Following last night’s UFC 282 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced and Dana White got into the Christmas spirit as he handed out a whopping 10 ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses in addition to a ‘Fight Of The Night’ award too.
Among the standout performances was Ilia Topuria’s impressive striking and then submission finish of Bryce Mitchell, while Jairzinho Rozenstruik TKO’d Chris Daukaus in just 23 seconds with his heavy-handed strikes and the UFC’s new youngest ever fighter, 18-year-old Raul Rosas Jr took just half a round to submit Jay Perrin via rear-naked choke.
The other performance bonus winners on the night included Santiago Ponzinibbio, Edmen Shahbazyan, Chris Curtis, Billy Quarantillo, TJ Brown and Cameron Saiiman.
Meanwhile, ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors were handed to the main card scrap between Dricus du Plessis and Darren Till. In the opening round it was all du Plessis as he quickly got his opponent to the mat and hammered away at him with ground-and-pound. At times Till’s lack of urgency to escape left him in danger of being finished, but he survived and left du Plessis’s gas tank running dangerously low after his failure to find a finish.
That seemed to give Till some much needed confidence and so he pressed forward with more purpose in the second round and started to find success with his own strikes. Du Plessis was still being competitive in short bursts though and managed to get enough of a second wind in the final round to land a takedown and force a quick tapout from Till via a rear-naked choke.
