Following last night’s UFC 245 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was the hard fought main event welterweight title clash between Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington.
For much of the fight this one was fought tooth and nail on the feet, with Usman demonstrating the greater power and cleaner, crisper striking, but Covington was doing his best to make up for that with his sheer work rate and volume of strikes.
Covington showed real heart to continue fighting despite breaking his jaw in the third round, but by the final round it all became too much as Usman floored him with a right hand and then dropped him a second time soon after, leading to a TKO stoppage.
Meanwhile, Petr Yan earned a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus after he slowly but surely began to increase the intensity against Urijah Faber, which really started to pay dividends in the second round as he sent him to the mat with a left hand and then put him down again with an elbow strike, leaving the veteran star bleeding and with a bad haematoma close to his left eye.
However, Faber demonstrated his toughness by making it to the third round, only to then be caught flush with a head kick as they separated from a clinch for the KO finish.
Also securing a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus was Irene Aldana who handed Ketlen Vieira the first loss of her career by way of knockout courtesy of a powerful left hook late in the opening round of their preliminary encounter.
