The Real Winners and Losers from UFC Fight Night 239
It was a crossroads Saturday at the UFC Apex.
Heavyweights Tai Tuivasa and Marcin Tybura met in a five-round main event atop a Fight Night card chock full of fighters desperate to maintain elite-level octagonal status.
Tuivasa and Tybura arrived ranked ninth and 10th, respectively, but neither was on a particularly good roll lately, with Tuivasa having lost three straight fights by finish and Tybura dropping two of his last four to opponents now ranked ahead of him.
Two of the other fights on a 13-bout card that kicked off at 4 p.m. ET also featured matchups of ranked fighters in the same weight class, including a main card duel between bantamweights Pannie Kianzad and Macy Chiasson.
Kianzad was No. 6 at 135 pounds but had dropped two of her last three fights after beginning her UFC run with a 4-1 record, while Chiasson, ranked 10th, had lost three of six since starting with three straight wins—including a rear-naked choke finish of Kianzad in November 2018.
The B/R combat team was in position to deliver a real-time assessment of the show's definitive winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought or two of your own in the comments.
Loser: 'Bam Bam' Goes Bye Bye
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It's official: The Tai Tuivasa phenomenon is over.
The popular Australian heavyweight climbed the UFC's heavyweight ladder with five wins across 16 months bridging 2020 into 2022 and gained attention with memorable post-fight celebrations in which he chugged beers out of shoes presented to him by giddy fans.
But the momentum stopped when he was KO'd in three rounds by Ciryl Gane, and subsequent finishes by Sergei Pavlovich (KO 1) and Alexander Volkov (SUB 2) put his high-profile career on life support and prompted a change in coaches and training teams before Saturday.
It didn't help.
Tuivasa was ferocious early but opponent Marcin Tybura endured the barrage, got his opponent to the floor and gradually worked his way to a decisive position and a rear-naked choke finish at 4:08.
It was Tybura's 25th victory as a pro and his 12th in the UFC since arriving in 2016. He'd been coming off a quick KO loss to Tom Aspinall but had won two straight before that and is 8-2 in his last 10.
"I think I proved to everbody I am still doing good," he said. "I didn't bring any name (for a callout) because I lost my last fight. But anyone from the top 10 would be great for me."
It seems a cinch he'll at least supplant Tuivasa at No. 9 in the division after getting him to the ground, getting to his back and unleashing a torrent of blows while the defenseless Tuivasa tried vainly to get to his feet from a kneeling position. Instead, he sank fully to the mat and enabled Tybura to chase the choke, which he had to hold for several seconds while Tuivasa struggled for air.
"I choked him for so long and he was having a hard time, but he wasn't giving up, I was thinking 'What is he made of?'" Tybura said. "I heard him breathing hard and his skin was changing color. So, I knew there was more force to apply. That's what we were practicing."
Winner: Creating a Feud
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Once the competition stopped, the fight started.
Just seconds after the co-main between welterweights Bryan Battle and Ange Loosa was deemed a no contest after six minutes thanks to an inadvertent headbutt followed by an eye poke, the two men nearly finished matters in unofficial fashion.
Loosa sustained an apparent injury to his left eye from the unintentional foul and was given the requisite time to recover by referee Mike Beltran. A cage-side physician was called in to speak with Loosa and apply a cold compress to the impacted eye, but the fight was waved off when Loosa indicated to the physician that he was unable to see.
Battle dropped to his knees in frustration across the mat and he confronted Loosa in the center after Bruce Buffer officially announced the verdict as a no contest.
"You're a p---y," he yelled as officials separated them. "I will cripple your a-s."
A suddenly energized Loosa replied by yelling "I will f—king kill you."
Battle, who'd won two straight and five of six in the UFC, told analyst Michael Bisping that he'd rejoin the fight with Loosa as soon as next week's Fight Night card in Las Vegas.
"I was beating the sh-t out of him. I was doing everything I wanted to do," he said. "He was looking for a way out. F--king p---y b-tch mother f—ker. Once they feel this strength, they look for a way out. That's what he did."
Winner: Maintaining Menace
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It's a young man's game. Most of the time anyway.
Just when it seemed like prohibitive favorite Kennedy Nzechukwu would be the one to relegate soon-to-be 41-year-old Ovince Saint Preux to the scrap heap, the old dog pulled another trick.
He showed he wasn't quite ready to go away.
Saint Preux, who failed in a light heavyweight title bid eight years ago against then-champ Jon Jones, gritted his teeth through a dramatically violent final round and emerged with a split decision victory over a foe who was just 16 years old when Saint Preux debuted in 2008.
It was his 27th victory as a pro and 15th overall in the UFC, and his 25th appearance at 205 pounds—establishing a new promotional record for the weight class.
Two judges saw it 29-28 in Saint Preux's favor to offset the one who gave it to Nzechukwu.
All three scored the rounds differently, with Adalaide Byrd giving the winner the first and third, Junichiro Kamijo giving him the first and second, and Derek Cleary giving him only the first.
"It feels good," the winner said. "I just wanna keep on going."
It seems feasible given the energy, resilience and work rate he showed against Nzechukwu, who'd won six of 10 in the UFC and 12 of 16 overall. Saint Preux endured an early onslaught from the younger man and began landing telling blows of his own, particularly in the second and early in the third.
The final five minutes was a compelling give and take in which each man fired and received good shots, but Saint Preux may have earned it late with a flurry that had Nzechukwu reeling in the last 10 seconds.
"You couldn't put a cigarette paper between them," blow-by-blow man John Gooden said.
Saint Preux said it was persistence that proved decisive.
"The game plan was to just stand in front of his face," he said. "I didn't expect his jab to be that good. It took me awhile to get my head movement down. He doesn't do good going backward. So I stayed in his face. Stayed in his face."
Loser: Protecting a Lead
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Isaac Dulgarian shrugged and waved his hand in disgust, then simply stared.
The unbeaten 27-year-old featherweight was certainly gassed across a one-sided final five minutes of a main card scrap with Christian Rodriguez and seemed fortunate to hear the final horn after a few moments where it looked like he was on the verge of being finished.
But given the degree to which he'd controlled the initial two rounds with seven takedowns and one second shy of nine minutes of control time, he didn't expect it to matter.
Until it did.
Rather than escaping with the decision he figured he'd earned, Dulgarian instead heard two scores in the other direction and exited the cage with the first blemish in a pro career that began three years ago.
All three judges scored it 28-27 overall, with two going in Rodriguez's direction.
All three scored the first round 10-8 for Dulgarian and the third 10-8 for Rodriguez. The decisive margin came in the second, which Anthony Maness saw 10-9 for Dulgarian but was overruled by matching 10-9's from Sal D'Amato and Ron McCarthy.
Rodriguez held an 18-15 edge in total strikes in the second but was taken down four times and controlled for better than four minutes.
The official tallies were a stark contrast to the B/R card, which had it 29-27 for Dulgarian after giving him a 10-8 margin in the first and a 10-9 in the second before seeing the finale 10-9 for Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was surely pleased with his fourth win in five UFC fights but seemed at least a bit surprised given that his corner had told him between the second and third that he needed a late KO.
"I feel like i did more damage," he said. "He did take me down a few times, but I got up every time."
Winner: Slow-Motion Submission
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It was a submission in slow motion.
Bantamweight Pannie Kianzad was in a dire position with Macy Chiasson's right arm wrapped around her chin, and she reached backward to find her opponent's hands and fingers in a desperate attempt to peel them away and restore an unfettered flow of air to her lungs.
But the more she struggled, the more determined Chiasson got.
Kianzad's flailing left her neck tantalizingly open and Chiasson took advantage, dropping her arm across her throat and prompting an instant surrender at 3:54 of the first round.
"I really went to a dark place (after my last fight) and I wasn't sure I was gonna be fighting anymore," Chiasson said. "I said f--k that. It's all about discipline. I've given it everything I have, putting the work in day in and day out and just being consistent."
It was a second choke-out win against Kianzad in two tries for Chiasson, who'd also beaten her in The Ultimate Fighter finale in 2018. It also gave her six wins in nine UFC fights since that triumph and presumably will mean a spike in the rankings, given that Kianzad arrived at No. 6 to her No. 10.
"I want this belt," Chiasson said. "I'm gonna get this belt."
Winner: Compassionate Violence
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He's an assassin. But one with a conscience.
Just seconds after putting Bryan Barberena to sleep with the 34th finish and 10th rear-naked choke of his career, a victorious Gerald Meerschaert had his mind on his middleweight foe's safety.
Rather than dashing across the cage to celebrate his win in the main card opener, Meerschaert immediately pivoted back toward an unconscious Barberena and lifted his legs in the air alongside referee Herb Dean to begin restoring blood flow back to the stricken man's head.
It was a mature reaction to what the winner deemed "a mature performance."
"Sometimes I feel in the past I've made things hard on myself but here I want to make it easy," Meerschaert said. "You don't need to be on someone's chin to choke them unconscious. You can do it on the jaw. You just have to squeeze it really hard."
That's precisely what he did after at 4:23 of the second round, culminating a nine-plus-minute effort in which he was patient on the feet and aggressive on the mat, chasing a variety of sequences before scoring the finish that tied Anderson Silva (11) for the middleweight record.
It was his first win since August 2022 and ended a two-fight skid, while tagging Barberena with his fourth straight loss since a most recent victory in July 2022.
"It's time," Meerschaert said, "for a beer and a nap."
Winner: Patient Punishment
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He'd been gone for 17 months, so Mike Davis was in no hurry.
Rather than haphazardly looking to advance positions once he got opponent Natan Levy to the mat early in Round 2 of their prelim feature bout, the 31-year-old was calm and precise.
And, as analyst Michael Bisping said, he was both "dangerous" and "technically perfect," too.
The Florida-based New Yorker went seamlessly from back control to top mount to isolating Levy's left arm, ultimately cinching in the arm triangle choke that ended things at 1:43.
It was his first UFC appearance since a decision win over Viacheslav Borshchev in October 2022 and just his third since defeating Thomas Gifford by a third-round KO three years earlier, giving him a prolonged four-fight run that's good for the third-longest active streak at 155 pounds.
He's not lost since tapping out to subsequent title challenger Gilbert Burns five years ago.
"MMA, UFC, fighting gives me freedom of life but it isn't what I really want to do," Davis said.
"I'm good at it. I'm amazed. I'm happy. And now I'm 4-0 in the world's most decorated division. Let's get someone with some decoration. Paddy Pimblett, Jim Miller, Clay Guida. Where you guys at?"
Winner: Backing Up the Boss
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Whaddya know? Dana White knows what he's looking at.
The UFC czar previews each card with an Instagram post called "If you don't know, now you know" that is designed to call attention to lower-profile fights outside of the main event.
This time, he mentioned a prelim bout in which Dana White's Contender Series winner Danny Silva was making his official debut with the promotion against six-fight featherweight veteran Josh Culibao and suggested the two strike-first fighters could produce a particularly entertaining match.
He was right. To the point, in fact, that analyst Michael Bisping deemed the fight "sensational."
Silva and Culibao exchanged blows across most of their three rounds together and Silva was able to add four takedowns and better than five minutes of control time as well, ultimately extending his pro record to 9-1 with a split decision in which two of three judges gave him two of three rounds.
The dissenting judge saw it for Culibao by the same 29-28 margin.
Silva started strong and scored a knockdown with a short right uppercut early in the first round before Culibao regrouped and fared better thanks to fast hands and footwork. Silva began to control things with the hands again in the third and added a takedown with 2:04 of control.
"I was really confident (when the cards were being read)," Silva said. "I thought I did enough. I mixed it up. I went for takedowns. I went for submissions."
Loser: Early Introductions
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Not every UFC debut is a positive memory.
And though both Charalampos Grigoriou and Mitch Ramirez may indeed go on to long and successful careers with the promotion, there's a good chance they'll skip the story's initial chapter.
Grigoriou was a Dana White's Contender Series winner and had former bantamweight champ Aljamain Sterling in his corner, but he gassed out following a hard round of grappling and wound up on the short end of a unanimous decision against Chad Anheliger in Saturday's first fight.
The second fighter from Cyprus to appear in the octagon, Grigoriou lost 29-28 verdicts on two scorecards and by a 30-27 nod on the third.
"He's really skilled. He's got a lot of power," Anheliger said. "But I'm a bad mother f--ker."
It didn't go much better for Ramirez in the afternoon's second match against Thiago Moises, who battered his left calf with kicks across two rounds before finishing the fight early in the third when Ramirez was dropped with another kick and could not continue.
It was the 17th leg kicks finish in UFC history and the official time was 15 seconds of the third.
It was Ramirez's second career loss in 10 fights—one on Dana White's Contender Series last summer and this one, which came on short notice (16 days) when Brad Riddell was unable to go with an injury.
"This is disrespect putting me on the second fight," Moises said. "I'm a main event fighter."
Full Card Results
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Main Card
Marcin Tybura def. Tai Tuivasa by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:
Bryan Battle vs. Ange Loosa declared no contest (eye injury), 1:00, Round 2
Ovince Saint Preux def. Kennedy Nzechukwu by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Christian Rodriguez def. Isaac Dulgarian by split decision (28-27, 27-28, 28-27)
Macy Chiasson def. Pannie Kianzad by submission (rear-naked choke), 3:54, Round 1
Gerald Meerschaert def. Bryan Barberena by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:23, Round 2
Preliminary Card
Mike Davis def. Nathan Levy by submission (arm triangle), 1:43, Round 2
Chelsea Chandler def. Josiane Nunes by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Jafel Filho def. Ode' Osbourne by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:27, Round 1
Danny Silva def. Josh Culibao by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Jaqueline Amorim def. Cory McKenna by submission (armbar), 1:38, Round 1
Thiago Moises def. Mitch Ramirez by TKO (leg kicks), 0:15, Round 3
Chad Anheliger def. Charalampos Grigoriou by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27)
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