On This Day — November 2: Masvidal Beats Diaz for the BMF Belt at Madison Square Garden
Some dates belong to a single fight. November 2 belongs to two headliners six years apart: the night the UFC invented a belt for the occasion at Madison Square Garden, and the night Bellator's greatest rivalry produced its second classic in Long Beach.
Some dates belong to a single fight. November 2 belongs to two headliners six years apart: the night the UFC invented a belt for the occasion at Madison Square Garden, and the night Bellator's greatest rivalry produced its second classic in Long Beach.
2019 — Masvidal, Diaz and the BMF belt at Madison Square Garden
UFC 244 was the promotion's 500th live event, and the UFC marked it with something it had never done: a belt with no division, no rankings and no future — the BMF title, created after Nate Diaz returned from nearly three years away, beat Anthony Pettis, and called out Jorge Masvidal as the other man fit to fight for it.
Masvidal arrived as the author of the fastest knockout in UFC history, the five-second flying knee that felled Ben Askren four months earlier. In front of 20,143 at the Garden — and a sitting US president, the first to attend a UFC event — he set about Diaz in the first round: an elbow and a head kick opened a cut above Diaz's right eye and put him down, and Masvidal dropped him again on the way to outlanding him 112 to 43 in significant strikes.
Diaz, bleeding from the first round onward, did what Diaz does — kept walking forward, kept firing back, and was plainly warming to the fight when the third round ended. He never got a fourth. The cageside doctor inspected the cut, Diaz insisted he could continue, and the fight was waved off anyway, to a chorus of boos. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson wrapped the BMF belt — stamped 244 on the front, 500 on the back — around Masvidal's waist, and both men spent their interviews asking for the rematch. It never came, which somehow fits a belt that was only ever meant to exist for one night.
The card underneath was its own argument for the date: Kevin Lee returned to lightweight and knocked out the unbeaten Gregor Gillespie with a head kick at 2:47 of the first round; Darren Till edged Kelvin Gastelum by split decision on his middleweight debut; Stephen Thompson outclassed Vicente Luque; and on the prelims, Jairzinho Rozenstruik needed 29 seconds to finish Andrei Arlovski.
2013 — Alvarez takes the rematch in Long Beach
Six years earlier, November 2 belonged to Bellator. Bellator 106 was supposed to be the promotion's pay-per-view debut; when Tito Ortiz withdrew injured, the show moved to Spike TV — and produced the better headline anyway.
Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler had made the greatest fight in Bellator history in 2011, Chandler submitting Alvarez to take the lightweight title. The rematch went the full five rounds: Alvarez's jab and movement against Chandler's wrestling, Chandler's left eye swelling nearly shut, a fifth round in which Alvarez poured it on and nearly finished a rear-naked choke. The judges gave it to Alvarez by split decision, 48–47 twice against one 47–48, and the series stood at one apiece — the trilogy fight, in the end, never happened in Bellator. Daniel Straus took the featherweight title from Pat Curran on the same card.
Also on this day
- 2019 — Corey Anderson stopped Johnny Walker by TKO at 2:07 of the first round on the UFC 244 prelims.
- 2019 — Edmen Shahbazyan knocked out Brad Tavares with a head kick at 2:27 of the first round at UFC 244.
One date, two promotions, and the same lesson: the fights people invent belts for, and the rematches that live up to the first fight, are the ones a calendar remembers.
