Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 273 event in Winnipeg, Canada the recipients of the evening’s $100,000 bonus awards were announced.
Fight Of The Night honors on this occasions went to a very competitive main card battle between Charles Jourdain and Kyler Phillips that went the full 15 minutes.
Jourdain pushed a blazing pace from start to finish here, applying lots of striking pressure, but Phillips countered with clinch-work, takedowns and control on top. Even so, he spent a lot of time dealing with Jourdain’s very active scrambling and continual submission threat. Then in the final round Jourdain’s intensity started to take a toll on the feet as Phillips began to tire, but he kept fighting on until the end, where Jourdain emerged with a unanimous decision victory (29-28 x3).
Main event winner Mike Malott earned one of two ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses after getting the better of veteran campaigner Gilbert Burns, who announced his retirement immediately after the fight.
Malott showed good composure in this fight, steadily picking apart Burns with his clean, accurate striking, while also doing a good job of fending off his experienced opponent’s takedown threat. The strikes eventually started to take their toll, with Malott’s uppercut in particular being a weapon of choice, and utilizing that followed by a left hook dropped Burns in the third round. The veteran got back up, but was soon put down again with a right hook, followed by ground-and-pound to seal the TKO victory.
Also earning a performance bonus was Marcio Barbosa, who remained patient as Dennis Buzukja tried to lead the dance in the opening minute, only to then suddenly unleash a well-timed left hook at the 80 second mark that ended the fight by KO.
