Following last night’s UFC 311 event in California the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
The co-main event bantamweight title bout between Merab Dvalishvili and Umar Nurmagomedov earned ‘Fight of The Night’ honors after a hard-fought encounter that went the distance.
The early rounds were closely contested but Nurmagomedov appeared to have a slight edge has he nullified some of Dvalishvili’s early takedown attempts and forced more striking exchanges. However, as the fight went on Dvalishvili’s pressure and intensity only seemed to increase, and the cracks began to show in his opponent’s own energy levels as a result, enabling Merab to find more success with his takedowns – albeit without ever managing to keep the challenger down for an extended period. Nurmagomedov did his best to stay in the fight despite not havign much left in the tank, but in the end it was Dvalishvili who rightly emerged with a unanimous decision victory (48-47 x2, 49-46).
Jiri Prochazka earned one of two ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses after he managed to win an intense fire-fight against Jamahal Hill. There were a lot of wild exchanges in this fight as both men threw caution to the wind, but in the end it was Prochazka who was able to land the more telling blows, and after having previously dropped Hill in the opening round, he floored him again in the final five minutes and sealed the TKO with follow-up strikes on the mat.
Also earning a performance bonus was Jailton Almeida, who engaged in some back-and-forth grappling exchanges with Sergey Spivak in the early stages of their fight and then as they returned to their feet late in the round he landed some big strikes, got Spivak down, took his back and then flattened him out while landing ground-and-pound to secure a TKO finish.
