by UFC on ESPN: Machado Garry vs. Prates was held live tonight from the T-Mobile center in Kansas City. After taking the prior weekend off to honor WWE WrestleMania and Easter, the UFC was back and the action was intense all night long.
Here is your full breakdown in case you may have missed anything.
The Prelims
The card started with four straight brutal finishes. Joselyne Edwards KO’d Chelsea Chandler in 2:31 to win her 2nd straight fight and improve her UFC record to 6-4. Timothy Cuamba hit a perfectly placed highlight reel flying knee to take out Roberto Romero at the 3:55 mark of the second round. We then saw our first submission of the night as Jaqueline Amorim sunk in a rear naked choke on Polyana Viana in the second round to win. The final finish of the prelims came when Malcom Wellmaker knocked out Cameron Saaiman in just 1:59.
It was a hot way to start the night before it slowed down drastically as the final 4 fights of the undercard ended in routine decisions with not to much to talk about.
The main card.
Much like the undercard, the main card started off with fireworks. Ikram Aliskerov and Andre Munoz started off slow before both pouring it in on the closing seconds of the first round with an exchange that led to Munoz getting knocked out with 6 seconds left in the round.
The same could be said for Randy Brown who knocked out Nicholas Daly. One could make a case for Daly winning on points until he made the mistake to try and stand and trade with Brown who ended up knocking him out cold at the 1:39 mark of the second round. For Brown, it was a KO of the night candidate bomb in which he landed. This improves his UFC record to 14-6 and 20-6 overall. For Brown, this was also his 8th career knockout and easily his best.
In shocking fashion, the night then came to a screeching halt as the Michel Pereira vs Abusupiyan Magomedov was one of the worst fights in a very long time. This fight had the potential to be the show stealer and instead was an absolute disaster that the fans crapped on, even going as far to have KC Chiefs chants during the contest. The win went to Magomedov on name value alone as the crowd went mild with the decision. Adding to the comedy was the fact that Magomedov claimed he “made it exciting for the fans”, in his post fight interview. This was a costly loss for Pereira who has now lost two straight after being on an eight win streak only a few months ago.
David Onama and Giga Chikadze put on a slightly better fight, but at 29-28 it was a bit of a snoozefest spent mostly on the ground. It was then that Anthony Smith fought in his 60th and final career fight. Not exactly a legendary career as Smith only came into it with a 13-9 record, so nothing really of note on his resume. Like most of his career, Smith went out on his back, beaten and bloodied as Zhang Mingyang stopped Smith in just minutes. Smith got destroyed and became so bloody the ref had no choice but to stop it before it got even worse.
Ian Machado Garry had won 15 straight to start his career before losing his fight to Shavkat Rakhmnov last December by a slim decision. Tonight he bounced back in a big way with a decisive 49-46 victory across the board over Carlos Prates. Garry dominated for the first found and half rounds before a scary final 30 seconds that almost saw Prates steal it. Garry hung on to improve to 16-1.
A solid night of fights.
