On Saturday, October 26th, UFC 308 took place in the Etihad arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The event featured Max Holloway, fighting Ilia Topuria as the main event of the evening. The preliminary rounds started roughly around 10:00 AM east coast, with the main card starting at 2:00 pm. There were three canceled fights on the preliminary card including Said Nurmagomedov vs Daniel Santos, Kennedy Nzechukwu Justin Tafa, and Rinat Fakhretdinov vs Nursulton Ruziboev. There was one canceled fight on the main card, heavyweights Ciryl Gane vs Alexander Volkov.
To kick off the prelims we saw welterweights Rinat Fakhretdinov vs Carlos Leal which ended in round three decision, the winner being Fakhreldinov. After that was middleweights Ismail Naurdiev vs Bruno Silva, which had Naurdiev for round three decision. The next fight was featherweights Farid Basharat vs Victor Hugo, which also ended in a decision, Basharat taking the win. The fighting after that between the heavyweights Kennedy Nzechukwu, and Chris Barnett, unfortunately Kennedy took the win with a Ko round one at 04:27, which I believe was faulty and only due to a leg injury that Chris Barnett had. The next round ended in a submission round three at 03:14, seeing Abus Magomedov take down Brunno Ferreira. Next fight ended in decision Mateusz Rębecki winning over Myktybek Orolbai. The next fight was KO/TKO with Geoff Neal knocking out Rafael dos Anjos. The brutal light heavyweight fight between Ibo Aslan and Raffael Cerqueira ended with a Ko/Tko having Aslan win the final fight of the prelims.
Then at 2:00 pm the main card began, my picks for the main card were Sharaputdin Magomedov by round two KO. Ige by decision; Ankalaev by decision; Whittaker by round four Ko.
Finally, I had Max Holloway by round four knockout. My prediction about Sharaputdin was correct as he did end up winning KO/TKO by the second round. Next I did think Ige was going to win, and in my opinion it was a very close fight. One time Dan Ige fought Diego Lopez on a four-hour notice, and it was still a very close fight; however, Ige ended up losing to Murphy by decision.
