At the age of 24, Yair Rodriguez fought two former champions back-to-back.
The featherweight hunter from Chihuahua, Mexico arrived earlier than most of the UFC and earned a contract at 22 from 'The Ultimate Fighter: Latin -America' season 1. By the time he was 23, Rodriguez was already at the head of his own events.
Yair Rodriguez improved to 5-0 in the UFC and to #10 in the world with a main event victory over Alex Caceres.
The following year, Rodriguez would be matched against UFC Hall-of-Famer, former UFC Lightweight Champion BJ Penn on January 15, 2017. It was Penn's return fight after almost three years away.
Penn was retired in 2014 after a TKO loss for Frankie Edgar. Penn, however, was on his career, this time at featherweight.
Penn entered the Rodriguez those three consecutive losses came from Nick Diaz, Rory Macdonald and Edgar, who has not won since 2010.
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Yair Rodriguez Bj Penn in one of the skewed UFC fights of all time
14 years younger (and a considerable gambling favorite), Rodriguez had a significant speed benefit in his fight with BJ Penn. It was not long before Penn was caught by the stairs of Rodriguez and many of them.
The Taekwondo hunter fluctuated Penn with a headkick two minutes after their fight, things that only get worse for Penn from there.
Rodriguez effectively mixed in stairs to the body, head and legs, chipping the lightweight legend. A striking clinic from the Mexican and not much retribution of the 38-year-old Penn.
Round 2 would be everything she wrote with Rodriguez who started quickly, land a beautiful front -staircase on the face and a right prick to follow it up. Penn went downstairs, but he was surprisingly not out.
Rodriguez swung ground and pound attacks and knocked on Penn's head like a drum. The grounded penn continued to move and grinned in pain while trying to survive.
Rodriguez flowed on three dozen or so strikes before the referee finally stopped the match.
Rodriguez Penn 55 to 4 had beaten in important slabs.
Yair Rodriguez earned a shot at Frankie Edgar with performance
The victory of the most important event brought the UFC record from Yair Rodriguez to 6-0 and earned the competition on someone higher up-that Frankie Edgar, another former UFC light weight champion and a former rival of BJ Penn's.
Unfortunately for the 24-year-old, the stylistic matchup was too fast, because Edgar used his wrestling to close the flashy striker for a Doctor's Stop TKO at UFC 211.
It was a huge learning experience for Rodriguez, who eventually won to win interim gold in 2023.
Outside his last fight against Brian Ortega, Yair Rodriguez has only lost to former champions in the UFC, such as Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway.
Currently ranked #5 in the world, Rodriguez defends his ranking against former two-division Bellator champion Patricio Pitbull on UFC 314, and welcomes him in the Octagon.
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