Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 242 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was the co-main event pairing of Natalia Silva and Jessica Andrade, which went the full 15 minutes.
Andrade constantly applied pressure throughout the fight and did her best to land big punches, but Silva fought well off the back foot, making the most of her speed, footwork and cleaner striking, including some nice kicks, to get the better of the action and emerge with a unanimous decision victory (30-27 x3).
Meanwhile, one of the two ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses went to Cody Durden, who only had four days to prepare after being brought in as a late replacement to fight Matt Schnell, and seized the moment when he stuffed a takedown attempt early in the second round, locked in an anaconda choke submission and rolled with it to force a frantic tapout from his opponent.
Steve Gaarcia lived up to his ‘Mean Machine’ nickname on the main card when he fought his way out of an armbar attempt from Kyle Nelson in the first round of their fight and then immediately started hammering away with big ground and pound punches and elbows that would lead him to a TKO finish.
