Following last night’s UFC 253 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was an action-packed main card flyweight battle between Brandon Royval and Kai Kara-France.
The two had a fast and furious start that saw Royval buckled to his knees by a punch, only to then catch Kara-France with a spinning elbow as he rushed in for the kill that sent him to the mat.
Despite both men having been hurt the scrap continued at a fast pace until the second round when Royval was able to catch Kara-France in a guillotine choke in the midst of being taken down and forced the tapout seconds later.
As you might expect, main event winner Israel Adesanya scooped up one of the two ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards after his two-round dismantling of Paulo Costa.
Despite all of his pre-fight talk, Costa never really got going in the fight as Adesanya masterfully managed the distance the action took place at and proceeded to butcher the Brazilian’s lead leg with precision kicks, leaving visible welts below the knee.
It didn’t get any better for Costa in the second as Adesanya started to have success upstairs too, partially landing a head kick and then soon afterwards dropping his opponent with a single punch, before blasting him with ground and pound to earn a TKO stoppage victory and retain his 185lb title.
Also securing a performance bonus was Jan Blachowicz, who looked comfortable in the opening round of his co-main event title fight with Dominick Reyes as he put together combinations of punches followed by kicks to the leg or body.
Reyes own offensive output start to pick up in the second round, but as things really began heating up, Blachowicz clocked him with a left hook that left him stumbling back on wobbly legs and then falling to the mat, where the fight would end by TKO a few seconds later.
