Following last night’s UFC 293 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was a main card flyweight fight between Manel Kape and Felipe dos Santos, which delivered three rounds of exciting back-and-forth action.
The 22-year-old dos Santos was making his debut on short-notice, but he didn’t let the occasion get the better of him and instead made the most of his active, dynamic striking, good cardio and durable chin to give Kape a real challenge. So it was far from an easy night for Kape, but he proved to be up to the task, utilizing his sharp counter-striking, fast hands and big power to win by unanimous decision.
Sean Strickland’s shock upset win on the scorecards over Israel Adesanya earned him a ‘Performance Of The Night’ award to go with his new middleweight title belt.
It was a fight that didn’t go the way anyone expected, with Strickland even managing to drop Adesanya with a hard right hand in the opening round, though he wasn’t able to seal the deal with his ground-and-pound afterwards. From that point on Adesanya appeared a bit shell-shocked and just couldn’t seem to figure out how to get past Strickland’s accurate jab, unorthodox but effective defense and knack for putting him on the back foot with constant pressure. That left Strickland to cruise to victory relatively unscathed in order to secure one of the biggest upsets in the sport’s history.
Also earning a performance bonus was Justin Tafa, who made short work of Austin Lane in their heavyweight rematch, flooring him with a big left hand and then a barrage of ground-and-pound bombs for a TKO finish just 82 seconds into the fight.
