Daniil Donchenko continued his sizzling streak Saturday within the featured preliminary bout on a UFC Battle Evening occasion on the Meta Apex in Las Vegas.
The touted 24-year-old striker who received the welterweight match on Season 33 of The Final Fighter final 12 months prolonged his total profitable streak to eight with a radical dismantling of Alex Morono.
Ukraine’s Donchenko repeatedly harm Morono’s left leg with exhausting low-kicks and blended up his assaults en path to touchdown 100 vital strikes in quarter-hour earlier than getting his hand raised because of a clear sweep of the scorecards.
Morono has now misplaced 4 straight as he fell to 13-10 with one no-contest within the UFC. The 35-year-old from Texas has absorbed 100 or extra vital strikes in three of his previous 4 losses and was completed with strikes within the different loss on his present streak.
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In the meantime, Nikolay Veretennikov wasted little time towards fellow welterweight Niko Value in one other 170-pound contest.
Veretennikov unleashed a six-strike mixture early within the first spherical that left Value leaning towards the cage, being held up by the referee, who was waving off the struggle. The 36-year-old from Kazakhstan returned to the win column after dropping a call to Punahele Soriano again in October.
Value has now misplaced three in a row and 5 of his previous six, and that would imply his UFC tenure is nearing its finish. The 36-year-old American has been within the UFC since late 2016 and has at all times confronted prime competitors, however his report within the group has fallen to 8-10 with a pair of no-contests. Six of his losses within the UFC have been by KO/TKO.
4 fighters on the prelims missed weight on Friday, which resulted in three consecutive catchweight contests.
Opponents Wang Cong and Eduarda Moura each missed weight forward of their scheduled ladies’s flyweight bout. Cong weighed 127.5 kilos and Moura a good 127, however neither athlete was fined as a result of their opponent additionally missed weight. Cong ended up profitable a unanimous determination. That’s now three consecutive determination wins for Cong as Moura fell to 3-2 within the UFC.
Muin Gafurov missed weight by a whopping 5 kilos forward of his bantamweight matchup with Jakub Wiklacz, forfeited 25 per cent of his purse to his opponent, and ended up tapping out on the literal final second of a tightly contested contest.
The struggle had been aggressive for many of the three rounds, however Wiklacz managed to lock onto a guillotine choke within the waning seconds of the ultimate spherical and it resulted in Gafurov clearly tapping out with each fingers simply because the horn sounded.
The referee didn’t initially wave off the struggle as a submission win, nevertheless, following an official video replay evaluation from the Nevada State Athletic Fee it was rightfully dominated a third-round submission victory for Wiklacz.
Satirically, considered one of Gafurov’s cornermen for the struggle was former bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili, who infamously misplaced his second UFC bout through technical submission that occurred as the ultimate horn sounded.
Poland’s Wiklacz, 29, was coming off a profitable UFC debut in October when he edged out touted former Bellator MMA champ Patchy Combine at UFC 320. He would’ve gotten his hand raised towards Gafurov no matter whether or not it was dominated a submission or went to the scorecards, since Spherical 3 was formally scored by the three cageside judges earlier than the ultimate submission ruling was decided and all three judges had Wiklacz profitable two of the three rounds.
UFC newcomer Gianni Vazquez accepted a bantamweight matchup with Javid Basharat solely on a number of days’ discover, however ended up chubby by 5 kilos. Vazquez forfeited 25 per cent of his purse to Basharat, who finally received a unanimous determination to snap a three-fight winless streak.
Basharat’s unique opponent, Stated Nurmagomedov, was faraway from the cardboard in the course of the week as a consequence of visa points.
Additionally on the prelims, Ketlen Souza snapped a two-fight skid with a unanimous determination win over Bruna Brasil at flyweight. Klaudia Sygula kicked off the cardboard with a unanimous determination win over Priscila Cachoeira in a ladies’s bantamweight matchup.
UFC Battle Evening: Bautista vs. Oliveira was the primary Battle Evening card of 2026 and the primary occasion on the Apex in almost two months.
