Jeremy Stephens and Yair Rodriguez Possibly Won the Round of the Year Award

The first fight between Yair Rodriguez and Jeremy Stephens was the main event in UFC Mexico and the rematch just showed us why. The rivalry between these two featherweight started when the first fight ended in a no-contest after Rodriguez eye poked Stephens. Well, they have settled their beef inside the octagon in the rematch and possible won the round of the year award.

Both Rodriguez and Stephens were coming into this fight with some bad intentions. “If he doesn’t die, it doesn’t count” said Jeremy Stephens in the pre fight interviews and he showed up with the same intent. Rodriguez started strong in the first round as he blasted Stephens’face with a head kick. It’s even safe to say that Rodriguez out classed Jeremy Stephens completely in the first round and it seemed as if Rodriguez will be able to pull of a quick win over the UFC veteran, Jeremy Stephens.

However, you can never count out Jeremy Stephens off a fight and tonight we got to see why. Yair Rodriguez carried the momentum from the first round and kept hurting Stephens with the kicks. A brutal kick to the liver dropped Stephens down and the fight was on the verge of getting stopped. It was unbelievable how Stephens survived that strom from Rodriguez in the second round.

Jeremy Stephens did his best to wrestle and stay in the fight while Rodriguez was landing bombs to finish the fight. However, Stephens not only weathered the storm he almost knocked out Yair Rodriguez in the second round. If that fight had gone a few seconds longer, Stephens would have finished the fight.

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Stephens dominated Yair Rodriguez in the third round who was exhausted after the two hard rounds with Stephens. Though Jeremy Stephens finished strong he was not able to secure the victory as Yair Rodriguez had done enough to win the first two rounds and win the fight via unanimous decision.

Now we have already seen some great fights in the year of 2019. Israel Adesanya vs Kelvin Gastelum, Max Holloway vs Dustin Poirier, Paulo Costa vs Yoel Romero, and Stipe Miocic vs Daniel Cormier are just a few of them. However, the second round in Rodriguez vs Stephens rematch has a good chance at beating all the great rounds we have seen so far.

With this win, Yair Rodriguez has earned himself an opponent from the top 5 of the division. On the other hand, though Jeremy Stephens showed a ton of heart, he faced another defeat on the judges’ scorecards. However, it can be concluded that the rematch between Stephens and Rodriguez was one of the most exciting fights we have seen so far in 2019.