Taiyilake Nueraji TKO’s Kiefer Crosbie In 1st Round At UFC Fight Night 257

Taiyilake Nueraji TKO’s Kiefer Crosbie In 1st Round At UFC Fight Night 257

Taiyilake Nueraji TKO’d Kiefer Crosbie with brutal ground-and-pound elbows at UFC Fight Night 257 in Shanghai, but controversially was also deducted a couple of points before the finish for a nasty illegal knee that cut his opponent.

Solid side kick to the body from Nueraji to start. Crosbie responds by trying for a takedown, but there’s a scramble and Nueraji ends up on top. Crosbie trying to work a triangle choke off his back. He gives up on that soon enough though.

Nueraji landing a few strikes from inside Crosbie’s guard. He postures up and lands elbows. Now a big punch. Crosbie tries for a leg lock, but not much happening there.

Nueraji able to pass to full mount and then almost gets the back, but is now back in Crosbie’s full guard and drops down heavy elbows. A big elbow seems to spur Crosbie on to try to get out of this bad spot. However, as he scrambles up to his knees Nueraji lands an illegal knee to the head that opens up a nasty cut.

This could be the fight over, but after taking time to recover Crosbie says he can fight on despite still bleeding from that cut. The ref opts to deduct 2 points from Nueraji and the fight goes on.

Nueraji goes into the clinch looking for a takedown. He gets him down to his knees against the cage then starts dropping down more brutal elbow strikes with serious force, and Crosbie can only cover up until the ref steps in to end the fight by TKO at 3.33mins of the first round.

Generally a very good performance there from Neuraji, but that damaging illegal knee does take some of the shine off the win. That being said though, it looked like he was on his way to victory regardless.

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About 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.

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