weight classes.
It was bad for Stevenson from the beginning. Penn hurt him with the first flurry of the fight and controlled the rest of the first round from on top.
"I thought I was going to ice him right there," Penn, who was unmarked after the fight, said of the opening. "I thought that was it but he came back strong. Joe was fighting, like he said, for his family and all that stuff when you fight for those reasons, you're tough."
Stevenson, who has three kids with another on the way, tried to fight back from the bottom as the round wore on but finished the round with his forehead masked in blood after Penn opened a cut on the hairline with an elbow.
"Until that big cut happened, it was an interesting fight," said UFC president Dana White. "I mean that was a nasty cut, that thing was pouring blood and I think that affected the fight big time."
Blood streaming down his face, Stevenson came out swinging in the second but Penn avoided the rush and counter-punched effectively. Referee Herb Dean had the doctor look at the cut midway through the round but the fight was allowed to continue. Penn hurt Stevenson, who went down and then was mounted. Penn took his back and mounted him again, methodically improving his position before finally choking him out at 4:02 of the round.
Penn and Stevenson ended up fighting for the 155-pound title after Sean Sherk was stripped as champion for testing positive for steroids last July. Sherk denied cheating but was given a six-month suspension by the California State Athletic Commission.
He watched the two fight for his title from ringside, where he was part of the commentary crew. His ban now over, Sherk will take on Penn next in May at Las Vegas.
"I think it's all going to be about conditioning," White said in handicapping the Penn-Sherk bout.
The smack talk has already started.
"Sean Sherk, you're dead," Penn, who won a US$35,000 bonus for submission of the night, said in the ring before Sherk joined him in the cage.
"You can talk a lot of crap if you want to," countered Sherk.
In the first fight of the night, Canadian lightweight Sam Stout evened his record in the UFC with a comfortable decision over outmatched Swede Per Eklund. Stout will next fight in Canada, on the April 19 event in Montreal. Eklund had no answers for Stout.
Saturday's card was titled Rapid Fire and it lived to its billing with four of the nine bouts lasting less than 90 seconds. Dutch kickboxer Antoni Hardonk probably took longer putting on his trunks than the 17 seconds he needed to floor 39-year-old Northern Ireland heavyweight Colin Robinson.
The fight of the night went to English welterweights Paul Kelly and Paul Taylor, who each earned a bonus of $35,000 for putting on a show in going the distance on the preliminary card.
Kelly used his wrestling and ground-and-pound skills to keep a game Taylor on his back and win by unanimous decision. Taylor opened the fight with a machine-gun flurry of punches but eventually was controlled by Kelly, who carved open a nasty cut on Taylor's forehead with an elbow at end of the second round.
Gonzaga seemed to have the better of it in the early going, scything Werdum down twice with vicious leg kicks in the first round before Werdum rallied later in the round. But Werdum got Gonzaga in a Thai clinch in the second round and hurt him with a knee. Gonzaga was never the same and passively took punishment before the referee stopped it 4:34 into the second round.
Werdum needed the win after a sluggish showing in his UFC debut, a mind-numbing loss to Andrei Arlovski at UFC 70: Nations Collide. For Gonzaga, once the poster boy of the UFC after nearly decapitating Mirko Filipovic on the same card, it's back to the drawing board.
The UFC came to Tyneside in a bid to build on its European audience and reward what is seen as a thriving pocket of English fight fans.
But the show was largely ignored by local media in the days leading up to the fight, as all eyes were on the reappointment of Kevin Keegan as manager of Newcastle United. While fists were flying before a sellout crowd of 8,412 at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle tied Bolton Wanderers 0-0 before 52,500 at St. James' Park.
The fight card drew a venue record gate of $1.25 million.
In a night full of big knockouts, welterweight Marcus Davis ran his win streak to 11 by stopping Jess Liaudin with a left behind the ear after just 64 seconds. Liaudin saw his five-win streak snapped emphatically in what some had thought would be the best fight on the card.
Davis, a former pro boxer was not happy at some of the London-based Frenchman's pre-fight comments. When Liaudin launched a kick, Davis put him to sleep.
"I was pissed. I literally said I wanted to punch a hole through his face," said Davis.
Veteran Jorge Rivera was another heavy hitter, slamming six-foot-six Hawaiian beanpole Kendall Grove with a string of unanswered punches before flooring him with a left to the chin 83 seconds into the middleweight bout.
Rivera, at 35 some 10 years older than Grove, improved his record in his first fight since having his jaw broken by Terry Martin in February.
Elsewhere light-heavyweight Wilson Gouveia crumpled Jason Lambert with a left hook out of nowhere 37 seconds into the second round. Lambert had controlled Gouveia on the ground for most of the first round but paid for a lapse in the second when he was caught defenceless as he began to swing a right.
Gouveia won $35,000 for KO of the night.
Light-heavyweight Alessio Sakara needed just 90 seconds to end James Lee's unimpressive UFC debut via TKO. Sakara subsequently said he will move down to middleweight to campaign at 185 pounds.
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