One punch, twelve seconds
Gable Steveson opened with a leg kick. He then reached both arms out to parry whatever came back. Sean Sharaf looped a left hook over the top, caught him clean on the chin, and Steveson dropped. A few follow-up shots confirmed what the arena had already seen. Twelve seconds, and the heavyweight prospect everyone had been watching was out cold on the canvas at Crypto.com Arena a few hours ago.
It ranks as the third-fastest heavyweight knockout in UFC history. It also counts among the largest upsets the promotion has recorded. Sharaf walked in at -2400 against him, roughly 24-to-1, and had lost his two previous Octagon appearances.
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The prospect and the man nobody backed
Steveson arrived in mixed martial arts with an Olympic freestyle wrestling gold medal and a perfect professional record. He had stopped his debut opponent in the first round two months earlier and the UFC had moved him quickly, matching him again before the end of the summer. The plan was a heavyweight division rebuilt around him.
Sharaf spent fight week telling reporters he would win. Nobody wrote it down. “I believed in myself when nobody believed in myself,” he said afterwards, and the record will now show he was the only one who had to.
Steveson left the cage without waiting for Bruce Buffer to read the result. He goes back to a drawing board that looked unnecessary on Saturday morning.
The rest of the card
Joshua Van kept the flyweight title in the main event, beating Alexandre Pantoja in a rematch nine months after their first meeting ended in 26 seconds when Pantoja injured an arm. Van had spent the buildup answering suggestions that the belt came to him by accident. He answered them across five rounds instead.
Arman Tsarukyan handled Mauricio Ruffy in the co-main event, a result that puts him back in line for a lightweight title shot he has been chasing since withdrawing from UFC 311. On the preliminaries, Joanderson Brito put Giga Chikadze on the ground and unloaded hammer fists from inside the guard until the referee stepped in, inside two minutes of the first round.
Next for the promotion is UFC 332 in Salt Lake City, with a vacant women’s flyweight title on the line.
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