After a relatively quiet start to the night, business picked up once the main card started on Saturday night at the UFC APEX, with Caio Borralho closing out the night by establishing himself as a legitimate contender in the middleweight division.
Paired off with former title challenger Jared Cannonier in his first main event assignment, Borralho rose to the occasion, ratcheting up his output and running away from “Tha Killa Gorilla” down the stretch to earn a unanimous decision win.
Most observers believed the two men had split the first four rounds, alternating back and forth to where the fight seemingly hung in the balance heading into the final stanza. While Cannonier popped off his stool with energy, it was Borralho who was the more aggressive and effective early in the frame, taking the fight to Cannonier and slowly starting to pull away.
With 90 seconds remaining, “The Natural” connected with a shot that seemed to short-circuit Cannonier’s central processing system, causing him to fall backwards to the canvas two beats after the punch landed. Borralho chased him to the mat and looked to secure an arm triangle choke to no avail, but had already done more than enough to salt away the win.
This was a massive effort for the 31-year-old Sao Paulo native. In his first bout with a Top 5 opponent and fighting five rounds, Borralho saved his best for the last five minutes, advancing to 7-0 in the UFC with the victory, while extending his overall winning streak to 14 straight and his unbeaten streak to 17 fights in the process.
He called for a clash with middleweight Dricus Du Plessis in his post-fight interview with Michael Bisping, doubling down on previous requests to face the South African. While that fight is unlike to happen next given the congestion at the top of the 185-pound weight class, Borralho is now in the title conversation, and should get another marquee assignment next time out.
In the co-main event, Tabatha Ricci picked up her second win of the year and the biggest victory of her career, edging out Angela Hill on the scorecards following a thoroughly entertaining back-and-forth battle.
“Baby Shark” took the fight to the veteran straight away, with Hill happy to match her pace, leading to 15 minutes of largely non-stop action. The strawweights fired off strikes at high volume, with only limited time spent on the canvas and the moments where they fought in the clinch remaining full of action.
All three judges saw the fight in favour of the 29-year-old Ricci, who registered a split decision win over Tecia Pennington earlier this year to get things moving in the right direction again, and takes another step forward in the division by out-hustling Hill, moving to 6-1 inside the Octagon when fighting in the 115-pound weight class.
The Ultimate Fighter added two more fighters to its ranks on Saturday night in Las Vegas, as Mairon Santos and Ryan Loder scored second-round stoppage wins in their respective tournament finales to close out Season 32 of the long-running reality TV competition.
Santos, from trains at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, knocked out fellow Team Grasso representative Kaan Ofli with a left hook to the jaw in a finish reminiscent of Carlos Condit’s knockout win over Dan Hardy at UFC 120 in London. One fight later, Loder worked through a competitive opening frame against Robert Valentin before putting the Swiss middleweight on the canvas early in the second and working to a mounted crucifix, where a string of unanswered elbows brought the fight to a close.
Both men shone during the season and made the absolute most of their opportunities back at the UFC APEX, putting themselves in the company of nine former titleholders and myriad contenders that have previously earned the distinction of winning The Ultimate Fighter.
While the welterweight division already features ascending talents like Shavkat Rakhmonov, Ian Machado-Garry, and Jack Della Maddalena, 25-year-old Michael Morales made it clear that his name needs to be added to that list on Saturday night.
The Dana White’s Contender Series grad registered a first-round stoppage win over divisional stalwart Neil Magny, pushing his record to 5-0 in the Octagon and 17-0 overall in the process. After getting controlled along the fence in the early moments of the fight, Morales connected with a spinning back elbow on the break, dropping the veteran and chasing him to the ground. From there, he climbed into mount, flowed as Magny tried to escape, and pounded out the finish.
Morales looked like a potential contender when he earned his contract and has steadily been working his way forward in the division ever since, registering a pair of victories in each of his first two years on the roster. While every fight is different, he dispatched Magny quicker than both Rakhmonov (second-round submission) and Machado-Garry (unanimous decision), and should join those two and “Della” in the rankings next week.
Gerald Meerschaert claimed a place in the UFC record book with a come-from-behind finish of Edmen Shahbazyan in the main card opener.
After controlling the opening stanza, Shahbazyan hurt Meerschaert with a shot to the body early in the second, chasing him to the canvas and unloading a torrent of blows in hopes of securing the stoppage. But Meerschaert survived, and after getting back to his feet, put “The Golden Boy” on his back in the center of the Octagon, attacking an arm-triangle choke that left Shahbazyan dead to rights.
With the finish, the Milwaukee native moved passed long-time titleholder and MMA icon Anderson Silva for the most stoppages in UFC middleweight history. It’s only fitting that it came this way, as “GM3” has made these exact types of efforts his calling card over the course of his lengthy UFC career.
Wang Cong announced herself as a talented new name to watch in the flyweight division to open Saturday’s show, needing just 62 seconds to knockout Victoria Leonardo to claim her third win of the year and sixth consecutive victory overall to begin her professional MMA career.
The 32-year-old, who holds a kickboxing win over Valentina Shevchenko from earlier in their respective careers, showed out in May in a non-tournament Road to UFC appearance, and upped the ante here, blasting Leonardo with a clean one-two in the center of the Octagon that sent the DWCS alum crashing to the canvas in a heap. Following her win, Wang called for a main card fight in Macau later this year, mentioning Casey O’Neill as a potential opponent.
Wang’s performance was the high point of the prelims, as each of the remaining four fights went the distance, with three of the four ending in split decisions. While they were competitive, entertaining affairs, they couldn’t live up to the electric jolt “The Joker” delivered right out of the chute.
Before the event kicked off, it was announced that the matchup between TUF 32 alums Zygimantas Ramaska and Nathan Fletcher had been scrapped due to a medical issue on Fletcher’s side, continuing a run of unfortunate luck for both men.
Ramaska was declared unable to compete in the semifinals after suffering a facial fracture in his quarterfinal win, leaving him stuck watching as Guillermo Torres replaced him and dropped a clear decision to Santos. As for Fletcher, he dropped a two-round decision to Ofli in the opening round of the featherweight competition, learning after the fact that he suffered a broken fibula early in the contest that took him out of the running to fill in for Ramaska.
It was announced during the broadcast that Ramaska and Fletcher will meet when the UFC returns to action on Saturday, September 7.