Check out our breakdown of the post-fight bonuses from UFC Fight Night: Nelson vs. Ponzinibbio in Glasgow, Scotland. We tell you who won, who didn’t, and why.
The SSE Hydro, was the home to a… well, it was a day of fights, with six (T)KOs, one submission and five decisions. The hometown fighters lost in three of their four bouts, and even crowd favorites Neil Seery and Gunnar Nelson picked up losses. Even so, the Scottish crowd remained just as raucous as we’ve come to expect from the Celtic nations.
Performances of the Night: Paul Felder and Santiago Ponzinibbio
The Paul Felder vs. Stevie Ray match-up looked destined to be a drawn-out, strategic clinch battle as both men fought for position through the opening minutes. After trading knees and elbows, Felder landed just right on the Scot and dropped him. Ray went out, woke up, scrambled for guard, and was finally taken out by a series of brutal Felder elbows from guard, which earned “The Irish Dragon” a cool $50,000 in bonus money.
Santiago Ponzinibbio came into Glasgow as an underdog against the Icelandic Iceman, but he proved his doubters wrong by landing some precision strikes on the evasive Nelson after a cagey opening. Nelson was more aggressive than we have seen in the past and his striking technique is miles ahead of what it was even a few years ago, but that just played into the hands of the stone-fisted Argentinian assassin, as a clean straight right slipped straight through Gunni’s guard, sending him crashing to the canvas with his eyes rolling to the back of the head.
A couple followup strikes was all it took for the referee to step in and a dazed Nelson even looked like he was ready to grapple with the official for a second. Thanks to Santiago’s gameplan--the Ponzi Scheme, if you will--the ATT fighter walked out with the biggest win of his career and an extra 50 Gs on top of that.
Fight of the Night: Danny Henry vs. Daniel Teymur
The prelim bout between Scotland’s Danny Henry and Sweden’s Daniel Teymur was a fantastic example of mixed martial arts, with the action taking place in every phase of combat, with every limb available. We saw punches, kicks, elbows, knees, even some “spinning shit,” to quote the renowned philosopher Nicholas Diaz. Then, after two rounds of back-and-forth striking action, we saw takedowns, submission attempts, reversals, transitions and ground-and-pound in the final stanza.
The fight wasn’t exactly one-sided, but Henry was clearly the winner after 15 minutes of action. It was great to have a fight with a clear winner that still contains the drama, excitement and tense moments we only normally see from razor-thin wars and both guys thoroughly earned their $50k bonuses.
Attendance: 10,589
Gate: $1.2M
