Mir puts Duffee to sleep in 73 seconds
Frank Mir has hooked up his betting supporters with back-to-back first-round KO finishes as a healthy underdog.
Published on Friday, 7/17/15, at 4:34 p.m. Eastern.
Frank Mir is back. The two-time UFC heavyweight champion put Todd Duffee to sleep with a powerful left hand just 73 seconds into their main-event fight Wednesday in San Diego.
It was Mir’s second straight win by first-round KO after taking some time off following four consecutive losses. Mir acknowledged this week that he considered retirement, but he returned to the Octagon and destroyed Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva earlier this year.
After easily disposing of Duffee in spectacular fashion, Mir is on the cusp of being in title contention once again. Fedor Emelianenko has come out of retirement, so Mir could be a possibility if the promotion can get a deal done with the 38-year-old Russian.
Don’t count on that, however, as Fedor’s Russian handlers have been outrageous with their demands from Dana White and the UFC brass over the last decade. Nevertheless, Mir has positioned himself for another big fight in the final stages of what has already been a spectacular career.
Although the fight with Duffee lasted only 73 seconds, it was non-stop action from the start. Mir, who was an underdog in the +190 range, backed up Duffee several times when he got the better of the early exchanges. He appeared to have Duffy hurt when the young KO artist landed a big right hand to stun the veteran from Las Vegas. But Mir’s chin held up fine and on the next exchange, a thunderous left literally put Duffee to sleep.
In the co-main event, the rise of Tony Ferguson continued when he dominated Josh ‘The Punk’ Thomson in a unanimous-decision triumph. Ferguson had Thomson badly hurt and bloodied by a slew of elbows in Round 2. Thomson somehow absorbed the crushing shots and even landed some big strikes of his own in the final seconds of the stanza.
A big body kick hurt Thomson again midway through the third. ‘The Punk’ took punishment galore but fought like a warrior and landed a nice spinning back fist of his own in the third. But this night belonged to Ferguson, who won his sixth straight fight and improved to 9-1 in the UFC. His only loss came to Michael Johnson by decision.
It was Thomson’s third straight defeat, but two of those came by controversial split decisions.
Ferguson and Mir bagged 50K bonuses for Performance of the Night, while Alan Joubon and Matt Dwyer took home Fight of the Night. Joubon won by UD. Other winners on the main card included Holly Holm, Manny Gamburyan and Kevin Lee.
In other UFC news, Yahoo’s Kevin Iole reported Thursday that the UFC is honing in on AT&T Stadium in Arlington (Jerry World where the Cowgirls play) for the featherweight showdown between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo.
