Following last night’s UFC 257 event the winners of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
On this occasion the UFC opted to skip a ‘Fight Of The Night’ awards and instead dished out four performance bonuses.
Of course, main event winner Dustin Poirier was one of the performance bonus winners after he avenged his TKO loss to Conor McGregor back in 2014 by giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Poirier mixed things up in the first round, landing a takedown and utilizing clinch work, but it was his calf kicks that really started to take a toll by the second round. Poirier then capitalized on his compromised opponent and was able to daze him with a left hand, with a sustained barrage of blows that followed sending McGregor to the canvas and a final right hand sealing his TKO victory.
Also securing a performance bonus was co-main event winner Michael Chandler, who made an immediate impact in his UFC debut by TKO’ing Dan Hooker mid-way through the first round, initially hitting to the body and then following up with a left hook flush to the chin that dropped him, and then a series of punches on the mat.
Makhmud Muradov saw his preliminary fight with Andrew Sanchez moved to the main card on short notice and he made the most of it as he delivered a third round TKO finish after initially rocking his opponent badly with a big overhand right, then surging forward into a flying knee and a flurry of powerful punches to ensure victory.
The final performance awards went to Marina Rodriguez who produced an upset win over Amanda Ribas, and can almost claim to have beaten her twice in quick succession due to refereeing confusion in the heat of the battle.
Rodriguez initially hurt Ribas with a right hand that badly dazed her as she dropped to one knee. Rodriguez landed follow-up punches and ref Herb Dean swooped in as if he was about to stop the fight. He was close enough that Rodriguez thought the fight was over and walked away, while Ribas wobbled to her feet and looked quizzically over at the ref. Dean waved the action on again and Rodriguez almost immediately wobbled Ribas with punches to finally convince him to award her TKO victory.
