Australian veteran Robert Whittaker has earned a career-first victory at light heavyweight with a bone-crunching series of hits against Nikita Krylov at UFC 329.
Fighting for the first time in nearly a year, Whittaker took time to get into the fight as he came to grips with stepping up from a stellar middleweight career.
But he piled on the pressure and a combination late in the second round rocked Krylov, who called time in the third after copping a right-hand to the jaw.
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“Robert comes in with the hammer. Boom,” Joe Rogan said in commentary.
“He steps back and immediately recognises something’s very wrong with his jaw.”
Daniel Cormier put it simply: “That’s nasty.”
“(Krylov) immediately reacts here like my jaw is broken,” he said.
“You can see his neck. When your chin goes to the other side, it hits your shoulder, you’re in trouble, man. That is not good.”
Whittaker conceded he had “a lot of nerves” moving up to light heavyweight but, buoyed by the victory, said “this is my home now”.
“Bobby’s still got it by the looks of things,” he said.
“I trained for the entire camp with the idea my opponent’s going to be the boogeyman that every touch would kill me … I hit as hard as anybody else.”
Whittaker’s fight closed the preliminary card at UFC 329, headlined by Conor McGregor’s return after five years out.
