Watch: Tom Aspinall defends title, stops Curtis Blaydes just 60 seconds into rematch at UFC 304

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us tonight, July 27, 2024, for UFC 304, going down live from the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester, England.

Headlining the event is a welterweight title bout between defending champion Leon Edwards (22-3) and no. 2 ranked Belal Muhammad (23-3), a rematch of their 2021 encounter that resulted in a no contest.

Co-headlining the event is also a championship rematch, this one coming in the heavyweight division between interim UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall (15-3) and no. 4 ranked Curtis Blaydes (18-5).

Their first encounter went down two years and four days ago back in July of 2022, Blaydes winning the fight via injury TKO just 15 seconds in. Tonight Aspinall had the chance to avenge his only promotional defeat to date and make the first defense of his interim title doing so.

Continue reading to see how this heavyweight affair went down:

Official Result: Tom Aspinall def. Curtis Blaydes via TKO (punches) at 1:00 of round one

Just like he did in their first fight, Blaydes landed a good short combination early. Aspinall fired back before tying up with him momentarily, shortly after separating where he landed a thunderous right hand that dropped the challenger.

Aspinall absolutely swarmed Blaydes from there, unloading on a number of punches from top position that forced the referee to stop the action exactly one minute into the opening round.

Tom Aspinall just knocked Curtis Blaydes out in the first 60 seconds 🤯pic.twitter.com/OU1K02AKyK

— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) July 28, 2024

nish.

This is Tom Aspinall’s 15th professional MMA victory, and also his 15th finish.

Of those 15 finishes, 14 came in round one, including his 3-0 run since returning from injury with stoppages coming in 73 seconds, 69 seconds, and now 60 seconds; his one win that went past round one came just 69 seconds into round two.

Furthermore, our interim UFC heavyweight champion is now 8-1 inside the UFC octagon with a win over that lone defeat.

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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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