Julija Stoliarenko upsets Molly McCann with early armbar finish in UFC London co-main event

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to us today, July 22, 2023, for our second UFC London event of the year.

Going down live from the o2 Arena in London, England, UFC London is to be headlined by a pair of heavyweight contenders in no. 5 ranked Tom Aspinall (12-3) and no. 10 ranked Marcin Tybura (24-7).

Our co-main event of the evening came at 125 lbs between former Cage Warriors flyweight champion Molly McCann (13-6) and former Invicta FC bantamweight champion Julija Stoliaranko (11-7-2).

McCann came into the bout having gone 3-1 over her latest four appearances, while Stoliarenko had gone 1-4 since joining the UFC roster in 2020. McCann’s last two victories both came via knockout stemming from spinning back elbows, while Stoliarenko boasts a 3-0 lethwei record and also has nine submission victories to her credit.

Continue reading to see how this flyweight co-main event went down:

Official Result: Julija Stoliarenko def. Molly McCann via submission (armbar) at 1:55 of round one

McCann begins the bout with heavy-handed combinations, as she usually does, but is having trouble getting inside the range of Stoliarenko, who is clearly the much bigger party of the two.

Stoliarenko takes McCann down about one minute into the fight and quickly secures mount. She falls to her side not long thereafter, throwing her leg over the face of McCann as she does. From here it was only a matter of seconds before the perfectly performed armbar was at full extension and McCann was forced to tap.

Julija Stoliarenko with an absolute beautiful back take and finishes Molly McCann via Armbar in the 1st #UFCLondon https://t.co/SW0rJvVBK2

— The Octagon Obsessed (@octagonobsessed) July 22, 2023

Julija Stoliarenko upsets the homecoming for Liverpool native Molly McCann today at UFC London. Of her 11 professional wins, this was her 10th career finish, all 10 of them coming via armbar. That’s just incredible.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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