Following last night’s UFC 334 event in New York City the winners of the evening’s $100,000 bonus awards were announced.
The ‘Fight Of The Night’ was an easy pick after Ciryl Gane and Josh Hokit relentlessly slugged it out for five rounds in the main event.
From the opening bell Hokit doggedly stuck to his strategy to constantly push forward and pressure the champion, while throwing punches and elbows at close quarters and in the clinch at every opportunity. At first that resulted in him eating a lot of punches thanks to Gane’s superior technical striking, but his pace was so high that by the mid-way point of the 2nd round the champ was already starting to look visibly fatigued. That slide continued in the third round as the technical side of Gane’s boxing went completely out the window and he came dangerously close to running on empty, while Hokit continued to march him down and landed some big strikes. Prior to the start of the fourth round Hokit motioned that he was going to break Gane, but unexpectedly the champion seemed to find his second-wind and got back to landing clean strikes, and though Hokit was still coming forward, he was now only focusing on clinching rather than striking as his own cardio began to falter. The same was largely true in the final round and so it’s Gane who emerged with the unanimous decision win to retain his title (48-47 x3).
Main event winner Kayla Harrison won one of two ‘Peformance Of The Night’ awards after she endured coming off second-best in the striking exchanges against Amanda Nunes in the early rounds and gradually began implementing her strong clinch-work and judo throws and managed to get herself in dominant positions on the mat to rain down some ground-and-pound. Along the way she managed to open up a cut with a big elbow, and in the fourth round as Nunes threatened with strikes, Harrison managed to catch a kick and send her off-balance to the mat, before swiftly pouncing on her back and locking in a rear-naked choke finish.
Meanwhile, 43-year-old Stephen Thompson turned back the clock to deliver a vintage ‘Wonderboy’ performance in his retirement fight against Charles Radtke. He had to deal with being stifled by Radtke’s wrestling early in the fight, but in the end Thompson’s high-level striking shone through as he began to hurt his opponent with short bursts of punches and swift kicks. Then came the fairy-tale ending as Thompson unleashed a spinning wheel kick at the mid-way point of the final round that crashed through Radtke’s guard and turned his legs to jelly, sending him falling to the canvas for a memorable TKO finish.
