Following last night’s UFC On ABC 5 event the recipients of the show’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
‘Fight Of The Night’ honors were handed to the event’s headliner, which saw Ilia Topuria and Josh Emmett battle it out for the full five rounds.
From the opening bell Emmett went on the attack and was swinging for the fences, but Topuria stayed patient and composed as he avoided most of the blows and began to land his more clean, calculated strikes, and by the end of round Emmett’s left eye was already swelling.
And that would continue to be the story for much of the fight, with Topuria’s more technical, accurate, yet still hard-hitting offense winning out, resulting in Emmett being dropped twice in the 2nd round and once in the fourth. There was no quit in Emmett though and he continued to try to land a fight-ending bomb until the bitter end without success, leading Topuria to win by a wide margin on the scorecards (50-44, 50-42, 49-45).
In the co-main event Maycee Barber put on her best showing to date as she got the better of Amanda Ribas by TKO in the second round to earn a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus.
This was a competitive back-and-forth scrap throughout, with Barber bloodying Ribas’ nose in the opening round, only to get the same in return in the 2nd as the fought for supremacy on the feet, while Ribas also mixed in some head-and-arm throws to get the fight to the mat, but struggled to keep the spirited Barber down for extended periods.
The action only intensified as the 2nd round went on, until suddenly the head kick Barber had been trying to land several times in the fight finally landed. Ribas tried to fight through it, landing a punch, only to then be caught with a right hand that led to her backing up as Barber fired off more blows. Ribas went for a takedown in desperation, but was left clinging onto a leg for dear life as Barber blasted her with ground-and-pound until the TKO finish.
Also earning a performance bonus was David Onama, who found himself in a fast-paced fight with Gabriel Santos on the main card.
Santos was the one who was often pushing the pace here and looked good with both his striking and his active ground-game, which saw him threaten Onama with multiple submission attempts during the fight.
However, Onama was able to fight off the submissions and stay somewhat competitive on the feet up until late in the 2nd round when he started to have some notable success and punctuated that with a hard uppercut to the jaw that sent Santos crashing to the canvas, with two further punches landing before he hit the floor to seal a highlight-reel KO finish.
