The Real Winners and Losers from UFC Fight Night 240

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

That was the competitive mindset carried by sixth-ranked UFC middleweight Brandon Allen as he headed into a Fight Night main event with a former foe, Chris Curtis, atop a 12-bout show at the promotion's Apex facility in Las Vegas.

Allen arrived on a six-fight win streak with five submission finishes across the last two-plus years since the most recent of his two octagonal losses, a second-round TKO that Curtis scored with a barrage of punches and knees along the fence in December 2021.

Curtis stepped in as a replacement for No. 5 contender Marvin Vettori, who took to Instagram in mid-March to claim it was an undisclosed injury that prompted his pull out. The opening meant the 14th-ranked Curtis fought for the second time in 2024 and the seventh time since the initial defeat of Allen, a stretch in which he'd gone 3-2 with a no contest.

"I know there's not a lot of reward for me in this, as of now—afterwards we can look back and see—but as of now, it's all risk for me, and all reward for him," Allen told UFC.com. "He's not risking nothing—he's (No. 14); I'm (No. 6)—so there's not a big risk factor for him. I'm supposed to beat him. All that aside, I just fall back to the one thing: focus."

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.

Chris Curtis was feeling the pain.

The Vegas-based middleweight was wearing the effects of big strikes from opponent Brendan Allen, not to mention what was instantly labeled a torn hamstring suffered in the final 30 seconds of the fifth and final round, to the point where he couldn't stand without assistance to hear the decision.

And then when he heard that decision, it got even worse.

Curtis winced in anguish from both the damage sustained and the disappointment of being on the wrong end of a split decision in which one judge saw it 3-2 in rounds for Allen and another had it 4-1, offsetting the one scorecard that was 3-2 for him.

B/R's card agreed with the dissenter and had it 3-2 for Curtis, too.

The 14th-ranked contender who'd beaten Allen in their initial meeting in 2021 exited the cage and was placed on a gurney as Allen basked in the glow of the victory that extended an active win streak to seven in a row since the Curtis loss and lifted him to 12-2 in the octagon.

"It's always a nervous moment," Allen said. "But everyone told me i won the fight and I thought I won the fight."

Allen was particularly strong in the first round with an early takedown and several precise strikes, though Curtis seemed to rally across the middle rounds with consistent pressure and successful defense that either allowed him to elude takedown attempts or quickly escape before Allen could get close to a 15th career submission.

Allen was hurt badly with a combination in the third and seemed rattled again in the fourth, angling for a respite by claiming a punch later in the flurry was an eye poke before replay confirmed it had not been. He rallied with seemingly desperate aggression in the fifth, scoring the final two of his six takedowns and landing 13 significant strikes along with 74 seconds of control time.

Curtis stumbled as he pulled away from a final scramble in the final minute and was waning along the fence in the final seconds as Allen jumped in with a knee. He crumbled to the floor at the final horn and the broadcast team immediately suggested a torn right hamstring.

"Chris is tough as sh-t. He's short so it's hard to get shots on him," Allen said. "I knew what I was up against."

Damon Jackson wore the evidence of 15 hard minutes with Alexander Hernandez and the anxiety of having to sweat out a split decision in a verdict that he thought was clearly deserved.

"This," he told analyst Michael Bisping, "was the fight of the night."

Given the to-and-fro nature of those 15 minutes and the levels of exhaustion each man had been pushed to alongside the cuts and bruises, he wasn't wrong.

Jackson earned two scorecards with 29-28 margins to counter the curious 30-27 in Hernandez's direction given the winner's three takedowns to Hernandez's none and matching advantages in both overall and significant strikes.

Jackson got to his foe's back and at least pursued if not full-on chased submissions in each of the first two rounds, then recovered gamely from a hard right hand that sent him to the seat of his pants early in the third.

"I knew it was gonna be a tough fight," Jackson, who was cut and swollen over his right eye, said. "When I got the matchup, I got excited."

Jackson controlled more than half the first round on the mat and another 82 seconds in the second round in addition to consecutive 36-10 and 33-19 edges in overall strikes. Hernandez's right hand was the most significant blow of the third, which could conceivably have offset Jackson's continuing striking and control margins in the third.

The B/R card had it 2-0 in rounds heading to the third before Hernandez won the finale.

Jackson agreed with that account.

"It was 29-28 me all the way," he said.

It was the one thing the first eight bouts had lacked.

Though they'd included bursts of sustained action, a dubious decision and a handful of finishes, nothing that occurred before fight No. 9 could be filed as a walk-off KO.

It came courtesy of Chilean lightweight Ignacio Bahamondes, whose pre-fight visualization of a head-kick finish came true the instant his left shin connected with the right side of Christos Giagos' head.

Giagos immediately crumbled to the mat alongside the fence as Bahamondes turned away, leaving referee Chris Tognoni to wave things off at 3:34 of the initial round.

"I dreamed about this. I'm a righty, but I dreamed about winning with a left high kick," the winner said. "I visualized it and it's here. I saw it."

It was his fourth win in six UFC fights and 15th in 20 overall in a career that begin in 2015. Giagos is 6-8 across two stints in the UFC and has been finished in each of his last four losses.

It was also a 10th KO for Bahamondes, who said he eschewed a chance to land a few more quick shots before Tognoni arrived.

"I know whenever somebody can't defend himself," he said. "I knew he was gone and he didn't need any more punishment."

For 14 minutes and 40 seconds, there was little to separate them.

Lightweights Trevor Peek and Charlie Campbell had matched one another strike for strike and grappling exchange for grappling exchange, to the point where picking a winner between them was difficult.

But then, Peek's perpetually revving motor finally idled.

The Tennesseean buzzsaw was flat on his back as Campbell regained controlling position from yet another mat scramble, when he looked up toward the ceiling, drew an obviously difficult breath and closed his eyes in at least a subtle competitive resignation.

A few minutes later, Campbell's superiority was made official with a unanimous decision on the cage-side scorecards that lifted him to 9-2 as a pro and 2-0 in the UFC.

"The 'Cannibal' has come back to the Apex. I feared this place, but I faced that fear," he said. "It was a very difficult fight but very easy, too. I love my family. I had to push. That was easy."

The 28-year-old was marginally better by each statistical measure, earning a 4-2 edge in takedowns, a 54-47 margin in significant strikes, and a 5:41-3:15 gap in control time.

"I'm the best in the world," Campbell said. "I still believe that."

If the winner looks surprised, the judges may have gotten it wrong.

That seemed to be the case in the penultimate prelim bout when popular contender Johnny Walker's younger brother, Russian-trained grappler Valter Walker, seemed to have earned at least two rounds of a heavyweight grinder with journeyman Lukasz Brzeski.

Brzeski was a winner on Dana White's Contender Series nearly three years ago but was 0-for-3 in subsequent UFC fights before somehow escaping with a dubious unanimous decision over Walker across 15 tedious minutes.

A taller, longer and faster Brzeski was intent on keeping the fight on the feet and winning with strikes, but he was consistently out-muscled, taken down and mauled by his 264-pound opponent while being controlled for better than three minutes in two of the three rounds.

It seemed to come down to the third, which Brzeski started well before again being taken to the mat by his clearly exhausted foe.

But it was already a moot point by then according to the scorecards, with Walker losing the first two rounds before winning the third to lock in a 29-28 margin in Brzeski's direction on all three cards. The B/R card had a 29-28 margin for Walker.

Brzeski blinked in apparent shock before celebrating his gifted victory while an equally shocked, for different reasons, Walker immediately turned to his corner team with palms up. It was his first professional blemish after 11 straight wins since October 2020.

Sometimes, you're better off staying away.

Former featherweight champion Germaine de Randamie exited the cage 30 months ago with eyes on continuing her career as a police officer and becoming a mother for the first time, then discussed a return with the intention of adding a second career title belt at bantamweight.

Given her result on Saturday afternoon, maybe the sidelines aren't so bad after all.

De Randemie, 39, was in shape and determined to overcome a younger opponent with precise striking from a stand-up position, but she seemed to have no answer once Norma Dumont eschewed a striking match and got her to the ground just 90 seconds after the opening horn.

Dumont got the veteran to the mat twice in the first round and six times overall, running up better than 10 minutes of ground control time and grinding her way to a unanimous decision with matching scores of 29-28—two rounds to one—across the three official scorecards.

The scores matched the B/R card, which gave Dumont the first and third rounds while awarding the second to de Randemie, who landed 67 percent of her strikes across those five minutes and was taken down just once.

Dumont, 33, was already ranked sixth at 135 pounds and defended her position against de Randemie, who'd not fought since defeating incumbent No. 1 bantamweight Julianna Pena in December 2020. She's now won four straight UFC fights and seven of nine inside the octagon since February 2020.

Not every unbeaten fighter is a world-beater.

But a couple who risked their pristine records in the early prelims may be worth watching.

Bantamweight Jean Matsumoto and middleweight Cesar Almeida arrived for their official UFC debuts with a combined 18-0 pro mark and matching Dana White's Contender Series wins, and emerged with their statuses intact with a pair of impressive second-round finishes.

Matsumoto was relentlessly pursued through his initial five minutes and into the second round against Dan Argueta and was taken down nine times, but seized the initiative on the last of the nine and reversed it into the arm-in guillotine choke that ended matters with one second remaining.

"This is the type of training we go through. We go through harder stuff," he said. "I'm here to prove to people it doesn't matter where you come from."

One bout earlier, Almeida had been taken down three times through seven minutes but began dishing out more and more punishment each time opponent Dylan Budka got close, eventually beating him to his knees with elbows and punches and prompting a rescue from referee Mark Smith at 2:13.

"I'm ready for all wrestlers. I keep patient and make them pay once they get tired," said Almeida, who holds a pro kickboxing win over Alex Pereira and called for a fight ex-champ Chris Weidman in Saturday's aftermath. "I have a lot of things for me here."

Main Card

Brendan Allen def. Chris Curtis by split decision (47-48, 48-47, 49-46)

Damon Jackson def. Alexander Hernandez by split decision (27-30, 29-28, 29-28)

Chepe Mariscal def. Morgan Charrière by split decision (29-28, 27-30, 29-28)

Ignacio Bahamondes def. Christos Giagos by TKO (kick), 3:34, Round 1

Charlie Campbell def. Trevor Peek by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Preliminary Card

Alex Morono def. Court McGee by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Lukasz Brzeski def. Valter Walker by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Norma Dumont def. Germaine de Randamie by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Victor Hugo def. Pedro Falcão by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)

Jean Matsumoto def. Dan Argueta by submission (guillotine choke), 4:59, Round 2

Cesar Almeida def. Dylan Budka by TKO (elbows), 2:13, Round 2

Nora Cornolle def. Melissa Mullins by TKO (knee), 3:06, Round 2