Following last night’s UFC On ESPN+ 1 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was the bout that fronted the prelims between Donald Cerrone and Alexander Hernandez.
This was exactly the kind of bout that the UFC and ESPN would both have wished to serve as the featured prelim on ESPN as lead-in to the main card on ESPN+, being a spirited toe-to-toe war in which Hernandez took the fight to ‘Cowboy’ early, but then Cerrone gradually started to turn the screw.
Some very well timed knees were a big weapon for Cerrone and in general he was landing the better strikes as the fight progressed, until he eventually sent Hernandez’s equilibrium haywire with a head kick and then ruthlessly despatched him with ground and pound for the TKO finish deep into the second round.
That showing was also enough to earn Cerrone a ‘Performance Of The Night’ into the bargain, and also helped him make history by now holding the record for the most bonuses in UFC history (16) ahead of Nate Diaz and Joe Lauzon.
Also earning a ‘Performance Of The Night’ award was Henry Cejudo, who brought the first UFC On ESPN+ card to a shocking conclusion when he successfully defended his flyweight title with a 32 second TKO victory over bantamweight kingpin TJ Dillashaw, catching him with a punch behind the ear that floored him and then repeatedly putting him down again with more blows as he tried to stand, leading to the referee waving off the fight.
