Following last night’s UFC On ESPN 71 event in Las Vegas the recipients of the evening’s $50,000 bonus awards were announced.
The fight card may have looked underwhelming on paper, but it proved to be an action-packed show and that led to a rare decision being made to award two ‘Fight Of The Night’ bonuses.
That included the co-main event bloody three round war between Chris Duncan and Mateusz Rebecki, who showed remarkable resilience as they blasted each other with their hardest shots from start to finish.
Duncan left Rebecki with a hematoma on the right side of his scalp after a well timed elbow in the first round, and by the end of that five minutes spell had also opened up a cut close to his right eye too. That didn’t deter Rebecki though, who continually pressed forward and landed his own strikes.
The intense exchanges continued in the second round and Duncan was making the most of his long limbs and making good use of body kicks, but couldn’t find a way to deter Rebecki, who was still a threat despite returning to his corner inbetween rounds with his right eye now completely swollen shut.
They also essentially went blow-for-blow in the final five minutes and while Duncan was still landing good strikes, Rebecki’s offense was taking a visible toll on him too with a sizeable cut opening below his left eye and swelling on the right, resulting in a bloodbath in the final few minutes before Duncan emerged as the winner via unanimous decision (29-28 x2, 30-27) and both men were subsequently transported to hospital.
Joining them at the hospital was the evening’s other ‘Fight Of The Night’ pairing of Esteban Ribovics and Elves Brener who also put on a show with another entertaining war of attrition.
Ribovics set out his stall to apply pressure from the start and never wavered from that despite often having to ear hard-hitting strikes in return from Brener. Both men demonstrated granite chins, but Ribovics sharp boxing combinations helped him gain the upper-hand, while also being able to fend off multiple takedowns from Brener as he slugged his way to a hard-fought unanimous decision victory (29-28, 30-27 x2).
Meanwhile, Ateba Abega Gautier also earned a ‘Performance Of The Night’ bonus after he quickly gained the striking advantage over Robert Valentin and TKO’d him with a flurry of strikes just 70 seconds into their prelim card bout.
