Following last night’s UFC On ESPN 67 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
The UFC opted to hand out four ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards on this occasion, and main event winner Cory Sandhagen scooped up one of them after his 2nd round TKO finish against Deiveson Figueiredo.
While a striking battle may have been anticipated, large portions of this fight were fought on the mat, with Figueiredo surprisingly eager to go for leg lock attempts, but it wasn’t working out for him as Sandhagen was able to defend against it while dropping down hard ground-and-pound. And things went from bad to worse for the former flyweight champ in the second round when Sandhagen turned the tables on him by going for his own leg lock. With their legs increasingly tangled, when Sandhagen looked to get on top to deliver strikes Figueiredo winced in pain due to his knee being twisted, forcing him to concede, resulting in a TKO loss.
Co-main event winner Reiner de Ridder also earned a performance bonus after he snapped Bo Nickal’s unbeaten record after getting the better of him on the feet.
RDR is generally better known for his grappling prowess than his striking, but he made an exception in this case, particularly in the second round as he began to trouble the wrestling ace with big knees to the midsection. Nickal tried his best to fight back, but another big step-in knee to the body crumpled him to the canvas to hand de Ridder a headline-grabbing TKO finish.
Azamat Bekoev made short work of TUF winner Ryan Loder in the prelims to earn his bonus, delivering a TKO finish less than three minutes into the fight.
Queng Le also landed on the performance bonus list for a fast finish after he submitted Gaston Bolanos with a rear-naked choke at the 1.54min mark of the opening round.
