7 Takeaways From UFC 213

Despite everything, the most anticipated fight of the weekend ended up in the main event slot at the last minute. Yoel Romero, always a crazy man, almost knocked out one of his corner men thumping his chest on the way to the Octagon. That was interesting.

And then the fight began. And what a fight it was. At the end of the first round, a Romero side kick landed to Whittaker's left knee. He told his corner that the knee was trashed. Romero's biggest mistake was that he didn't capitalise on his opponent's bad wheel.

Romero was clearly two rounds up, but Whittaker gutted it out, taking the last three as Romero tired. Whittaker utilised the front kick well to simultaneously keep Romero at distance, and work the body to deplete the Cuban's gas tank.

Perhaps the biggest story was that Whittaker was able to almost completely nullify Romero's wrestling. As an Olympic medalist in freestyle wrestling, Romero is no slouch in the grappling department, but Whittaker was able to stuff with whizzers, great sprawls and athleticism. An impressive all round performance from Bobby Knuckles.

Michael Bisping came into the cage and caused some histrionics to build up the upcoming title unification fight. But it couldn't take away from Oceania's first UFC champion as he racked up an eighth straight win to take the interim middleweight championship. While only the interim champion for now, it's hard to imagine him without gold any time soon.