Following last night’s Noche UFC 3 event in San Antonio, Texas, the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.

‘Fight Of The Night’ honors went to a banger of a main event between Diego Lopes and Jean Silva that provided plenty of thrills and spills for as long as it lasted.

The first round undoubtedly belonged to Lopes who was able to capitalize on a spinning body kick from Silva to take his opponent down, where he proceeded to take full mount and then bloody him up with nasty elbow strikes. Silva came close to being stopped during a sustained barrage of ground-and-pound, but somehow eventually managed to scramble to his feet and fight on.

In the second round Silva came out looking for payback and repeatedly landed huge punches, but Lopes showed off an exceptional chin to eat his best shots and continue to apply pressure. That led to Silva only ratcheting up his intensity, but late in the round that cost him as he aggressively waded into range, only for Lopes to unleash a spinning elbow strike that floored him, and then finished off the job with strikes on the mat to seal a stunning TKO finish 12 seconds before the end of the round.

Lopes win impressed the UFC brass so much that they also awarded him one of the two ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards too, meaning that in total he pocketed a cool $100,000 in post-fight bonuses.

Also earning a performance bonus was the debuting 21-year-old Santiago Luna, who was dropped by the very first punch of his fight against Quang Le in the main card opener, but quickly rallied to KO his opponent with hard-hitting blows just a couple of minutes later.