Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone got all kinds of violent at UFC on Fox 10 Saturday, brutalizing Adriano Martins with a vicious head kick to earn a first-round knockout victory.
The official stoppage came at 4:40 of the opening stanza.
Most of the round unfurled with minimal action. Cerrone landed leg kicks more or less at will, and Martins seemed content to simply absorb them. “Cowboy” seemed content to ride that line of offense to an easy win in the round.
But the leg kicks opened up Martins’ defenses at the top. Cerrone went upstairs and the kick was there. He planted his right shin almost perfectly along Martins’ jaw line, and Martins appeared to lose consciousness almost instantly. Martins stiffened as he collapsed to the ground. Cerrone swarmed in but, in a display of good sportsmanship, held off on any academic ground shots on the unconscious Brazilian.
With the win, Cerrone, 30, moves to 22-6-1 as a pro. He has now won two straight. In his last fight, Cerrone defeated Evan Dunham by submission in the second round.
The loss drops the 31-year-old Martins to 25-7. Martins, a talented jiu-jitsu player with heavy hands, is now 1-1 in the UFC octagon. This was his first defeat in his last seven fights.
The win also netted him a $50,000 Knockout of the Night bonus, and that might have been goal No. 1 for “Cowboy” all along. Just last week, Cerrone said in an interview that he was “broke,” and as such hoping to fight six times in 2014. If he can keep winning bonuses like this one, he shouldn’t have to worry much about money for a while. And that is by no means far-fetched. In his win over Dunham, he took home a check for pulling off the Submission of the Night. Saturday’s bonus took Cerrone’s career post-fight bonus total to eight.
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