Antonio Carvalho picked up his second win in a row in the UFC by taking a less-than-thrilling split decision victory over Rodrigo Damm in their UFC 154 featherweight bout.The story of the fight was Carvalho’s damaging leg kicks, which busted up Damm’s leg very badly. Damm landed some hard strikes, but he didn’t really push the pace enough to inflict any serious damage. In the end, that was the difference. The scores were 29-28, 28-29, and 29-28.
After a minute of feeling each other out, Damm landed the first significant strike with a solid straight right. Carvalho landed some nice inside and outside leg kicks, while Damm responded with some of his own. The pace was pretty slow overall though. Damm’s leg was pretty battered by Carvalho’s kicks.
Carvalho went back to kicking the leg in round two, while Damm tried to load up his big right. Carvalho slipped on a kick, and Damm jumped right over him and took his back. Carvalho scrambled away in a fun sequence though. The round was just as tentative as the first though. Damn did land a nice left hook, but ate a bunch of kicks in return. They finally flurried a bit at the end of the round, with Carvalho landed a stiff right to the chops.
Neither man landed much of anything for the first 90 seconds of the final round, and the crowd started to turn on them a bit. They exchanged a few kicks, and Damm landed two big rights. Carvalho connected with his own right in return though. Damnn finally started to show some urgency for a few seconds, then settled back into inactivity again. Pato turned it up with 10 seconds to go, but there wasn’t anything there.
UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva was in Damm’s corner for the bout.