On This Day — November 3: Cormier Defends a Second Crown at Madison Square Garden
November 3 is Madison Square Garden day on this calendar more than once, but its defining moment came in 2018, when a card that nearly fell apart was rescued by a champion making a kind of history the UFC had never seen — on four weeks' notice, against the most unlikely challenger of the year.
November 3 is Madison Square Garden day on this calendar more than once, but its defining moment came in 2018, when a card that nearly fell apart was rescued by a champion making a kind of history the UFC had never seen — on four weeks' notice, against the most unlikely challenger of the year.
2018 — Cormier defends a second crown at UFC 230
UFC 230 was not supposed to look like this. The New York card had lost its planned co-feature when Dustin Poirier withdrew injured from a fight with Nate Diaz, and the main event was only assembled in the final month: Daniel Cormier, the light heavyweight champion who had knocked out Stipe Miocic in July to add the heavyweight title, would defend the bigger belt against Derrick Lewis.
Lewis was the people's choice by accident. Four weeks earlier at UFC 229, he had spent three rounds being outstruck by Alexander Volkov — 129 significant strikes absorbed — before knocking him out in the final seconds and turning into a star overnight. It was his ninth win in ten fights, and he had said more than once that he did not want a title shot because his conditioning was not there. He accepted this one anyway, on the same four-week turnaround, because heavyweight title shots do not wait.
Cormier, who had broken his right hand winning the belt and had already declined a short-notice rematch with Miocic, made the mismatch clinical. He took Lewis down in the first round, kept him there, and in the second worked to his back and closed a rear-naked choke at 2:14. "Two belts for each shoulder!" he said afterwards, draped in both championships. He was the first fighter in UFC history to defend titles in two weight classes — a champion in two divisions who had actually put both belts at risk. Then he called out Brock Lesnar, because it was 2018 and that was the other thing heavyweight champions did.
The two-belt reign did not last long in that form: Cormier relinquished the light heavyweight title the following month rather than hold up the division, and the heavyweight belt went back to Miocic in their rematch the next summer. But the record set at the Garden — defenses in two divisions, by one man, in the same reign — was the kind that only gets harder to reach as the sport grows.
2018 — Jacaré breaks New York hearts in the co-main
The fight of the night happened one bout earlier. Chris Weidman, New York's own former middleweight champion, was outstriking Ronaldo "Jacaré" Souza and heading toward a decision that would have restarted his title ambitions. Jacaré, 38 years old and running out of road, found the punch that changed it in the third round — a right hand that put Weidman down, and follow-ups that forced the stoppage at 2:46. It was awarded Fight of the Night, and it remains the signature late-career win of one of the greatest grapplers the sport has produced — won, pointedly, with his hands.
On the same main card, a 29-year-old former kickboxer named Israel Adesanya dismantled Derek Brunson with knees and punches at 4:51 of the first round and took home a Performance of the Night bonus. It read as a prospect's breakout. Within a year he held the middleweight title.
Also on this day
- 2018 — Jared Cannonier stopped David Branch early in the second round of his middleweight debut at UFC 230, earning a Performance of the Night bonus.
- 2018 — Lyman Good knocked out Ben Saunders at 1:32 of the first round on the UFC 230 prelims.
A salvage-job card, a two-division champion defending what no one had defended before, and a future champion announcing himself underneath: November 3 earned its place the hard way.
