The athletes on the UFC Seattle prelims were not messing around or wasting any time Saturday night.
None of the seven preliminary bouts required any judges. In fact, none of the matchups even needed a third round.
Notably, Ricky Simon snapped a three-fight losing streak in style.
The bantamweight stalwart is from the Pacific Northwest and had the crowd at Climate Pledge Arena on their feet when he put Javid Basharat to sleep with a picture-perfect right hand in the first round of their 135-pound encounter.
The 32-year-old who fights out of Vancouver, Wash., said it was “a dream come true” to earn a win like that in his home state.
Simon connected flush on a one-two down the pipe and Basharat was unconscious before he hit the canvas. Basharat, 29, is now winless in his past three outings after beginning his pro MMA career 14-0.
Light-heavyweight sluggers Ion Cutelaba and Ibo Aslan swung wild and traded clubbing punches early and often during their featured preliminary contest, but it was Cutelaba who used some veteran savvy and changed course to a submission attack.
The 31-year-old from Moldova handed Aslan his second pro loss and first in the UFC when he locked up a tight arm-triangle choke moments after hopping into mount position on the ground.
Cutelaba has a go-out-on-your-shield fighting mentality and has now won three of his past four bouts since the start of 2023. Prior to that, he had only managed a 5-8-1 UFC record and had been finished in seven of them.
In other action at 205 pounds, Modestas Bukauskas kicked off the early prelims with a highlight-reel knockout of Raffael Cerqueira.
Bukauskas hurt Cerqueira and unloaded with a nine-punch combination that rendered Cerqueira out on his feet before slumping to the ground, pulling shades of Phil Baroni’s crazy KO of Dave Menne from way back in the day.
Longtime former Bellator fighter Austin Vanderford made good on his short-notice UFC debut with a technical knockout win over Nikolay Veretennikov.
Vanderford leaned on his quality wrestling skills to dictate where the action took place and after trapping his opponent’s arm along the cage during the second round, he forced the referee to step in and halt the action due to repeated unanswered strikes.
The 34-year-old was only just added to the UFC roster and this event earlier in the week. Veretennikov lashed out in frustration following the loss and shoved Vanderford after the fight was over before security quickly stepped in.
The card began with five consecutive KO/TKO wins before Melquizael Costa changed things up for fight fans watching as he tapped Andre Fili with a nifty submission victory.
Costa craftily caught Fili in a one-armed guillotine late in the opening round of their featherweight contest and Fili couldn’t escape.
Fili has alternated wins and losses over his past six fights and is 12-11 with one no-contest during his 24-fight UFC tenure that began against Max Holloway back in 2014.
Costa has two stoppage wins in a row and got his hand raised in three of his past four since he made his UFC debut two years ago at UFC 283.
Mansur Abdul-Malik is considered a blue-chip prospect in the 185-pound division and he proved he can fight through some adversity in a victory over Nick Klein, a fellow alumnus of the most recent season of Dana White’s Contender Series.
Abdul-Malik, 27, improved to 8-0 and maintained his 100 per cent finishing rate after overpowering Klein with powerful punches along the fence in the second round.
Klein rocked Abdul-Malik midway through the opening round with a spinning elbow to take the momentum and put Abdul-Malik on the defensive until he was able to regain his bearings and implement his offence in the second.
“That was not a good performance by me. Period. Point blank,” Abdul-Malik said of his TKO win. “I could’ve done a lot better but I’m grateful. Onto the next.”
In other middleweight action, Nursulton Ruziboev knocked out Eric McConico early in the second round of their bout to improve to 3-1 under the banner.
Saturday’s event was the first time the UFC had returned to Seattle since 2013.
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