Credit:Getty/UFC
Credit:Getty/UFC
Credit:Getty/UFC
Malcolm
Wellmaker followed his spectacular
Dana White’s Contender Series win with a similar effort in his
Octagon debut.
Wellmaker earned a $50,000 “Performance of the Night” bonus for his
knockout of Cameron
Saaiman in a preliminary bantamweight clash at UFC
Kansas City on Saturday night. The Augusta, Georgia, native
sent his foe crashing to the floor with a counter right hook,
abruptly ending their bout at the 1:59 mark of Round 1. Wellmaker
earned a UFC deal with a first-round KO of Adam
Bramhald on the Contender Series this past August.
Elsewhere, Mingyang
Zhang received a $50,000 “Performance of the Night” award for
spoiling Anthony
Smith’s retirement bout in the evening’s light heavyweight
co-main event. Zhang busted his opponent open with an elbow early
and went to work from there, ultimately finishing “Lionheart” with
a barrage of elbows on the canvas 4:03 into the opening stanza.
Finally, Randy Brown
and Nicolas
Dalby took home “Fight of the Night” honors and $50,000 apiece
for a thrilling scrap at welterweight. While Dalby landed a
knockdown in the opening period, “Rude Boy” mangled his adversary’s
nose and struck the fight’s decisive blow: a right hook that
rendered the Dane unconscious at the 1:39 mark of Round 2.