Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 215 event in Las Vegas, four fighters were handed $50,000 ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards.
Among them was Kennedy Nzechukwu, who had seen his fight against Ion Cutelaba be elevated to main event status just hours beforehand after Derrick Lewis withdrew from the show due to illness.
Nzechukwu was actually coming off second-best in the first round as Cutelaba swarmed in with punches and then proceeded to get the fight to the mat on a couple of occasions.
However, early in the second round the fight swung firmly in Nzechukwu’s favor after he landed a perfectly timed knee to the head as Cutelaba was swooping in for a takedown attempt. Somehow he survived that blow, but soon after Nzechukwu landed another knee upstairs and then floored him with a series of big punches, with follow-up ground-and-pound sealing a TKO win.
Muslim Salikhov also secured a performance bonus after ‘The Kung Fu King’ unleashed his full array of spinning attacks against Andre Fialho, connecting with a spinning backfist, spinning kick to the body and a spinning wheel kick en-route to a second round TKO finish.
Also on the main card, Jack Della Madallena’s boxing looked very impressive against Danny Roberts as he unleashed powerful combinations of punches to the body and head in the opening round that sunk his opponent to the mat for a TKO victory.
And in the opening bout of the night, Natalie Silva took home a performance bonus after landing a spinning back kick to TKO Tereza Bleda in the final round of their fight.
