The latest UFC card was actually a lot better than one would expect from a Fight Night card and honestly, I probably wouldn't have went out of my way to watch it if the Korean Zombie hadn't been headlining against Brian Ortega. The Zombie is one of the only Asian men contenders in the UFC across the board and I always root for him (as I am sure Dana White does as well) because I kind of feel bad for how badly most Asians are defeated in the octagon.
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Zombie has a pretty great track record and his last loss was back in November of 2018. This was coming after his delayed compulsory military service that every male in South Korea must go through so a lot of allowances were made for him having lost that.
He doesn't fight very often for some reason but when he does fight it is almost always a very exciting affair because he has such a wide range of abilities and one of them is very important and is something that I don't think can actually be taught. He is just damn-near-impossible to KO and even his KO losses were because of stoppage on the referees part, not because he was actually out cold.
Ortega appears to have improved dramatically since his loss to Max Holloway in 2018 and the Zombie, who is known for his explosive power and resiliency in the ring looked as though it was all for naught when Ortega nearly finished him in the first round. Any normal fighter probably would have been KO'd but this kind of goes back to what I was saying before about the Korean having a chin that can't be matched by very many people.
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Zombie looked like he was going to win round 2 as he was landing some good shots after making adjustments from the very one-sided round 1 only to get floored again by a spinning elbow that allowed Ortega top time to steal the round on the scorecards.
It wouldn't get any better for the remaining 3 rounds as Ortega landed twice as many strikes as his opponent overall. Although I really wanted the Korean to win, it was pretty obvious whose arm was going to get raised during the post fight announcement.
So if you watched the fight you probably already knew all of this and even though I was pulling for the Zombie to win, Ortega looked really good and at number 2 ranking, I suppose it was expected that he was going to win this anyway. It will be nice to have a new person to focus on in the featherweight division as I grow tired of everyone always talking about Holloway and I don't think that Volkanovski is a very dominant champion and will lose very soon, perhaps to Ortega and the obvious thing to do next would be to have Ortega have a rematch against Holloway.
I think that the UFC and Dana White were secretly hoping that Zombie would win this one and it is purely for marketing reasons. The Korean audience is unlikely to remain interested in a sport when they don't have a horse in the game and Chan Sung Jung (Zombie) is a hero of sorts over there. Korea is a relatively affluent country and the population is willing to spend a ton of money on things like UFC events but probably a lot less likely if they don't have any real contenders in the sport. There are only 10 Korean fighters in the UFC at all and the Zombie is the only one that really has any sort of chance as a headliner.
I feel as though the other 9 fighters are kept around simply so there can be events in South Korea and if there is no headliner (IE if Zombie retires) I think we will quickly see the other 9 get released.
There is another hope in Da Un Jung who will fight on the 24th of this month. The 6 foot 3 (very rare for a Korean to be this big) fighter is 2-0 in the UFC and hasn't had a loss since 2015. Perhaps he could be the next coming for Korean fans. He hasn't been tested a great deal and a win against Sam Alvey could propel him to the main card in the future. A loss, especially a bad one, could relegate him to the sidelines forever.