Ufc Paris, Vettori beaten by Whittaker. Di Chirico ko

The ville lumiere dazzles Marvin Vettori. In the first Ufc fight in Paris, the Italian fighter could have definitively shone in the firmament of Mixed Martial Arts, beating one of the strongest in the world and earning another title chance for the middleweight belt. Instead he sees the stars, clearly beaten by an opponent who was unable to attack or read. And yes, he knew it, the Italian fighter: “Whittaker is like a snake, he stays there, he doesn’t expose himself, he looks for the right hole, if you let him do it it’s dangerous”. Words that imply respect, much more than the one fielded in the weighting ceremony in which he did not give him his hand: those are mind games, the cage is something else. And the cage said Whittaker had little difficulty winning.

the meeting

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Let’s clarify: it is not that Vettori has studied, done or given little. However, dealing with a Whittaker like this is difficult: Zen calm, concentration, reading of spaces and situations, technical mastery. The Australian played with Vettori: after a very balanced first round he saw that he was able to control the Italian’s game quite well and started to beat. Not with a lot of volume, but heavy blows, those kicks that hurt, that gave him the nickname “the reaper” – the reaper – and that would have brought down other fighters. The Italian is good at cashing, but to win you have to hit and Marvin was unable to solve the Rubik’s cube of an opponent who did not offer him solutions. He was unable to touch him with his jabs, he was unable to take him to the wall or to the ground – a solution that on other occasions had been his wildcard – he was not able to scratch his Olympic calm as he had tried to do with the lack of handshake of the day before. Indeed, in the third round it is almost finalized. The road to the dream of Vettori’s title starts uphill: he has known worse ones, Marvin, and they have always pushed him to reach higher. The night in Paris also said badly to Alessio Di Chirico, who was knocked down against the Russian Kopylov in the third round. He had arrived there with little energy, he had spent a lot of them in a strong second round in which he had hit the other hard but never tried to close the match. And in this the MMAs are ruthless: if you are a hammer, beat, otherwise you can become an anvil at any moment. It happened, in fact, to Manzo, caught off guard by the Russian: first he worked him with a series of kicks to the body, then with a one-two to his face he pushed him against the cage and made him collapse. First victory for Kopylov, Di Chirico is in his second consecutive defeat: he will have to find the way to get up.

main card

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Feather: Wood (Ing) beats Joubain (Can) by unanimous decision; Feather: Gomis (Fra) beats Errens (Ola) by unanimous decision; Medium: Kopylov (Rus) beats Di Chirico (Ita) by knockout at the 3rd; Medi: Imavov (Fra) beats Buckley (USA) by unanimous decision. Medi: Whittaker (Aus) beats Vettori (Ita) by unanimous decision.

preliminary card

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Feather women: Egger (Svi) beats Perez (Arg) by submission (neck grip, 2nd round); Rooster: Quinonez (Mes) defeats Taha (Tun) by ko at 1st; Lightweight: St Denis (Fra) beats Miranda (Bra) by knockout at 2nd; Lightweight: Ziam (Fra) beats Figlak (Pol) by unanimous decision; Lightweight: Haqparast (Ger) defeats Madkessi (Can) by unanimous decision; Medium: Magomedov (Ger) beat Stoltzfus (USA) per ko al 1°.