Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 142 event in Adelaide, Australia the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Given that there’s been a lot of talk that the UFC’s flyweight division will be scrapped next year, it was ironic that the ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors last night went to a 125lb scrap between Kai Kara-France and late replacement Elias Garcia from the prelim card that went the full 15 minutes in a hard fought striking battle.
Meanwhile, earning a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus was Brazilian veteran Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua who was hurt in the opening round by Tyson Pedro, but managed to hang in there and then capitalized in the third round when his opponent appeared to suffer an ankle injury that left his leg buckling under him.
Shogun seized on the opportunity to put Pedro under pressure with strikes and when his leg completely gave way then proceeded to drop down bombs on his grounded opponent until the referee moved in to award him a TKO victory.
Also earning a performance bonus was Sodiq Yusuff who came out throwing heavy leather with incredible intensity from the opening bell against Suman Mokhtarian, hurting his opponent and backing up against the cage, where he continued to tee off until the ref stepped in to wave it off half-way through the round – perhaps a little prematurely, but an impressive display nonetheless.
