Following last night’s UFC 319 event in Chicago the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.

On this occasion all four bonuses were for ‘Performance Of The night’, and they all took place on an action-packed main card.

First up was Khamzat Chimaev, who completely dominated Dricus du Plessis on the mat for five rounds to begin a new era as the UFC’s middleweight champion.

The fact that Khamzat was able to take DDP down and control him in the opening round wasn’t a surprise, but the question was whether he’d be able to continue to do so in the rounds that followed due to previous cardio concerns in fights. However, Khamzat didn’t go all out for a finish at any stage and instead carefully managed his energy levels while continuing to take down du Plessis at will and control him with relative ease in the rounds that followed. DDP did try to rally late in the fight and was briefly on top, but overall this was as lop-sided a title clash as your likely to see and Khamzat emerged with a very comfortably unanimous decision victory (50-44 x3).

Dana White instantly confirmed that co-main event winner Lerone Murphy would be getting a performance bonus after he punished the debuting Aaron Pico’s early forward pressure in the first round with a perfectly timed spinning elbow strike that knocked him out cold for several minutes. Murphy was already on an eight-fight winning streak in the UFC heading into this match-up, but this was the kind of picture-perfect highlight-reel finish would have been dreaming about to thrust him firmly into title contention at 145lbs.

Carlos Prates also earned a performance bonus in style when he also delivered a stunning spinning elbow KO of Geoff Neal in the final second of the opening round. The strike landed with an audible thwack as it connected to the side of his opponents head and sent him to the canvas, and continued to enhance the Brazilian’s reputation as one of the UFC’s most potent finishers.

And finally Tim Elliott returned from an 18-month absence at 38-years-old and managed to survive coming off second-best in the early striking exchanges against Kai Asakura, before turning the screw in the second round when he was able to seize upon a tight guillotine choke to tap-out the former Rizin champion.