UFC 183: Iaquinta vs. Lauzon, Woodley vs. Gastelum Highlights
Al Iaquinta and Joe Lauzon met on last night’s (Saturday January 31st, 2015) UFC 183 card in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it was a predictably gritty affair. Known for being the biggest bonus winner in UFC history, “J-Lau” looked to make another extra $50K by making the fight exciting early on, but it wasn’t to be his night.
The opening exchanges saw “Raging” have a few problems with Lauzon in the stand up, but the second round was a contrasting stanza. Iaquinta started to chain together his combinations, and it became a very tough night for the fan favorite and 13-time bonus winner. The Serra-Longo product looked polished in the stand up, and made the finish look easy.
The stoppage came at 3:34 of round two, as Lauzon back-pedalled across the cage from some heavy power punches. As Iaquinta attempted to put the screws in with some more bolo punches, the referee had to wave the action off.
“Raging” Al Iaquinta likely breaks in to the ranks of the top 15 at lightweight with his win over the veteran Lauzon, and he did so in very impressive fashion.
Check out the UFC 183 Al Iaquinta vs Joe Lauzon highlights video above.
Tyron Woodley and Kelvin Gastelum tied them up for three rounds in the evening’s co-main event, and eventually went to a split decision win for “The Chosen One””. The talk surrounding this fight was about the quest for gold at welterweight, a weight that “Mini Cain” failed to make by a large margin of nine pounds.
I suppose the talk of him moving up to middleweight makes perfect sense now, as a win against “T-Wood” would have probably presented more of a puzzle. We’ll forgive KG for his discrepancy considering he almost died during fight week.
For Woodley, it was about keeping his angles tight and never staying still. Gastelum tried to keep the pressure on, but was simply too slow and got hit too much. Won’t go down as the best fight in either guy’s career, but it could prove to be pivotal for both, and easily could have gone either way.
“MIni Cain” got his first pro loss, and a ticket to 185 pounds, and Woodley might well have just earned a title shot, although he was a little tired by round three for my liking. Don’t tell Rory MacDonald though.
It may interest you to know that Woodley gave back the 20% to Gastelum that he was fined for losing weight, nice guy!
Photo by Jayne Kamin Oncea for USA Today Sports
