The only two fighters to survive UFC Champ Ilia Topuria collided on the UFC 320 main card.
A championship double-header takes place in Las Vegas on Saturday as Alex Pereira and Cory Sandhagen go for gold against defending champions Magomed Ankalaev and Merab Dvalishvili.
A few fights before, Josh Emmett and Youssef Zalal met in a top-10 contender bout in the featherweight division.
Emmett and Zalal are the only fighters to make it the distance with the heavy-handed Ilia Topuria, but the veterans wouldn’t need the judges’ scorecards this weekend.
Youssef Zalal scores verbal submission over Josh Emmett at UFC 320
Zalal didn’t break a sweat finishing Emmett at UFC 320.
Zalal took Emmett down to the ground less than 40 seconds into the fight.
Zalal quickly secured the back of Emmett and, at the 90-second mark, Zalal attempted an armbar submission.
Within seconds, Emmett verbally tapped to the submission, with Zalal walking away the winner.
That’s now eight straight wins for Zalal, who called out top contender Lerone Murphy post-fight. UFC commentator Joe Rogan called Zalal’s first-round submission ‘effortless’.
Josh Emmett puked five times in TJ Dillashaw’s training camp
Emmett, 40, said he had felt better than ever after training with former two-time UFC Bantamweight Champion TJ Dillashaw.
Dillashaw’s grueling training sessions out of his garage are the stuff of legend in the MMA world.
Emmett got a taste of what it was like for his latest training camp, puking five times en route to his fight with Zalal. The former interim title challenger even had a puke bucket with his name on it.
“The first workout, I was like, I haven’t felt this in the last four or five camps,” Emmett told Full Send MMA.
“He was telling me people don’t come back after this because they realize how hard it is,” Emmett said.
“Everything’s mental and that’s my strongest attribute. So, I just kept coming back and I was throwing up. He had a red bucket that had my name on it and I was like, f— that bucket…
“I think it was like the fourth time that I didn’t throw up…
“But I take that back because the fourth time I didn’t throw up, I celebrated. I went home. I had to pull over because I threw up in my mouth. I had to spit it out,” Emmett admitted.