UFC 221 Bonus Awards

Jake Matthews

Following last night’s UFC 221 event in Perth, Australia the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.

Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was a main card match-up between Jake Matthews and Li Jingliang, which went the distance.

It’s somewhat interesting the Jingliang lands a bonus given that he appeared to illegally gouge Matthews eye that enabled him to escape a very tight guillotine choke during the fight.

Aside from that it was a good performance from Matthews, who looked as good as we’ve seen him in the Octagon as he got the better of Jingliang in most aspects of the game, particularly with his grappling, to emerge with a unanimous decision victory.

Jussier Formiga earned one of two ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards thanks to a convincing win over Ben Nguyen.

It was on the mat that Formiga was really able to display his dominance, though the end of the fight began with him landing a spinning backfist that dropped Nguyen, followed up by taking his back and finishing him by rear-naked choke.

Also taking home a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus was Israel Adesanya, who was able to shrug aside Rob Wilkinson’s repeated takedown attempts and then made him pay with heavy-hitting strikes, and as his knees from the clinch in particular began to take their toll it was only a matter of time before his opponent crumbled and he emerged with a TKO victory.

Ross Cole
Ross launched MMA Insight (previously FightOfTheNight.com) in 2009 as a way to channel his passion for the sport of mixed martial arts. He's since penned countless news stories and live fight reports along with dozens of feature articles as the lead writer for the site, reaching millions of fans in the process.