For the first time in over six years, UFC returned to St. Louis with a Fight Night show headlined by heavyweight knockout artist Derrick Lewis.
Lewis, a fan favorite nicknamed ”The Black Beast”, squared off against Brazilian Rodrigo Nascimento and lost the first round, but bounced back in the second and subsequently scored a TKO stoppage in the third.
In typical Derrick Lewis fashion, he immediately took his pants off. This time, however, he took things one step further as he also decided to pull down his underwear to moon the St. Louis crowd during his in-cage celebration.
With the knockout win, Lewis bounces back into the win column following a decision loss to Jailton Almeida. ”The Black Beast” now has 15 UFC knockout victories to his name.
Full UFC results from St. Louis
In the co-headliner, rising star Joaquin Buckley stepped into the octagon in front of his home crowd to face Nursulton Ruziboev in a welterweight contest.
Buckley, known for crazy knockouts, didn’t get the finish this time around but still managed to put on a rather dominant performance to win by unanimous decision after a fun fight.
Rising light heavyweight contender prospect Carlos Ulberg secured his sixth straight win as he knocked out Alonzo Menifield just 12 seconds into the first round. The stand-out performance landed him an extra 50 000 dollars in bonus money.
The other ”Performance of the Night” bonus went to Diego Ferreira, who overcame early adversity after getting knocked down only to turn things around and end up absolutely smashing the heavy favorite Mateusz Rebecki en route to a late third-round TKO.
Furthermore, Trey Waters and Billy Goff each got a 50K bonus for ”Fight of the Night”.