It had always been a dream for Ricky Simón to fight UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber, so when the opportunity arose for that dream to become a reality, the 26-year-old bantamweight made sure he’d be the one to welcome “The California Kid” back into the octagon. In fact, Simón was so excited to take on this fight that he happily postponed his honeymoon so that nothing would get in the way of preparing for the bout of his life.


Per MMA Junkie:

Simon, who was planning on returning in August, was heading to his honeymoon with his fiancee before he got the call to face Faber. He jumped at the opportunity right away, and thankfully his fiancee completely understood the importance of this fight. “She believes in me a lot, so she knows I’m going to go in there and put an awesome performance against a Hall of Famer,” Simon said. “And then we set our honeymoon for the following Monday, so we’re going to have an even better one afterwards.”﻿




This wasn’t only just a case of a young fighter wanting to take on an MMA veteran that he had revered for a lot of his life. Up until recently, Simón’s dream fight seemed impossible as Faber announced his retirement from the sport in 2016. But the 40-year-old decided that he wanted to keep going with his career, and set his comeback for this bantamweight co-headliner.

So how did this all work out for Simón? Short answer: not well.

Simon ultimately paid the price for being a bit too aggressive as it gave an opening for Faber to make quick work of him in a match that could have very well gone the younger fighter’s way had it progressed a b it longer. The subsequent barrage of blows that followed Faber’s powerful right hand was all Mike Beltran needed to see to call this match under a minute.

There were no post-fight antics between Faber and Simón after the fact as both fighters showed respect to one another on Twitter.