Chapter 513: Five Title Defenses
Time flies by, and it's been a year and a half since she defeated Jon "The Bones" Jones to become the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion.
In the past year and a half, Xiang Hero has successfully defended his title five times, successively defeating "DC" Daniel Cormier, "Rui Shuai" Alexander Gustafson, "Death" Ryan Bader, Glover Teixeira and Volkan Osdemere five of the world's top ten fighters, becoming the UFC, the absolute dominant champion, the ace boxer, vaguely surpassing "Mouth Cannon" Conor McGregor, the momentum of becoming the biggest star in the UFC, and the appearance fee has also reached a staggering $3.5 million, second only to "Mouth Cannon". "of $4 million.
In those five title defenses, Xiang Hero's performance was dominant, with the exception of four rounds against Gustafson, the rest of the matches were fought within three rounds, and even two of them were fought in one round.
Xiang Hero's first title defense was against Daniel Cormier, who was ranked second in the world at the time. Cormier is 180cm tall and has an arm span of 184cm, and there is still a very big gap between him and Xiang Hero in terms of physical condition, but the captain of the American Kickboxing Academy training camp has very strong wrestling skills, and the lethality of his heavy punches is also very terrifying, and he also has the ability to resist hitting that is not inferior to Xiang Hero.
Because Cormier's team carefully studied the game of Xiang Hero and determined that Xiang Hero was a slow-heating player, in this game, Cormier took the initiative to launch an onslaught from the beginning of the game, wanting to take Xiang Hero by surprise and give him a heavy blow.
That's right, Xiang Yingying was indeed a little slow to heat up in the opening game, but he used his height and reach to hit his opponent many times. Cormier, on the other hand, responded with back-to-back low kicks, and the two were evenly matched on the court. However, Xiang then hit Cormier with a big hook and knocked him down, but Cormier held it up with his strong resistance and quickly got up to fight back when Xiang Hero pounced.
Cormier then used his wrestling skills to take Xiang down, but he couldn't suppress him, so Xiang stood up against the Circle Wall, pushed Cormier away with two high kicks, escaped the Circle Wall grappling, and the two ended the first round with a stand-up fight.
At the beginning of the second round, Xiang Hero and Cormier exchanged fierce kicks, and then wrestling master Cormier took advantage of Xiang Hero's attack gap and quickly dived and took the takedown. However, Xiang quickly dodged and wrapped his arms around Cormier's neck, but still let Cormier hold one leg.
However, the 1.80-meter-tall Cormier carried Xiang Ying up and fell directly to the ground with amazing strength, and in the process of suppressing the upper position, Cormier tried to implement the Kimura lock, but was never successful. However, Xiang Hero was also unable to turn the tables and was suppressed by Cormier until the end of the second round.
After the start of the third round, Cormier, who tasted the sweetness, still frequently used his wrestling skills, but the effect was mediocre, Xiang Hero made a targeted defense, although he still threw Xiang Hero down once, but he could not control it on the ground, and paid a heavy price.
Xiang Hero took advantage of the moment when Cormier dived and fell to raise his knee and hit Cormier's nose, although Cormier resisted hard at that time and successfully hugged Xiang Hero, but a wound of about one centimeter was knocked on the bridge of his nose, and blood was splashed.
Xiang Hero stood up and launched a furious attack, knocking Cormier to the ground, holding his head against the Circle Wall. When he finally escaped, he was hit in the head by a sudden high kick from Xiang Ying, causing a heavy blow.
However, the tough Cormier still didn't go down on the spot, and instead fled to the Circle Wall, but was caught up by Xiang Hero and hit the abdomen with a "step-by-step side kick" before being knocked out in a series of ground-and-pound punches.
The normal race time is 3 rounds and 3 minutes and 49 seconds. Xiang Hero successfully defended his title for the first time.
After the game, Cormier gave Xiang a hug and in the post-match interview, he said that he had been trying to achieve his goal of winning the championship, but it did not show up, and he did not perform well in this match.
Cormier pointed to Xiang's size as one of the main reasons for his loss. When the two were hugging, Xiang Yingying looked bigger. In particular, he regretted not being able to win the hero in the second round.
Although he imagined a lot of difficulties when he was preparing for training, what surprised him was Xiang Ying's huge size, and he couldn't suppress Xiang Ying at all when he was hugging, and he couldn't give full play to his potential at all.
Finally, Cormier also said that Xiang's attack power was too strong, especially the high kick and step-by-step kick at the end, when he felt like his head was going to be kicked and his internal organs were crushed. It's the most damage he's taken in his career, and he definitely doesn't want to take a kick, and no one in the light heavyweight division can handle Xiang Hero's leg sweep.
As for the trio of Ryan "The Grim Reaper" Bader, Glover Teixeira and Volkan Ötzdemir, Xiang won with relative ease.
In the match against Ryan "Grim Reaper" Bader, Xiang Hero completely dominated the game, and Xiang Hero that night was the real "Grim Reaper".
Ryan Bed, who is 38 years old, did not cause any trouble to Xiang Ying, although the gap between his height of 1.88 meters and his arm span of 1.92 meters is not too big, but there is a relatively large gap in attack power and standing skills.
After only holding on for more than 3 minutes in the first round, Ryan Bader collapsed under Xiang Yingying's unreasonable attack, and the entire offensive and defensive rhythm was completely chaotic, and he was soon hit in the head by Xiang Yingying's continuous combination punches, fell unconscious on the spot, and was sent directly to the hospital.
And in this match against Brazilian titan Glover Teixeira, who has a wild fighting style, Xiang Hero is even more famous.
Glover Teixeira, a large, not unusually fierce guy who usually only occasionally shows himself in front of the camera, was quickly disarmed under the onslaught of the hero's furious attacks.
Because the veteran chose to fight against Xiang Yingying in the opening game, he was ready to win by surprise, but when he felt wrong, he was still beaten by Xiang Yingxing on the Circle Wall, and when the referee stopped the game, the first round of the game was only 1 minute and 21 seconds.
After the fight, fans teased Glover Teixeira, saying that the "incomplete" area on the dude's head was even bigger.
As for the fight against Volkan-Ostmere, who went from an unknown to a strong contender for the division title in just seven months, Xiang was in full swing.
Before the fight, the guy who had clamored for a one-round knockout of Gustafson also spoke wildly, clamoring for two rounds to take out Xiang Hero. As a result, Xiang Yingying was very angry and abused him for three full rounds before ending the match when the opponent's coach decided to voluntarily abstain.