Marwan Rahiki didn’t get the knockout he wanted but he did earn a stoppage victory after breaking Harry Hardwick’s jaw at UFC Vegas 114 on Saturday.
The end came between the second and third rounds after Hardwick returned to his corner and told his coaches “my jaw’s f*cked … my jaw’s broken.” That was enough for his coaches to stop the fight after a valiant effort from Hardwick while Rahiki remains undefeated in his career and scoring a victory in his octagon debut.
“This is what I’ve been training for,” Rahiki said after the win. “I was coming to win no matter what. I still got the job done, broke his jaw. I wanted to get a quick knockout and get out of here but another lesson I learned, he made it hard for me, made me fight myself. I had to dig deep and another finish. I want to get back here as soon as possible.”
Prior to the stoppage, Rahiki was pouring on the punishment, scoring several hard punches that likely would have put away most featherweights but Hardwick somehow kept finding a way to survive.
Again and again, Rahiki would connect with a staggering blow and Hardwick would backup, clearly wobbled from the shot landed. Rahiki inevitably opened up with a huge flurry of shots but then somehow Hardwick would absorb the damage before swinging back with everything in his arsenal.
While Rahiki was clearly winning the majority of the exchanges, Hardwick was doing just enough to stay in the fight and his strikes often landed clean enough to back his opponent off from unleashing another offensive onslaught.
But somewhere during that second round, Rahiki blasted Hardwick with a punch stiff enough that it broke his jaw and that ultimately ended the fight.
It’s not clear yet if these two might be celebrating with a Fight of the Night performance bonus but they definitely deserve it after a truly entertaining affair until it was over.
