UFC Fight Night 251 Bonus Awards

Following last night’s UFC Fight Night 251 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.

The middleweight main event clash between Jared Cannonier and Gregory Rodrigues emerged with ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors last night in Las Vegas.

Rodrigues started the fight aggressively in the striking department, and that paid off for him as he put Cannonier down twice with hard-hitting punches. However, Cannonier survived those scares and then started to take over the striking battle in the second round as Rodrigues output slowed down significantly. The third round was competitive until it’s closing stages when Cannonier blasted his opponent with a big elbow to floor him and then unleashed a hard-hitting ground-and-pound assault. The round ended before he could find a finish, but early in the fourth round Cannonier sealed the deal with a flurry of punches that sunk Rodrigues against the cage to win by TKO.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Bonfim earned a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus after he put Khaos Williams to sleep with a d’arce choke submission with just 2 seconds of the 2nd round remaining in their prelim fight.

Also earning a performance bonus was main card winner Edmen Shahbazyan, who made short work of Dylan Budka as he avoided his opponents jab on the back foot and then connected with a powerful right hand counter to send him wobbling backwards onto the canvas and claim a 95 second TKO victory.