The Real Winners and Losers from UFC on ESPN 55

It was the combative calm between two storms.

Just two weeks after the promotional colossus that was UFC 300 and seven days ahead of a road trip to UFC 301 in Rio De Janeiro, the octagonal conglomerate was back on the grind with a Saturday afternoon/evening Fight Night show at the Apex facility in Las Vegas.

Though the card didn't include much in the way of household names, there were five ranked fighters in the final three bouts on a 13-bout card, including a main event between No. 5 flyweight Matheus Nicolau and eighth-ranked counterpart Alex Perez.

Nicolau was 4-1 in his second UFC stint but was coming off that lone loss, a first-round finish by Brandon Royval on another Fight Night show a year ago. Perez, meanwhile, was 6-1 to start his run but had dropped three in a row—losing twice by submission and once by decision.

The B/R combat team was in position to take it all in and compile a definitive list of the show's real winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the comments.

Guys on three-fight skids aren't supposed to look this good.

Alex Perez was in a championship situation in late 2020 but the loss to then-flyweight king Deiveson Figueiredo started a slide that had some suggesting the 32-year-old ought to hang up his gloves.

But he didn't. And now, there'll be no one still saying that he should.

Perez stepped in on short notice to take a bout with fifth-ranked contender Matheus Nicolau and made the most of the career-resurrecting opportunity, starching the Brazilian with a single right hand that ended matters at 2:16 of the second round.

"It feels amazing. Everyone counted me out coming off three losses and I came in off three weeks of camp, but it's any time, any day with me. I don't get paid to sit on the couch. I get paid to fight."

He was clearly on his game early with a frenetic style that threw off the more fundamentally based Nicolau, and he landed the clearest punches of the first round when darting in and out, switching stances and working both the head and the body.

His aggression was still bothering his foe in the second and it was a flurry of wide punches to the shoulders and arms that backed a defensive Nicolau to the fence and set him up for the right hook—delivered from a traditionally southpaw stance—that instantly left him semi-conscious and sagging to the floor as referee Mark Smith vaulted in.

It was Perez's first win since June 2020, five months before his title shot and subsequent losses to now-reigning champ Alexandre Pantoja and No. 7 contender Muhammad Mokaev. As for Nicolau, he's lost two straight since beginning his second UFC run with four straight wins.

"Tough times don't last, tough people do," Perez said. "I'm always working. All I do is train. That's just my game."

You know you've done something special when you get a callout from Daniel Cormier.

The ESPN analyst and former UFC champ-champ was clearly impressed by how quickly and violently Bogdan Guskov dispatched Ryan Spann, dumping the No. 11 light heavyweight with three right hands and finishing things with a dozen ground strikes.

"This dude," Cormier said, "has got some real power."

The end came at 3:16 of the second round and was an abrupt change from a first round in which Spann, moments after taking consecutive knees to the groin, got Guskov to the ground with a takedown and kept him there for more than half the round while chasing submissions and dishing out strikes.

But it was a different story in the second, when the Uzbek export began landing hard right hands. He caught Spann with an uppercut that sent his eyes rolling back in his head and followed with a pair of hard hooks that sent the 6'5", 205-pounder spinning to the floor.

From there it was a series of hard, clean shots until Herb Dean intervened.

"I'm coming to win. I'm coming to put on a big show," Guskov said. "We're going to the top, mother f--ker. Remember this name. Everybody wants to be at the top. Now I'm here."

The numbers don't always tell the story.

But Karine Silva is one of those fighters whose excellent overall record and pristine mark inside the UFC indicate that she may be the real deal.

The 13th-ranked flyweight made a legitimate case for raising her profile—and lowering her ranking number—with a grinding unanimous decision over No. 12 contender and former training teammate Ariane da Silva.

The official scores were 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28 for Silva, who improved to 18-4 as a pro and 4-0 in the octagon thanks to perpetual aggression that saw her continually get inside da Silva's attempts to keep the fight at distance.

It wasn't a technical masterpiece by any stretch, but Silva got the fight to the mat five times in six attempts and racked up better than six minutes in position control time to offset the 58-33 edge that da Silva ran up in significant strikes.

Da Silva is 17-9 overall and 6-6 in the UFC and saw a three-fight win streak end.

"She's a tough opponent and she wasn't going to give up on her game," Silva said.

"We were prepared for anything to happen tonight. This is MMA. It doesn't matter if it's one, three or five rounds. Whatever the girls in the division come with, I'm gonna solve the problem regardless. I know this is a step by step and I know I'm going to get to that belt."

It happened in slow, painful motion.

Ex-NFL'er Austen Lane was on the wrong end of a hard right hand and a harder left hook and the 6'6", 254-pounder went face-first to the mat as if being lowered by a crane.

The official time was 2:12 of Round 2.

It was an impressive win for Jhonata Diniz because of its violence, because it came in his UFC debut, and because of where the Brazilian had been just moments earlier.

Diniz was taken down by a football-style spear tackle early in the first round and Lane kept him there for the duration, scoring emphatic punishment points in the final 30 seconds after he established top position and strafed his foe with punches and elbows.

But Lane's success was also his downfall.

His gas tank was clearly compromised by the strenuous activity and when his two takedown attempts were stuffed early in the second, he became a sitting duck for Diniz's sharper and more powerful punches.

He was pinned along the fence as Diniz teed off, ultimately landing the combination that saw him topple like a redwood tree.

"I was calm because I trained a lot. I was calm and defensive all the time (in the first round)," Diniz said. "Midway through the first round I felt like his breathing was heavier. I just needed to do what I had to do."

It was the kind of fight MMA fans relish.

A sophisticated striker tried to keep things vertical and use precision, speed and timing to prove his superiority, while his grappling-first adversary did everything possible to get in close, make it physical and get the fight to the ground.

The bantamweight who could get the other into their realm would, in theory, win.

Both David Onama and Jonathan Pearce had their moments in their specific roles and the judges ultimately decided Onama had more of them when he was awarded a unanimous decision, with each scorecard giving him a 2-1 advantage in rounds.

Pearce disagreed and so did the B/R card, which had him up 2-1.

"I knew it was gonna be tough," said Onama, who was taken down five times but managed to reverse each one. "Everyone said I can't wrestle, but tonight I showed I could."

Indeed, Onama was able to elude Pearce's many attempts to keep him on the mat, escaping a submission attempt in the second round and finishing strong in the third with a fight-high 39 significant strikes. He'd trailed in that category through each of the first two rounds, by respective margins of 15-14 and 14-5.

"We came into this fight prepared," Onama said.

Every show has a memorable finish.

And on Saturday's show it was Uros Medic delivering it.

The Serbian turned 31 on Thursday and celebrated two nights later with what analyst Dominick Cruz described as a "mortar" of a left uppercut to signal the end of a scheduled three-rounder with veteran Tim Means in their main-card opener at welterweight.

Means, 40, tried to grind Medic to the canvas for the first 90 seconds, and was still coming forward with that in mind when Medic let loose with a left uppercut that initially dropped Means to his knees and then backward to the floor.

Medic came in with one more stiff left hand as referee Herb Dean intervened at 2:09.

It was Medic's 10th win as a pro and seventh in one round since he debuted in 2016. The loss was Means' 12th and came in his 25th fight at 170 pounds.

"I'm happy. Every now and then it's a little harder than usual," Medic said. "He probably watched my fights so he thought I'm going to get him tired, which is a good game plan. But if I land a punch it's going to be a problem. Sometimes I sit home and I look at my hands I just think 'What the hell?'"

Rani Yahya looked like a 39-year-old fighter.

The Brazilian, who turned pro in 2002 and knocked on the UFC's door in 2011, grimaced and exhaled as he climbed to his feet at the end of Round 2 of the featured prelim.

In fact, as he finally got to his stool after 10 minutes of action, he looked like he'd rather be just about anywhere else than prepping for another session with Victor Henry.

But his 36-year-old foe had unfinished business.

The younger man stepped on the gas against a tired foe from the moment the final round started, punched him to the floor twice and followed the second with a ground flurry that drew the intervention of referee Jason Herzog at 2:36 of the third.

It was Yahya's sixth loss in the UFC against 13 wins and a draw and came in his first fight since last April.

As for Henry, it went exactly according to plan. Almost.

"I'd like to go and knock everyone out in five seconds, but at this level everybody fights back," he said. "What a bunch of jerks."

Henry landed 90 significant strikes and 124 overall across the final round and a half, connected on 58 percent of his strike attempts for the whole fight, and managed to elude each of Yahya's 10 takedown attempts.

"I've got to get after what I know I'm good at," he said. "Come rounds two and three, your boy is dangerous."

OK, not every fight is a classic.

The heavyweight scrap between big boys Don'Tale Mayes and Caio Machado looked like a sure-fire entertainer given each man's predilection for power shots and absence of elite-level defensive prowess.

But even though each guy was swinging wildly and there to be hit, their get-together never amounted to much beyond an intermittently titillating grunt-fest.

Mayes wound up winning a unanimous decision in which each of three judges awarded him two of three rounds, matching a B/R scorecard in which he earned rounds one and two.

"I feel like I had two rounds," Mayes said. "He put the pressure on me in the third, but I was confident."

The 6'6", 264-pounder landed the fight's most decisive single punch, dipping down with a left uppercut late in the first round before coming across with an overhand right that clipped Machado on the chin and dumped him to the floor.

The Brazilian avoided significant follow-up damage, though, and the combatants settled into their plodding, wide-swinging duel for the balance of their 15 minutes.

"That's been one of my favorite combinations in training camp," Mayes said. "Slipping in, hitting with the left and coming over with the right."

If you go by the numbers, it wasn't supposed to happen.

Peru lightweight James Llontop arrived on a 12-fight win streak that included a victory on Dana White's Contender Series, and he was installed as the card's biggest favorite.

And he was matched with a late substitute, too, which made it look even less likely that Chris Padilla would even distinguish himself let alone win.

Until he did.

The 28-year-old nicknamed "Taco" was patient until his opportunity to grapple decisively arrived, getting Llontop to the mat after blocking a kick and quickly getting him into position for a rear-naked choke finish at 4:33 of Round 1.

It was his 14th win in 20 pro fights and fifth in his last six after a prolonged stretch that saw him go just 3-6 from 2016 to 2022.

"It feels surreal, but at the same time I know I belong here, and I'm not surprised," he said. "The biggest thing is playing the game. You have to strike to grapple, and I knew if I played the game long enough, I'd get something."

It's been a pretty good April for Chinese MMA fighters.

Just two weeks after strawweight champion Zhang Weili defended against Yan Xiaonan in the co-main event at UFC 300, two more representatives of the world's second-most populous country were back on the sport's biggest stage.

Their appearances were noteworthy. Their results were mixed.

Twenty-four-year-old lightweight Maheshate ended a brief two-fight skid with a split-decision defeat of Gabriel Benitez in a punching and kicking clinic in the card's initial bout, moments before flyweight Liang Na was choked out in three by Ivana Petrovic.

Maheshate's win was his second in four fights since a Dana White's Contender Series victory and he eked it out against Benitez despite being outlanded in each of three rounds. Neither fighter scored a knockdown nor was in serious trouble, but the winner seemed to land the more powerful blows on the way to winning two 29-28 cards and losing one.

"I felt like I had done enough," Maheshate said. "I really thought it was gonna be an easy fight given how he looked, but he was really tough."

Na was slightly less lucky, running out of gas after an active first round and getting battered with strikes in the second round before the end came at 1:23 of the third.

Na has 19 pro wins but only one that's lasted into the second round.

It was her fourth straight loss, all by stoppage.

Main Card

Alex Perez def. Matheus Nicolau by KO (strike), 2:16, Round 2

Bogdan Guskov def. Ryan Spann by TKO (strikes), 3:16, Round 2

Karine Silva def. Ariane da Silva by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)

Jhonata Diniz def. Austen Lane by TKO (strikes), 2:12, Round 2

David Onama def. Jonathan Pearce by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Uros Medic def. Tim Means by TKO (strikes), 2:09, Round 1

Preliminary Card

Victor Henry def. Rani Yahya by TKO (strikes), 2:36, Round 3

Austin Hubbard def. Michal Figlak by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Don'Tale Mayes def. Caio Machado by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Ketlen Souza def. Marnic Mann by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Chris Padilla def. James Llontop by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:33, Round 1

Ivana Petrovic def. Liang Na by submission (arm triangle choke), 1:23, Round 3

Maheshate def. Gabriel Benitez by split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28)