A whopping eleven fighters were handed bonus awards following last night’s finish-heavy UFC On ESPN 37 event in Austin, Texas.
The highly entertaining 13-fight card only had four bouts that went to the scorecards, and that included the main event between Josh Emmett and Calvin Kattar, which still managed to secure ‘Fight of The Night’ honors after five highly competitive back-and-forth rounds of striking led to Emmett emerging with a narrow split-decision victory.
Picking the usual two ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonuses is where things got really tricky though, with nine fights all providing finishes, including no less than six that didn’t make it out of the first round.
So, the UFC brass decided to change things up and just award a bonus to every fighter who delivered a finish, all nine of them, resulting in a total UFC On ESPN 37 bonus payment total of $550,000 instead of the usual $200,000.
Kevin Holland earned his bonus with a second round d’arce choke submission of Tim Means after initially dropping him with big punches.
Joaquin Buckley was handed a TKO stoppage before the start of the third round of his fight after his hard-hitting offense left Albert Duraev unable to see out of his swollen-shut left eye.
Gregory Rodrigues dropped and dazed Julian Marquez multiple times with thunderous punches in the opening couple of minutes of their main card fight before KO’ing him with another big blow.
Adrian Yanez opened up the main card in exciting fashion as he let Tony Kelley land some early strikes before turning up the intensity of his own striking and unleashing ferocious combinations that rocked his opponent and eventually led to a TKO stoppage at the 3.49min mark.
Meanwhile, the preliminary card had set the tone for the night with multiple fast finishes, including Jeremiah Wells brutally KO’ing Court McGee with a punch just 94 seconds into the fight.
Ricardo Ramos also received a well-earned bonus after he KO’d Daniel Chavez with a spinning backfist backed up by punches for a 72 second finish.
However, Cody Stamann outdid him by TKO’ing veteran campaigner Eddie Wineland in just 59 seconds, the fastest finish on the card.
Phil Hawes completely dominated Deron Winn for the best part of two rounds with damaging blows until finally getting the TKO finish.
And Roman Dolidze started the night as it meant to go on with a nasty knee strike that would lead him to KO Kyle Daukaus in just 73 seconds.
