UFC Fight Night Live Winners and Losers, Results
It was a UFC card for the second-tier fan.
The promotion produced the first Fight Night show of its Paramount era on Saturday night when seven ranked fighters—none higher than No. 6 in their weight class—were spread among 13 bouts at the Apex facility in Las Vegas.
Bantamweights Mario Bautista and Vinicius Oliveira were in the main event and risked their respective No. 9 and No. 11 rankings at 135 pounds.
Bautista returned for the first time since his eight-fight win streak was snapped by a unanimous decision loss to No. 2 contender Umar Nurmagomedov at UFC 321 in October. Oliveira, meanwhile, was pristine in four bouts with the company since a successful debut on the Contender Series in 2023.
B/R's combat team was in position to take in all the action and delivered a real-time account of the show's definitive winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the app comments.
Winner: Leveling Up
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Floyd Mayweather Jr. started many post-fight interviews with a single statement:
"There are levels to this."
It was a phrase Bautista could have gone to after Saturday's final bout.
The ninth-ranked bantamweight turned his first main event into his finest UFC performance, controlling the uber-confident Oliveira on the feet and dominating him on the mat on the way to a second-round submission finish.
"That was an unbelievable performance from Mario Bautista," said analyst Paul Felder, echoing the sentiments of broadcast colleague Laura Sanko, who referred to the winner's fight-ending transition to a rear-naked choke as "absolutely sick."
Indeed, Bautista's seventh career win by tap came soon after Oliveira had caught his attempted kick to the body and initiated a takedown.
But Bautista quickly spun to top position and worked his opponent into a crucifix position from which he began landing powerful elbow strikes.
Oliveira bucked hard to escape, prompting Bautista to first chase a kimura on the Brazilian's left arm before locking in the choke when Oliveira gave up his back to evade the kimura. Oliveira tapped almost immediately, losing by submission for the first time.
"I think he saw my previous fight and thought maybe (my grappling) was a hole," Bautista said. "I never want to be on bottom again, so I got back to my finishing ways. (The choke) was locked in and he wasn't going anywhere."
Winner: Encore Excellence
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Score one for the second time around.
Japanese flyweight Kyoji Horiguchi scored the biggest victory of his second stint with the UFC, using quick feet and sharp strikes to defeat sixth-ranked contender Amir Albazi by unanimous decision in their frenetic, three-round co-main event.
Two judges gave Horiguchi all three rounds and one had it 2-1 in his favor, matching the B/R W/L card.
It was the eighth-ranked Horiguchi's second straight win and ninth in 10 overall fights with the company, for which he'd gone 7-1 from 2013 to 2016, losing only in a title fight to then 125-pound champ Demetrious Johnson at UFC 186 in Montreal.
The 5'4" speedster won three more octagonal bouts following that high-profile defeat, then spent the subsequent decade in the Rizin and Bellator promotions before returning to submit Tagir Ulanbekov on a Fight Night show in Qatar in November.
"Today's performance? It was OK. I need a better performance next time," Horiguchi said. "Five in a row? Of course, now I want a title shot. Who is the champion? I want to fight you, OK?"
Loser: Big-Man Boredom
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Jailton Almeida is a lot of things.
He's a superbly conditioned athlete with a powerful frame and world-class grappling skills when things get to the mat, which have yielded a No. 6 ranking among UFC heavyweights.
But he's not at all fan friendly. Particularly in a UFC environment.
The Brazilian sleepwalked his way to a second straight disappointing result on Saturday's main card, dropping a unanimous decision to unranked Russian opponent Rizvan Kuniev in a 15-minute fight most memorable for about 14 minutes of audible fan disapproval.
In fact, the biggest cheers were reserved for referee Dan Miragliotta, who was celebrated each of the several times he separated the fighters after prolonged fence tie-ups.
It was a second straight scorecard loss for Almeida, 34, who dropped a split nod to Alexander Volkov at UFC 321 four months ago after attempting just 33 strikes despite nearly 11 minutes of positional control time.
He was far less dominant positionally against Kuniev, who landed 102 strikes to Almeida's 50 and successfully defended each of the ranked fighter's eight takedown attempts.
"Again, for Almeida," blow-by-blow man Brendan Fitzgerakd said, "the story is a lack of activity."
Winner: Advertising Accuracy
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UFC boss Dana White applied his "If you don't know, now you know" tag to the main-card scrap between journeyman middleweights Michal Oleksiejczuk and Marc-Andre Barriault.
And after some sleepy early going, the label stayed stuck.
Oleksiejczuk, who'd won nine of his previous 16 UFC appearances, earned the first round with superior work from distance, then rebounded from a difficult second round with a gutsy final five minutes that locked up 29-28 scores on all three scorecards and stretched his latest win streak to three in a row.
The 30-year-old went the distance to win for just the fifth time in his career and the first time since a split nod over Modestas Bukauskas at UFC 260 five years ago.
He went 4-5 in his subsequent nine fights but credits a move to the Brazil-based "Fighting Nerds" training team as a catalyst for the recent success that had featured two straight first-round KOs before the 15-minute defeat of Barriault.
"For me, this is the best fighter in this division. Very tough," Oleksiejczuk said. "I want the top 15 in the division. I know in one, maybe two years, I go to the top."
Loser: Judges Over Matchmakers
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Here's a shoutout to the matchmakers. If not the judges.
Bantamweight prospects Jean Matsumoto and Farid Basharat were plugged in for a main-card get-together and their styles meshed perfectly to yield 15 minutes of competitive activity that matched high-level technique with intermittent ferocity.
Not surprisingly, it yielded a close bout that Matsumoto seemed to have earned with superior activity over the last two rounds.
But the official scorecards—or at least two of them—didn't match that narrative, instead giving Basharat a split-decision win.
Two judges had it 29-28 in his favor to lift him to 15-0 as a pro and 6-0 in the UFC, overruling a dissenting judge that had the same score in the opposite direction for Basharat.
B/R's W/L card agreed with the minority and gave Matsumoto rounds two and three.
"Really and truly, I thought I won," said Basharat, whose post-fight interview was pockmarked by audible boos. "I thought two was the closest round, but I thought I won that one, too. I must have a ranking on Tuesday. I want top 10."
Winner: Uncivil Warfare
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Call it an uncivil war. American style.
Light heavyweights Dustin Jacoby and Julius Walker got together for one of only two fights on a heavily international card that matched combatants from the same country.
Walker spent much of the first round picking his former training partner up for highlight-reel slams, but it was Jacoby that ultimately landed the decisive blows in Round 2 that yielded a TKO stoppage when Miragliotta intervened at 1:42.
It was Jacoby's third straight KO win and his seventh among the 205-pounders in the UFC, tying him for third in the promotion's weight class history.
"This feels absolutely great," he said. "I love this Apex."
It came three bouts after the show's other single-country bout, in which Ketlen Souza earned a unanimous decision over Bruna Brasil in a matchup of Brazilian strawweights.
Thirteen bouts featured 26 athletes from 13 countries, including seven from Brazil, five from the U.S., three from Poland and two from Afghanistan.
One fighter apiece represented Canada, Russia, Iraq, Japan, Tajikistan, China, Mexico, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Winner: Using Multiple Tools
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Daniil Donchenko was ready to prove one thing, but it wound up being something else.
The precocious 24-year-old dropped durable veteran Alex Morono with a left hook in the opening round and seemed seconds away from a finish after he'd bombarded his foe with follow-up elbows and punches on the ground.
But once the bloodied 35-year-old survived the session, it was up to the Ukrainian to maintain the decisive stream of punishment while keeping track of his own gas tank over what became a long haul—a task he successfully handled on the way to a wide unanimous decision in the prelim card's feature bout.
It was just his third scorecard victory in 14 career wins, and it improved him to 2-0 in the UFC after he'd debuted with a first-round KO on the Noche UFC show in September.
Morono lost for the fourth straight time and dipped to 13-10 with the promotion.
"This guy made me much better," Donchenko said. "I was pretty sure that he could not hold all those punches. But then he came back from the fire like a phoenix."
Loser: Short-Notice Success
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Next time around, Niko Price might reconsider the short-notice thing.
The 36-year-old veteran took a prelim welterweight bout with Nikolay Veretennikov less than a week before the opening tap, and within two minutes of interaction was no doubt wishing he'd made another choice.
The southwest Floridian consistently ceded ground to a taller, longer opponent and it quickly became his downfall when he was clipped with a brutal combination of a right hand, a left knee and a right elbow that left him standing dizzily along the fence.
Veretennikov finished the job with a three-punch volley as referee Chris Tognoni raced in to pull him away at 1:42 of the opening round, with Price remaining upright only because he had his fingers grasping the cage.
It was his third straight UFC loss, his seventh in his last nine and his 10th out of 18 fights that ended by something other than a no contest, leaving his future in question.
"I prepared for something a little different," said Veretennikov, who won for just the second time in five UFC appearances. "But this is how it turned out. I did my job."
Loser: Near-Miss Submission
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Eduarda Moura was only seconds away.
She'd taken Wang Cong down and entered the final minute of the second round chasing a submission after snaking her right arm around her Chinese opponent's neck.
Her grip tightened and Cong's face was noticeably reddening as her air supply dwindled and she flailed with ineffective strikes, before reaching back several times and finally unlocking Moura's hands to relieve the pressure.
And once that happened, everything changed.
Moura's gas tank was severely compromised as the fighters began the third round and the Brazilian was on the wrong end of a steady stream of strikes that left her gasping and bloody on the way to a unanimous decision loss.
One judge somehow gave Cong all three rounds and was joined with 2-1 scores from the other two officials as the 12th-ranked flyweight won for the fourth time in five UFC fights. Moura, ranked one slot down at No. 13, lost for the second time in her five UFC outings.
Loser: Replay Reveal
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Muin Gafurov did his best to sell it.
When the horn sounded to end his bantamweight bout with Jakub Wiklacz, the Tajikistan-based 29-year-old climbed to his feet, embraced training parter Merab Dvalishvili, and strutted around the mat with his hands raised in would-be triumph.
But he knew the truth. And a few minutes later, so did everyone else.
A replay review by cage-side officials showed that Gafurov had tapped out to a guillotine choke just a second before the horn, giving Wiklacz the win by submission at 4:59.
"We just went to replay," Tognoni told Gafurov. "You tapped just before the bell went off."
It was a second blow in 36 hours for the losing fighter, who'd already sacrificed 25 percent of his fight purse to Wiklacz after weighing in at 141 pounds on Friday, well above the contracted 136-pound limit.
He was one of two bantamweights to reach the scale at 141 and lose, along with Gianni Vazquez, who also forfeited 25 percent to opponent Javid Basharat before dropping a unanimous decision in the card's fourth bout.
Winner: Starting in Style
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It was the first fight at a newly renovated and rebranded Apex.
And if all (or even most) of the subsequent ones turn out as good as the opener between bantamweights Klaudia Syguła and Priscila Cachoeira, White and his fellow executives will be pleased.
The hearty women engaged three rounds of consistent stand-up violence, with the taller and longer Sygula leaving her foe reddened, swollen and bleeding steadily from the nose on the way to a unanimous decision over her Amanda Nunes-trained rival.
Sygula swept the cards by scores of 30-27, 30-27 and 29-28, thanks to a steady offense that yielded a 159-99 edge in overall strikes and a 151-99 advantage in significant lands.
B/R's W/L card agreed, giving the winner the first two rounds.
Cachoeira, nicknamed "Zombie Girl," reached the final horn with her own blood smeared across her fight kit and dotting her thighs and lower legs, and fell to 5-8 in the company.
Sygula won for the second time in three UFC bouts.
Full Card Results
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Main Card
Mario Bautista def. Vinicius Oliveira by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:46, Round 2
Kyoji Horiguchi def. Amir Albazi by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
Rizvan Kuniev def. Jailton Almeida by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
Michal Oleksiejczuk def. Marc-Andre Barriault by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Farid Basharat def. Jean Matsumoto by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Dustin Jacoby def. Julius Walker by TKO (punches), 1:42, Round 2
Preliminary Card
Daniil Donchenko def. Alex Morono by unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-27)
Nikolay Veretennikov def. Niko Price by TKO (punches), 1:42, Round 1
Ketlen Souza def. Bruna Brasil by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Javid Basharat def. Gianni Vazquez by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Wang Cong def. Eduarda Moura by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
Jakub Wikłacz def. Muin Gafurov by submission (guillotine choke), 4:59, Round 3
Klaudia Syguła def. Priscila Cachoeira by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
