UFC Fight Night 252: Live Winners and Losers, Results

The UFC was back in Seattle for the first time since 2013 on Saturday night, and while the main event ended in disaster, it's fair to say fans in "The Emerald City" were rewarded for their wait with a very entertaining Fight Night card.

Headlining honors for the card went to a bantamweight fight, with former two-division champ Henry Cejudo taking on Chinese knockout artist Song Yadong. As aforementioned, the fight was unfortunately a disappointment, as Cejudo was unable to continue after a third-round eye poke, and Song was awarded a technical decision victory as a result, however, the card produced some excellent entertainment up to that point.

In the co-headliner, for example, surging middleweight contender Anthony Hernandez took another step toward title contention with a hard-fought win over Brendan Allen. Just before that, bantamweight veteran Rob Font handed Brazilian prospect Jean Matsumoto his first loss with a decision win in a thrilling three-round scrap.

Earlier on the card, we were also treated to some incredible finishes, including another stunning knockout from Brazilian featherweight Jean Silva, and a surprising submission victory from Moldovan light heavyweight Ion Cutelaba.

Keep scrolling for the real winners and losers of Saturday's card in Seattle.

There are a lot of fight fans who hate on Austin Vanderford—probably because he’s married to one MMA darling in Paige VanZant. The hate is unjustified. Not only is Vanderford a nice guy, but he’s an excellent fighter. He proved that in Bellator—despite losing efforts to Gegard Mousasi and Aaron Jeffrey in his last two fights—and he proved it again on Saturday night, when he scored a second-round TKO over Nikolay Veretennikov in a UFC debut he accepted on just four days’ notice.

The fact is that, haters be damned, Vanderford deserved to be in the UFC years ago. And while his win over Veretennikov isn’t going to set him up for a fight with a top-15 welterweight, it was proof that he does belong on the sport’s biggest stage. 

Time will tell how far he can go in the UFC welterweight division, which is jam-packed with incredible contenders like Shavkat Rakhmonov, Jack Della Maddalena, and Ian Machado Garry right now, but don’t be surprised if there’s a number beside his name in the near future.

Vancouver, Washington’s Ricky Simon has been in the UFC in 2018, and by the time he walked into the cage to fight Javid Basharat on Saturday night, his strengths were pretty evident. He is a wrestler, through and through, and his opponents’ best shot at beating him typically hinges on forcing him into a striking match. Just ask Urijah Faber. 

However, as Basharat learned in Seattle, Simon is not just a wrestler. While that may be his bread and butter, he can strike too, and he has some real firepower in his hands. He proved that by flattening his longer, rangier foe with a straight right hand fired right down the middle that led to a clean, one-punch KO.

It was an incredibly important win for Simon. While he was once ranked in the bantamweight top-15, he entered the cage in Seattle with three straight losses behind him, and might have been cut from the promotion with another loss. Yet he kept his career alive with arguably his most impressive win to date. 

He has a lot of work left to do if he intends to work his way back into the rankings, but he’s only 32, so it’s certainly possible—and let’s not forget, he’s the only person on the UFC roster with a win over current bantamweight champ Merab Dvalishvili. 

One way or the other, his future opponents ought to realize that, while it’s better to avoid a ground fight with him, he’s fully capable of ending things on the feet too.

The undercard of UFC’s return to the Pacific Northwest went very well for the home team, as area staples like Austin Vanderford and Ricky Simon picked up stoppage wins over solid foes. However, later in the night, Brazil’s Melquizael Costa scored a sorely-needed win for the visiting team at the expense of featherweight veteran Andre Fili. 

The Brazilian got it done with a guillotine choke in the waning moment of the first round. It would be fair to call it the best win of his career to date, and it moved him onto a two-fight streak following a brutal stoppage loss to surging featherweight contender Steve Garcia. 

“It was an honor,” Costa told commentator and former UFC champ Michael Bisping after the victory, giving his Washington-born opponent props. “I watched [Fili] fight Max Holloway. It was an honor to share the Octagon with him.”

For context, Fili lost by submission to Holloway all the way back in 2014, and has fought everyone from Calvin Kattar to Michael Johnson to Dan Ige to Cub Swanson in the time since. He is a UFC veteran, through and through, and despite a hometown advantage, was absolutely trounced by his visiting foe.

Ion Cutelaba has been competing in the UFC light heavyweight division for almost a decade. For all of that time, he’s been extremely entertaining, typically winning his fights by way of brutal knockout, or ending up on the canvas himself.

In Seattle, it looked like Cutelaba was in for another bad night in the office—one of the nights where he’s the one napping under the Jumbotron. The Moldovan was matched up with Turkish destroyer Ibo Aslan, who had won a ridiculous 100 per cent of his 14 wins to date by knockout, and was eating some big shots in the opening seconds of their fight. 

Then he showed off a part of his game we don’t often see: his grappling. After the fight hit the mat, he locked up an arm-triangle choke, and just after the halfway point of the opening round, he coaxed out a tap. 

It was the first time we’ve seen him win by submission in the UFC, and just the third submission win of his 30-fight pro career. 

“After 31 years, my career is only now starting,” Cutelaba told commentator Michael Bisping after the submission victory. “My grappling is good now.”

We’ll hold off on proclaiming Cutelaba the light heavyweight division’s next great submission threat, but it was great to see a little evolution from a guy who was starting to look pretty one dimensional.

It’s a bad time to be a UFC featherweight—at least if you value your consciousness. That’s thanks to Brazil’s Jean Silva, one of several representatives from the Fighting Nerds team who is absolutely laying waste in the Octagon of late. 

Silva was back in action in Seattle, taking on Armenia’s Melsik Baghdasaryan. Baghdasaryan isn’t exactly a world beater, but he is a former kickboxer and boxer, and entered the Octagon with a respectable 8-2 MMA record. 

Silva cut through him like butter. 

In the final minute of the first round, the Brazilian levelled his opponent with a rocket-fuelled straight right. He seemed to want a walk-off KO—he held off for a moment after the knockdown—but referee Kevin MacDonald needed a little more before intervening. Silva was happy to oblige the ref with a few vicious ground strikes, and a moment later, the fight was being waved off.

The win brought Silva to 15-2 overall, and 4-0 in the UFC—including wins over top foes in Charles Jourdain and Drew Dober. At this point, he’s definitely ready for a fight with a top-15 opponent, and there’s a very good chance he continues to deliver highlight reel KOs against superior opposition. He really is that dangerous. Dangerous enough that everyone in the division should be worried about him.

It’s common knowledge that in MMA, fighters in the lower weight classes don’t tend to perform very well after 35 years old. It’s very hard to explain—heavyweights are often competitive into their early 40s—but the evidence is readily available. Take Alexander Volkanovski, for example. He was nigh on unstoppable until he was about 34, then suffered three losses in four fights.

Rob Font is not an outright exception to that trend, but the bantamweight veteran is almost 38 years old, and in the last few years, has picked up decisive wins over several much younger opponents. First, he stopped Adrian Yanez in the first round. Then, after decision losses to Cory Sandhagen and Deiveson Figueiredo—two of the best bantamweights in the world—he picked up a decision win over Kyler Phillips. Most recently, in Seattle, he defeated the 25-year-old Jean Matsumoto by decision in an incredibly entertaining fight. 

Granted, Matsumoto took the fight on short notice, replacing the injured Dominick Cruz, but so did Font, and it’s probably a lot easier to switch opponents at the last moment when you’re 25 than when you’re 37. Matsumoto also entered the fight with a very impressive 16-0 record. 

At this point, there’s probably no chance Font ever fights for the title, but what he’s doing at this stage of his career is pretty amazing. He’s 3-2 in his last five, with wins over three tough young opponents, and decision losses to two of the best in the world. 

Father time is undefeated, but for the moment, Font is proving a pretty tough opponent.

Rising UFC middleweight contender Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez may not be a decorated collegiate wrestler like many of his predecessors in the division’s top-15, but at this point, his grappling skill is irrefutable. In fact, he’s breaking records in that department. 

Hernandez put himself in the history books in a fight with fellow contender Brendan Allen in Saturday’s main event. It was his second fight with “All In” after a decision win before they arrived in the UFC, and while it wasn’t easy, he ultimately moved to 2-0 in their rivalry with another decision victory. 

It was Hernandez’s seventh win in a row, and it will push him right to the brink of title contention, though he is still probably behind the likes of Caio Borralho, Nassourdine Imavov, and Khamzat Chimaev. That’s all great for him, but he also broke Chris Weidman’s record for the most successful takedowns in the division’s history, at 44. Considering Weidman’s accolades on the wrestling mats, that is quite an accomplishment, and one that will most likely stand for quite some time, even long after his time as a top middleweight contender has passed.

Main Card

Song Yadong def. Henry Cejudo via techical decision (30-27, 29-28 x2)

Anthony Hernandez def. Brendan Allen via unanimous decision (29-28 x3)

Rob Font def. Jean Matsumoto via split decision (28-29, 29-28 x2)

Jean Silva def. Melsik Baghdasaryan via TKO (punches) at 4:15 of round one

Alonzo Menifield def. Julius Walker via split decision (28-29, 29-28, 30-27)

Preliminary Card

Ion Cutelaba def. Ibo Aslan via submission (arm-triangle) at 2:51 of round one

Melquizael Costa def. Andre Fili via submission (guillotine) at 4:30 of round one

Mansur Abdul-Malik def. Nick Klein via TKO (punches) at 3:24 of round two

Ricky Simon def. Javid Basharat via KO (punch) at 3:58 of round one

Austin Vanderford def. Nikolay Veretennikov via TKO at 4:13 of round two

Nursulton Ruziboev def. Eric McConico via TKO (punches) at 0:33 of round two

Modestas Bukauskas def. Raffael Cerqueira via KO at 2:12 of round one