Following last night’s UFC On ESPN 43 event the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
Earning ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors was a preliminary card fight between CJ Vergara and Daniel Lacerda that delivered a late second-round comeback victory that few could have saw coming based on what went down in the opening five minutes.
Early in that first round Lacerda had hurt Vergara with punches and put him under so much pressure that he literally ran away and started doing a few laps around the cage to escape the onslaught. And that actually worked as he’d go on to survive to the end of the round, then in the second began to turn the screw as his opponent tired, eventually getting on top on the mat and delivering a TKO finish via ground-and-pound.
Daniel Pineda earned a performance bonus after he brushed aside his underdog status against Tucker Lutz and dropped him late in the opening round, then turned up the heat further in the second round as he landed a knee to the head that stunned his opponent and would go on to submit him via a guillotine choke.
Also earning a performance bonus was Nate Landwehr, who fought at a more measured pace than normal by his standards in the opening round against Austin Lingo, but then began to pick up the pace and aggression in the second, which led to the action eventually spilling onto the mat, where he’d seize upon a rear-naked choke submission finish.
