UFC on ESPN 66: Live Winners and Losers, Results

Ian Machado Garry is a proven commodity as a frontrunner.

The question asked Saturday was how he'd respond to adversity.

The outspoken Irishman rose toward the top of the UFC's welterweight ranks while winning his first 15 pro fights, but arrived to a Fight Night main event in Kansas City, Missouri, after dropping a decision to Shavkat Rakhmonov in December.

Now ranked seventh at 170 pounds, Machado Garry faced 13th-ranked Carlos Prates atop a jam-packed 14-bout card from the T-Mobile Center.

The B/R combat team was in place to take in all the action and deliver a real-time definitive list of the show's winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the app comments.

Exciting fights are nice.

But Machado Garry would far more prefer to have a series of tedious victories rather than adding another fan-friendly loss like the one he had against Rakhmonov in December.

So, while the fans in Kansas City weren’t always enthralled by his approach while outpointing streaking Brazilian contender Prates, don’t expect it to bother him much.

A winner of 15 straight before the loss at UFC 310 on 21 days notice, Machado Garry took on Prates after 25 days notice and did nearly everything according to plan in securing a unanimous decision victory across five rounds in the main event.

Two judges saw it 48-47, or three rounds to two, in Machado Garry’s favor and he made it a clean sweep by getting a 49-46 nod from the third judge. The B/R W/L card matched the majority view and gave the winner the first three rounds before Prates rallied late.

In fact, he had Machado Garry scrambling for survival in the final 60 seconds after some hard ground strikes but was unable to land another that’d warrant a stop by referee Dan Miragliotta.

“(I was) not hurt enough to not know where I was. I was completely in control,” Machado Garry said. “I just wanted to be smart and safe and not stupid. The game plan was to outclass him and I think I did that.”

The win was his ninth in 10 UFC fights while Prates saw both his four-fight octagonal win streak and an overall run of 11 stretching back to 2019 come to an end.

“Perhaps (Machado Garry) is as good as he says he is,” analyst Paul Felder said.

It’s the ending no one wanted.

Instead of riding into retirement on the momentum of a stirring victory, 36-year-old light heavyweight Anthony Smith found himself bloodied by an elbow and battered into a first-round TKO loss by streaking Chinese import Zhang Mingyang.

It was Smith’s 60th pro fight and his third straight defeat, wrapping his UFC career at 13-12, including a title fight loss to Jon Jones at UFC 235 in 209. His last win came 11 months ago, when he submitted Vitor Petrino at UFC 301 in Rio de Janeiro.

“Once I got clipped with that elbow it was bleeding into my eyes,” Smith said. “Five years ago that’s a beatable guy. Father time wins tonight.”

The win was the 12th in a row for Mingyang, who’s earned 10 of them by first-round KO/TKOs and the other two by first-round submissions.

“Boo me again, let me hear that,” he said to a clearly pro-Smith crowd. “If you don’t know, now you know.”

Smith, meanwhile, dropped his gloves in the center of the mat after being moved to tears by a UFC-produced highlight reel featuring tribute cut-ins from several former foes.

“I did that sh*t,” he said. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”

David Onama is billed as a mixed martial artist. Still, because better than 50 percent of his pro wins had come by KO/TKO, he’s most often celebrated for his stand up.

But don’t fool yourself into thinking that means he can’t wrestle.

The Kansas City-based Ugandan was strafed with punches and kicks from Giga Chikadze in the opening round before converting takedowns in rounds two and three that allowed him to control his foe and escape with a close, unanimous decision.

All three judges gave him 29-28 nods for wins in the second and third rounds, matching the B/R W/L card.

“I knew one day I was gonna fight him and I was prepared for this fight,” Onama said. “I was under pressure (fighting in Kansas City) but I knew everything was gonna come.”

It’s his fourth win in a row since he started his UFC run at 2-2 and presumably puts him on the cusp of entering the featherweight rankings given that Chikadze arrived at No. 12 in the division.

“Getting a ranking in Kansas City, Mo., oh man,” Onama said. “I’m speechless right now.”

Randy Brown clearly enjoyed that one.

The New York-based Jamaican exchanged words with welterweight foe Nicolas Dalby before and during their main card fight, and rearranged his facial features in the process.

But when he landed an overhand right amid a back-and-forth exchange in the center of the cage, you could tell the 34-year-old was particularly blissful.

The shot sent Dalby face-first to the mat as Brown strutted past, gestured to his fallen foe and climbed to the top of the fence to bask in the glow.

It was the first time Dalby has been finished in 30 pro fights.

“It feels good knowing that I could take on such a veteran and show what I’m about,” Brown said. “I’m too fast, too big, too slick, too good. I’m gonna be a problem for all these mother f**kers.”

He went a step further by calling out Saturday’s main event winner.

“For me, it’s whatever,” Brown said. “Anybody can get it.”

Sometimes the reactions aren’t instant.

Brazilian middleweight Andre Muniz was backed up to the fence when he was clipped with a left hook, but the immediate vibe was that it wasn’t a decisive shot.

Within moments, though, his legs weighed in.

Muniz’s knees slowly buckled as he folded to the mat and was in a vulnerable position as the man who’d thrown the left, Ikram Aliskerov, pounced with a long series of ground strikes that forced the hand of referee Jason Herzog at 4:54 of the first round.

It was the 32-year-old Russian’s third win in four UFC fights since a Contender Series win in 2022. It was a nice bounce back, too, from a TKO loss to former champ Robert Whittaker in a Fight Night main event last summer in Saudi Arabia.

“Somebody in the top 10, please,” Aliskerov said. “I’ve shown what I can do.”

Blow-by-blow man Brendan Fitzgerald agreed.

“Some people say he’s just a wrestler,” he said, “but the evidence proves otherwise after another KO.”

Referee Miragliotta is unquestionably among the promotion’s best.

He’s big enough to manage the biggest fighters and agile enough to stay in position to react to quick situations.

But Saturday will surely not make his career highlight reel.

The veteran official stepped in prematurely two times on the prelim card alone, reacting to the “clapper” that signals 10 seconds remaining in a round and instead interpreting it as the horn that would signify the round’s actual end.

He moved to separate strawweights Jaqueline Amorim and Polyana Viana as Amorim was in a dominant position with seconds still remaining in the first round of their fight, then tapped Matt Schnell on the back to get him to release the guillotine choke he held on Jimmy Flick before the second round of their prelim feature had come to an end.

Fortunately for Miragliotta, neither interruption proved decisive.

Amorim went on to submit Viana in the second round and Schnell went on to dominate Round 3 on the way to a narrow unanimous decision win.

“I’m not sure what’s happening,” analyst Laura Sanko said. “He’s normally one of the best but it seems like he’s hearing things.”

It’s not the worst habit to get into.

Georgia native Malcolm Wellmaker earned his UFC contract with a walk-off KO on the Contender Series and he kept the violence going in his official debut, leaving Cameron Saaiman in an unconscious heap with a single right hand after just 1:59 of Round 1.

The lanky 30-year-old bantamweight took a right hand as Saaiman leapt in, but he launched his own shot at the same time in accordance with a pre-fight plan set by his trainers.

“We knew that was gonna happen.  We knew that was gonna be the shot,” he said. “He gave me what I wanted and y’all got what you wanted.”

It’s a ninth straight win as a pro and fifth by first-round finish for Wellmaker, who immediately campaigned for a spot on a show in Atlanta in June.

“To come in here for the big finale and do what I did,” he said, “my life is better than I could ever imagine it would be.”

Jaqueline Amorim wore the “biggest favorite of the night” label well.

The perpetually aggressive strawweight got Polyana Viana to the mat early in each of two rounds and ran up better than six minutes of control time before chasing and securing a finish by rear-naked choke at 1:49 of the second.

It was a fourth straight finish and third in a row by submission for the 29-year-old Brazilian, who dropped her UFC debut by unanimous decision two years ago but hadn’t felt the need to get to the scorecards since in wins over Montserrat Conejo Ruiz, Cory McKenna and Vanessa Demopoulos.

She arrived Saturday as a -800 selection.

“I’m always going for the finish. I’m not just here to win fights by decision,” she said. “I think I deserve a top 15 now. I want to be ranked. I want to fight the best.”

Timmy Cuamba believed he had a UFC win streak in him.

But it hadn’t happened through two octagonal appearances, which made an abrupt second-round finish of Roberto Romero–thanks to a punishing jumping knee that left Romero in a stricken heap–even sweeter in its aftermath.

The 26-year-old was a Contender Series winner in 2023 and won again in a smaller promotion five months later, but his first two appearances with the three-letter conglomerate had ended in frustrating decision losses in February and June 2024.

He was in tough again with Romero, a rugged featherweight who’d gone 6-1-1 in the Combate Global promotion before a decision loss to David Onama in his own UFC debut last fall.

“Going into that second round I told myself it’s time to be great. So that’s what I did,” Cuamba said. “My run starts now.”

Main Card

Ian Machado Garry def. Carlos Prates by unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 49-46)

Zhang Mingyang def. Anthony Smith by KO (elbows), 4:03, Round 1

David Onama def. Giga Chikadze by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Abus Magomedov def. Michel Pereira by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Randy Brown def. Nicolas Dalby by KO (punch), 1:39, Round 2

Ikram Aliskerov def. Andre Muniz by KO (punch), 4:54, Round 1

Preliminary Card

Matt Schnell def. Jimmy Flick by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Evan Elder def. Gauge Young by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Chris Gutierrez def. John Castaneda by split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28)

Da'Mon Blackshear def. Alatengheili by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)

Malcolm Wellmaker def. Cameron Saaiman by KO (punch), 1:59, Round 1

Jaqueline Amorim def. Polyana Viana by submission (rear-naked choke), 1:49, Round 2

Timmy Cuamba def. Roberto Romero by KO (knee), 3:55, Round 2

Joselyne Edwards def. Chelsea Chandler by KO (punches), 2:31, Round 1