Robbie Lawler edges Carlos Condit to retain UFC title

Regardless of whether Condit should or shouldn’t have won the fight, Lawler proved why he’s a UFC champion when he went through a hellacious five-round battle and provided the world with another historic title fight.

Robbie Lawler managed to walk out of the 16,800-seater MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with the welterweight championship belt around his waist with a razor-thin decision victory over Carlos Condit in the headliner of the UFC 195 pay-per-view event on Sunday, January 3 (Manila time). Two judges scored the session for Lawler, while just one awarded it to Condit.

The scorecards were read, and two judges gave the fight to Robbie Lawler, making him the first American in a decade to successfully defend the Welterweight title two consecutive times.

“Here’s the thing, those fights…my game plan is always to go in there and dominate”, Lawler said earlier this month at UFC 194. “There were two winners tonight”. “Let’s do it again”, Lawler said after.

The fight is not expected to last the distance owing to the knockout percentages of both fighters, with Lawler able to score stoppages in 20 of his 26 wins while Condit was able to crush 28 of his 30 victims.

Condit has been a stalwart at the top of the welterweight rankings for several years and even had a reign as interim champion so facing the best fighters in the division isn’t anything new to “The Natural Born Killer”.

Lorenz Larkin destroyed Albert Tumenov’s lead left leg and probably did enough to win a split decision, but Tumenov’s volume and power earned him the win.

“I was a little oxygen deprived”, Condit said.

Whomever Lawler faces in his next title defense, expectations will be sky high.

Lawler returned the favor in the second round, tagging Condit with a knockdown punch of his own to badly stun the challenger midway through the round.

And Condit, whose massive edge in strike output to that point – he’d landed 114 significant blows to the champ’s 39 – might very well have prompted him to play it safe, he didn’t. [Then] I got caught up against the cage.

Lawler’s matchup with Condit only underlined his reputation as a tenacious veteran willing to do anything to preserve the title that he finally won 12 years after his first UFC fight. Welterweight champion Robbie Lawler and number one contender Carlos Condit absolutely stole the show, with both men displaying what it takes to be a champion.

Lawler had to be wondering how Condit managed to withstand that storm.

The only thing bad about the main event Saturday is that it wasn’t 15 rounds. Amazingly, though, he survived.

The crowd, which was on its feet in a full-throated roar for most of the final two minutes, left having seen one of the best fights they could possibly have hoped to see.

In the final round and the title belt on the line, Lawler and Condit went all out and treated fight fans to a finale to remember.