Renan Barao returned to action tonight at UFC Fight Night: Machida vs Dollaway and picked up an important win that should serve as his first step toward a title shot.
Mitch Gagnon gave almost as good as he got for much of the first two rounds, looking to land some huge shots on the former champion, but Barao was slightly better and in round three was able to get on top and advance for the arm triangle submission victory.
Patrick Cummins defeated a game Antonio Carlos Junior in a fight where the statistics don’t tell the complete story. Cummins outlanded Carlos by a ton, but also spent a lot of time defending against leg submissions, enough so that our official liveblog gave round one as 10-10. Cummins took the fight on the official cards though, winning 30-27 on all three.
Rashid Magomedov beat Elias Silverio with a very impressive performance. Magomedov controlled the action and managed to sneak a finish in by getting a TKO with just seconds left in the third and final round.
Erick Silva did the thing he does where he quickly beats overmatched opponents, putting Mike Rhodes to sleep with a choke in 1:15.
Daniel Sarafian beat Antonio dos Santos Jr. in a very good fight that ended in an unfortunate way. dos Santos dislocated his finger defending against a strike and thought he could ask the ref for a moment to pop it back in. But there’s no “timeouts” in MMA, so he effectively was telling the ref that he couldn’t defend himself due to the injury, resulting in a TKO.