Following last night’s UFC On ESPN 46 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was an action-packed three-round battle between Alex Caceres and Daniel Pineda.
This one was fought at a very high pace from the start as the action flowed from striking to the mat and back again. Caceres had a knack for ending up on top when they’d go to the ground, but got caught in a deep armbar attempt at one point that he did well to scramble out of.
Early in the second round Pineda started to look like the frenetic pace was getting to him, yet somehow he managed to fight through that and control the action on top for a significant period.
Then Caceres started the third round with a big body kick that hurt Pineda. That was Caceres cue to focus even more attention on going to the mid-section in the minutes that followed with big punches and kicks, but while Pineda would visibly struggle with several of those, he showed incredible toughness to keep going regardless and even dropped Caceres in the dying second of the round. It wasn’t enough to swing the fight in his favor though, with Caceres emerging with a hard-earned unanimous decision victory (29-28 x3).
Meanwhile, Jim Miller earned a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus after he took just 23 seconds to dismantle short-notice replacement Jesse Butler, knocking out the debuting fighter with a thunderous left hook that was followed by a big uppercut as he was crumpling to the canvas unconscious.
Also earning a performance bonus was another short-notice fighter Muhammad Naimov, who caught Jamie Mullarkey clean with a big right hand as his opponent was pressing forward midway through the second round to secure a big TKO win in his UFC debut.
