Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 202 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight of The Night’ honors was a stand-up war between Priscila Cachoeira and Ji Yeon Kim, which went the full three rounds.
True to form, Cachoeira was swinging from the fences from the opening bell, but Kim was the more disciplined, accurate striker of the two in the opening rounds and was landing more often, with her opponent was wearing the damage with significant swelling around both of her cheekbones heading into the final round.
However, never once did Cachoeira give up on herself and instead she somehow managed to ramp up her intensity even further in the closing minutes of the fight, hurling herself forward while throwing huge elbow strikes, and one opened up a nasty cut to the left side of Kim’s face, while a knee also landed upstairs and another elbow sliced open another gash.
Kim looked concerned though she kept fighting on, but in the end Cachoeira’s big moments late in the bout appeared to help sway the judges in her favor as she emerged with a split decision victory (29-28, 28-29, 30-27).
Co-main event winner Wellington Turman secured one of two ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards after he managed to get the better of veteran grappler Misha Cirkunov on the mat.
Both men had their moments early in the fight, but by the second round there was a sense that Cirkunov may have the ground advantage, but after successfully executing a trip takedown he suddenly found himself caught up in a tight armbar submission out-of-nowhere from Turman that forced an almost instantaneous tap-out.
Also earning a performance bonus was Arman Tsarukyan, who engaged in an absolute bloodbath of a fight against Joel Alvarez on the main card.
Tsarukyan was at a major size disadvantage compared to the lank Alvarez, but was successfully able to use his wrestling to get the fight to the mat and by the end of the opening round he’d opened a gruesome cut to the bridge of the nose via an elbow strike that had his opponent bleeding profusely.
Despite Alvarez’s cut man’s best evidence he was again covered in a crimson mask early in the second round as Tsarukyan again got him down and started a ground-and-pound assault that would ultimately lead to the referee waving the fight off for the TKO victory.
