A homecoming that announced a heavyweight contender
When the UFC finally brought its travelling circus back to The O2 Arena on 19 March 2022, it had been three long years since the promotion last set foot in London. The gap, stretched out by the pandemic and by scheduling logistics that had scattered UFC's European calendar across Paris, Vegas and beyond, meant that British fight fans arrived at Greenwich Peninsula with a backlog of pent-up noise to release. They got their money's worth. UFC Fight Night: Volkov vs. Aspinall has since been talked about by MMA media as one of the finest cards of its entire year, a night in which finish after finish rained down and the London crowd barely had time to sit back in their seats. By the final horn, the card had produced a promotion-record haul of nine post-fight bonuses awarded for finishes — an extraordinary strike rate for a single event, and a big part of why this particular Fight Night lives on in UFC London folklore.
But if one moment defines the evening, it is the sight of a 28-year-old Mancunian heavyweight named Tom Aspinall folding the highly ranked Alexander Volkov into a straight armbar and forcing the tap inside the first round. It was the kind of statement win that reshapes a career overnight. Volkov was no journeyman; he was a durable, dangerous contender who had shared the cage with the division's elite. For Aspinall to dispatch him so quickly, so cleanly, and in front of his own countrymen, turned a promising prospect into a bona fide heavyweight title threat in the space of three minutes and forty-five seconds. It is a result that reads differently with hindsight — Aspinall would go on to become UFC heavyweight champion years later — but even on the night itself, nobody inside The O2 needed hindsight to understand what they had just watched.
Results in full: main card and British interest
The March 2022 card was built around two firmly complementary storylines: a heavyweight up-and-comer looking to force his way into the title picture, and a stacked cluster of British prospects and veterans looking to make their mark in front of a home crowd that had waited years for another UFC night out. Both storylines delivered. In the co-main event, Milton Keynes featherweight Arnold Allen extended his unbeaten UFC run at the time with a brutal first-round TKO of the dangerous Dan Hooker, stopping him with punches and elbows inside two and a half minutes. It was, at the time, viewed as arguably the finest win of Allen's career, a statement against a name who had fought at the top end of two divisions.
Below the main event and co-main, the card was a showcase for exactly the kind of home-grown talent that has made UFC London such a reliable box-office draw. Liverpool's Paddy Pimblett, already a cult favourite thanks to his outspoken personality and grassroots fanbase, submitted Kazula Vargas with a first-round rear-naked choke in what was one of his earliest appearances on a UFC London card. Molly McCann, another Liverpudlian and by then already an O2 fan favourite, produced one of the most replayed knockouts of the entire year when she finished Luana Carolina with a spinning back elbow in the third round — a highlight-reel finish that circulated across combat sports media for weeks afterwards. Welsh bantamweight Jack Shore rounded out the notable British results with a clean unanimous decision win over Timur Valiev, scored 29-28, 29-28 and 29-27 across the judges' cards.
The table below summarises the verified results from the night.
| Bout | Result | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Tom Aspinall vs. Alexander Volkov (Heavyweight, Main Event) | Aspinall wins | Submission (straight armbar), round 1, 3:45 |
| Arnold Allen vs. Dan Hooker (Featherweight, Co-Main) | Allen wins | TKO (punches and elbows), round 1, 2:33 |
| Paddy Pimblett vs. Kazula Vargas | Pimblett wins | Submission (rear-naked choke), round 1 |
| Molly McCann vs. Luana Carolina | McCann wins | KO (spinning back elbow), round 3 |
| Jack Shore vs. Timur Valiev | Shore wins | Unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-27) |
Taken together, that is five marquee British and headline results, four of them finishes, on a single card — a hit rate that goes a long way to explaining why this event is still cited as one of the best of 2022. For a deeper look at the careers of the fighters above, our British fighters hub tracks how each of these names has developed since this night at The O2.
Tom Aspinall's rise, and the road that followed
It is worth dwelling on what this win meant in the broader arc of Tom Aspinall's career, because few fighters have had a more eventful relationship with The O2 Arena. The Manchester-born heavyweight would go on to headline the same venue on three separate occasions. Having announced himself against Volkov in March 2022, he returned to The O2 that July to headline against Curtis Blaydes — only for the fight to end in agonising fashion just fifteen seconds in, when Aspinall suffered a serious knee injury and the bout was ruled a TKO due to injury. It was a cruel turn for a fighter who had looked destined for a rapid rise. Aspinall's response was to come back to the same arena a year later and dismantle Marcin Tybura in barely a minute, a performance that served notice he had lost none of his power or precision during his lengthy rehabilitation. He would go on to become the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion in June 2025, before later vacating the title due to a lingering eye injury. The Volkov win at this event was, in many ways, the opening chapter of that entire story — the night London first got a proper look at a heavyweight who would go all the way to the top of the division.
Arnold Allen's trajectory has been steadier but no less impressive. The Milton Keynes featherweight's win over Hooker on this card kept an unbeaten UFC run intact and cemented his status as a fighter to watch in a stacked 145lb division; he has remained a top-ten featherweight contender in the years since. Jack Shore, for his part, made this the first of two winning appearances at The O2 — he would return a year later at UFC 286 to submit Makwan Amirkhani, though his more recent UFC form has been more mixed. Paddy Pimblett and Molly McCann, meanwhile, both became two of the most recognisable British names in the entire promotion off the back of nights like this one. Pimblett would go on to challenge for interim lightweight gold, while McCann's career, after further big moments at The O2 in subsequent years, eventually reached its conclusion with a retirement announcement inside the very arena that made her a star. None of these stories, in other words, ended on 19 March 2022 — they began, or accelerated, there.
The O2 Arena: London's fight-night cathedral
Part of what makes nights like Volkov vs. Aspinall resonate the way they do is the venue itself. The O2 Arena, on the Greenwich Peninsula in south-east London, opened in 2007 inside the shell of the old Millennium Dome and has since become one of the busiest and most recognisable indoor arenas in the world. Its bowl configuration, capable of holding well over 17,000 spectators for combat sports events, creates an atmosphere that fighters and broadcasters alike routinely single out as among the loudest and most electric on the entire UFC calendar. The acoustics of the dome structure seem to trap and amplify crowd noise in a way that smaller or more conventional arenas simply cannot replicate, and British fans have a well-earned reputation for making the most of it — the reaction to McCann's spinning elbow finish on this card, and to Aspinall's armbar in the main event, are frequently cited examples of just how deafening The O2 can get.
The venue's location also matters. Easily reached via the Jubilee line and North Greenwich station, and surrounded by bars, restaurants and hotels that have grown up around it over the better part of two decades, The O2 offers fight fans a self-contained night out that few other UK venues can match. Doors typically open well ahead of the prelims, giving fans time to soak up the atmosphere on the concourse, grab food and merchandise, and settle in before the walkouts begin. It is a large part of why the UFC has kept returning to the same building for edition after edition of what is now commonly known simply as "UFC London," rather than rotating between different British cities the way some other international markets do. Consistency of venue has its own benefits too: fighters know the walkout distances, broadcasters know the lighting rigs, and fans know exactly what kind of night to expect when a card is confirmed for The O2. If you're planning a trip to a future card, our tickets and prices guide covers what to expect in terms of seating tiers, typical costs and how early to book.
Where heavyweight and featherweight stood in 2022
To appreciate why the Volkov fight mattered so much, it helps to understand the shape of the heavyweight division around this period. UFC heavyweight has always been the promotion's smallest and most top-heavy roster, populated by a relatively short list of fighters capable of competing at the very top, many of whom carry genuine one-punch or one-submission finishing ability regardless of where a fight stands. That combination of thin depth and outsized danger means a single impressive win can vault a fighter into title contention far more quickly than in the deeper divisions below championship weight. Aspinall's dismantling of a ranked contender like Volkov landed at exactly the moment observers were searching for the next credible challenger to the reigning champions, and it is precisely why the win was treated as such a significant marker rather than just another entertaining finish.
Featherweight, by contrast, has long been one of the UFC's deepest and most competitive 145lb battlegrounds, packed with well-rounded strikers and grapplers capable of beating anyone on a given night. A statement win in that division — of the kind Arnold Allen produced against Dan Hooker on this card — carries weight precisely because there is so little margin for error against contenders who arrive from lightweight or move up within the featherweight ranks themselves. Both divisions, in their own way, illustrate why this particular Fight Night card produced results that still get discussed years later: two fighters delivering exactly the kind of statement performances their respective divisions demand.
How this card fits into UFC London's history
UFC Fight Night: Volkov vs. Aspinall sits at something of a hinge point in the modern history of UFC events at The O2. It marked the promotion's return after the 2019–2022 gap, and it kicked off a run of London cards that would go on to include UFC 286 (Leon Edwards's trilogy win over Kamaru Usman in March 2023), Aspinall's comeback win over Tybura that same July, the record-breaking gate of Edwards vs. Brady in March 2025, and Lerone Murphy's title-eliminator headline slot against Movsar Evloev in March 2026. Viewed against that backdrop, this event was the spark that reignited the modern era of UFC London — the card that reminded the promotion, and its British fanbase, just how much appetite there was for a return to The O2 on a regular basis. For the full run of editions before and since, our UFC London history page traces the complete sequence from the venue's earliest UFC visits through to the present day.
How UFC Fight Night cards are structured
For newer fans, it's worth explaining how an event like this one is put together. A standard UFC Fight Night card is split into two broadcast segments. The prelims — typically four to six bouts featuring newer signees, up-and-coming prospects and fighters looking to build momentum — are shown first, usually via streaming or a preliminary broadcast slot, and often set the tone for the night. The main card follows, usually comprising five bouts broadcast to a wider television and streaming audience, building in stakes and profile up to the co-main event and, finally, the headline bout. On a card like Volkov vs. Aspinall, that structure meant fans got an early look at rising British names on the prelims before the two featured contests — Allen vs. Hooker and Aspinall vs. Volkov — closed out the night. It's a format the UFC has used consistently across its Fight Night series, whether the event is held in Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi or, as here, London.
How to rewatch it
For fans who want to relive the card, or who missed it first time around, the full event — prelims and main card alike — is available to stream on UFC Fight Pass, the promotion's dedicated subscription service, which maintains a library of past events including full UFC London cards going back years. It remains the most straightforward way to watch Aspinall's armbar finish of Volkov, Allen's stoppage of Hooker, and McCann's spinning-elbow knockout in full, alongside the rest of the night's prelim and main card action. Highlight packages of the biggest finishes from the card, including the Aspinall and McCann finishes specifically, have also circulated widely across UFC's own social channels in the years since, for anyone after a shorter recap rather than the complete broadcast.
Frequently asked questions
When and where was UFC Fight Night: Volkov vs. Aspinall held?
The event took place on Saturday 19 March 2022 at The O2 Arena in London, in front of a sold-out crowd of 17,081.
Who won the main event?
Tom Aspinall defeated Alexander Volkov by submission (straight armbar) in round one, at 3:45, in a heavyweight bout.
Who won the co-main event?
Arnold Allen defeated Dan Hooker by TKO (punches and elbows) in round one, at 2:33, in a featherweight bout.
Which British fighters won on the card?
Tom Aspinall, Arnold Allen, Paddy Pimblett, Molly McCann and Jack Shore all recorded wins on this card, four of them by finish.
Why is this card considered one of the best of 2022?
A record nine post-fight bonuses were awarded across the event for finishes, giving the card an unusually high concentration of stoppage wins from top to bottom — a rate MMA media widely rated among the best of any card that year.
How can I watch it now?
The complete event, including prelims and main card, is available to stream through UFC Fight Pass.
Looking ahead to UFC London 2027
Nights like Volkov vs. Aspinall are exactly why UFC London remains one of the hottest tickets on the entire European combat sports calendar — a venue and a crowd capable of turning a Fight Night card into a career-defining moment for the fighters involved. With The O2 having hosted the promotion on a near-annual basis since this event reignited the tradition in 2022, British fans are already looking ahead to the next instalment. Sign up for alerts on this site to be the first to know when UFC London 2027 is officially announced, including venue confirmation, ticket on-sale dates and the full fight card as it comes together.