Many fighters will have fond memories of UFC 300. Don’t be surprised if Jalin Turner isn’t one of those fighters.
Turner lost via second-round TKO to Renato Moicano, which is respectable in a vacuum. Moicano is one of the top lightweights in MMA. He brought a two-fight win streak into Saturday’s early prelim feature fight at UFC 300.
That said, Turner hurt Moicano twice in the first round but couldn’t take advantage of his seemingly superior striking. Most notably, Turner knocked Moicano about as close to out as one can get without sealing the deal in the final 20 seconds of the first frame.
A straight left hand from Turner sent Moicano reeling to the canvas, flat on his back. Traditionally, fighters who put an opponent in this predicament will pounce on their fallen foe to finish the deal with ground and pound until the referee, who in this case was veteran official Herb Dean, stops the fight.
Turner was not a traditionalist on Saturday night.
The 28-year-old Californian chose to treat the knockdown as a walk-off shot, even though Dean never called off the fight. Turner briefly complained to Dean that the fight should have been stopped.
The contest proved to be in vain. Immediately, it seemed this might be one of those instances when a fighter deeply regrets not finishing an opponent while they had the chance.
Spinning Backfist captured Turner’s misstep.
Bad omen realized.
In the following round, Moicano took Turner down and controlled him for well over a minute before landing a huge elbow that led to the finish. Unlike Turner, Moicano did not stop the onslaught until Dean ended the fight.
In over 30 years of covering MMA, I cannot recall seeing a fighter take a loss–especially on a grand stage–that is promised to sting as much as this one probably will for Turner.
If you’re unfamiliar with Conner Burks, the producer of the MMA Show, you should probably consider following him on social media. He has established himself as one of the elite meme makers in combat sports.
He dropped these two gems to entertainingly capture Turner’s predicament during and after his embarrassing moment.
What makes this even worse is that Turner also had a chance to finish Moicano in the first 30 seconds of the fight. This wasn’t lost on MMA Writer Degenerate George as he posted this on X.
In case anyone is wondering what Turner should have done when he hurt Moicano at the end of the first round, Homelander MMA dropped this visual aid, which shows Sean O’Malley finishing Thomas Almeida at UFC 260.
Turner’s loss dropped him to 14-8 as a professional MMA fighter and derailed the momentum he was trying to establish after a KO win over Bobby Green in his last fight.
Moicano improved to 19-5-1. He is on a roll, with three straight wins and a string of memorable post-fight interviews after each victory. He has taken on the moniker ‘Money’ Moicano and the mantra, “I cannot afford to lose.”
Turner has not adopted the same creed.
