UFC London: Pressure is on as British fighters seek to replicate magical March event

UFC London cards, as it turns out, are a bit like buses in the English capital. You wait ages for one to come along, then two arrive at once.

In 2020, the UFC’s annual visit to London was a matter of days away when the card was cancelled – one of the first events to fall as Covid-19 crippled the sporting calendar. Britain’s own Leon Edwards was set to headline the card at the O2 Arena, taking on former welterweight champion Tyron Woodley. The fight fell through, along with the rest of the event, and British fans’ one-year wait for a UFC event eventually grew into a three-year longing.

Yet absence has a significant effect on the heart, its atriums and ventricles, and when the UFC ultimately returned to London this March, 17,081 fans and 24 mixed martial artists embraced the evening in equally full-blooded fashion. Together they made for a night that will go down in the folklore of British MMA, and one that captivated followers of the sport worldwide.

Records were broken as UFC London became the highest-grossing sporting event in the history of the O2 Arena, as well as the highest-grossing Fight Night that the UFC has ever staged. Of the 10 British fighters competing, seven were victorious – six of them winning via stoppage. Molly McCann’s spinning back elbow to knock out Luana Carolina was heralded as arguably the greatest KO ever in a women’s UFC fight, while Tom Aspinall’s first-round submission of veteran Alexander Volkov in the main event was emphatic. While most UFC events see two or three performance bonuses handed out, every fighter to have won via stoppage on 19 March received a monetary boost.

It would feel lazy to simply say there was magic in the air that evening, but the identifiable elements above fused with intangible ones to make for a jubilant celebration of British MMA – and the sport on the whole.

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And so, what choice was UFC president Dana White left with but to bring MMA’s flagship promotion back to the English capital at once? His voice raspy from hours of addressing fans and reacting to the stunning action on the other side of the Octagon fence, White croaked that the UFC would return to London at the earliest opportunity.

Since the UFC’s inception in 1993, it has staged 25 events in the UK – the first taking place at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2002, the 26th scheduled for this Saturday. The last time two cards were staged in the UK in one year was in 2018, when a London event in March was followed by a trip to Liverpool in May. The latter card was designed to capitalise on the hype around Darren Till, who was scheduled to co-main-event this weekend until the Scouser sustained an unfortunate injury.

Till’s withdrawal may be seen as a sacrifice to the MMA gods so that the rest of the card may stay intact – unlike in 2019. Aspinall’s headline bout with Volkov in March was his first UFC main event, and the Wigan heavyweight will top this Saturday’s card as well. His heavyweight clash with Curtis Blaydes may just crown a new No 1 contender in the division, as Aspinall looks to move a step closer to fulfilling prophecies that he is a UFC champion in waiting – Britain’s second ever UFC title holder, perhaps.

When White addressed the media moments after the card’s conclusion in March, he even teased that the next London event could be Britain’s first UFC pay-per-view since 2016, suggesting that Edwards could headline against welterweight champion Kamaru Usman in a long-awaited rematch. That title bout will in fact play out in Utah in August, but White and his team have delivered a more appetising set of fights on paper than they did in March.

Whether or not that will translate to an even more electric evening than the one that played out in March remains to be seen. Aspinall is not alone in making a swift return to the O2; McCann will feature again, as will Paddy Pimblett, Paul Craig, Muhammad Mokaev and Jai Herbert.

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While Herbert was one of the three beaten Britons in March, he had come agonisingly close to stopping Ilia Topuria. Mokaev, meanwhile, opened the prelims by submitting Cody Durden just 58 seconds into what was a perfect UFC debut for the Dagestan-born 21-year-old – one of the youngest fighters on the roster. Scotland’s Craig continued his thrilling run of stoppage wins with his own submission victory, avoiding what looked like certain defeat to submit Nikita Krylov.

And then there was Pimblett. In just his second UFC fight, “Paddy The Baddy” was the undeniable prince of proceedings, recovering from an early knockdown to submit Rodrigo Vargas in Round 1 and send the O2 Arena into raptures. The energy given off by the loudmouth Liverpudlian and returned in kind by the adoring masses in the building suggested that – even as an unranked fighter – Pimblett could have main-evented the card. While such a feat seems an inevitability for the 27-year-old, he will have to overcome a sterner test in Jordan Leavitt this weekend if he is to keep that dream alive – as well as hopes of headlining at Anfield, home of his beloved Liverpool FC.

The eyes of the MMA world will be on British fighters again this weekend, now more piercing than peering. The pressure will also be on.

UFC London in March felt like a moment in time for British MMA. Whether that night represented a peak or simply a precipice to keep climbing will become clearer on Saturday. In the words of UFC icon Bruce Buffer: It’s time.