UFC Fight Pass events usually don’t get much love from the fans, but UFC Fight Night 69 was different as it was the first Fight Pass event to feature a title fight, with UFC women’s strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk defending her title against Jessica Penne in the main event. The “Double J” fight was clearly the main draw on the card, and while the fight lived up to the hype, it was the other fights on the card that had less hype that delivered as well, making the event overall very fun to watch. The prelims were, for the most part, very good. Taylor Lapilus kicked things off with an impressive second-round TKO over Ulka Sasaki, and the finishes kept coming from there. In the next fight, Magomed Mustafaev TKOed Piotr Hallmann in the second round after the doctor stopped the fight due to a cut. Then it was Scott Askham knocking out Antonio dos Santos Jr. in brutal fashion. The next fight was a fun one between Noad Lahat and Niklas Backstrom — even though there was no finish, it was still a pretty exciting fight. That was followed up by a “Performance of the Night”-winning outing by Arnold Allen, who subbed out Alan Omer in the third round after losing the first two. Then it was Mairbeck Taisumov knocking out Alan Patrick in the second and Makwan Amirkhani earning a first-round tapout of Masio Fullen to end the prelims. Overall, even though there weren’t any big names on the prelims it was still one of the most exciting preliminary cards in a while. The main card, though, wasn’t as good as the prelims. The opening bout between Nick Hein and Lukasz Sajewski was quite boring and terrible. Peter Sobotta earned a tapout win over Steve Kennedy in the next fight, but it wasn’t a competitive fight and there really wasn’t any intrigue at all to it whatsoever. The co-main event between Tatsuya Kawajiri and Dennis Siver was pretty good, but nothing special. Thankfully, the main event between Jedrzejczyk and Penne was pretty good, although to be fair it was a pretty one-sided beatdown. Still, it was solid, and a night way to cap off an afternoon of good MMA action. I’d give the card a 8/10 rating overall. There were a number of finishes and for a card that had very little expectations heading into it, it turned out to be a lot of fun for a Fight Pas card. There was only one true stinker on the entire card (Hein/Sajewski) and many of the fights fans were writing off turned out to be much better than expected. It would have been nice to have seen a more competitive main event, but after such a solid undercard that might have been too much to ask for. Still, it was a very good card overall, and hopefully the UFC goes back to Germany sometime next year.
