UFC President Dana White handed out “Fight Night” bonuses to Chan Sung Jung (aka the “Korean Zombie”), Johny Hendricks, Michael McDonald and Edwin Figueroa for their work Saturday night as part of the UFC Fight Night 24 event.
Fighters earned $55,000 for their performances with the “Submission of the Night” going to Jung, the “Knockout of the Night” to Johny Hendricks, and “Fight of the Night” to McDonald and Figueroa.
UFC Fight Night 24 (aka UFC Fight Night: Nogueira vs. Davis) took place at the Key Arena in Seattle, Washington. The main card aired on Spike TV, while five preliminary bouts were streamed live on the internet on the promotions Facebook page.
The event set a record for “UFC Fight Night” events in both gate revenue and attendance. The Seattle event brought in a live gate of $1,182,850, with a reported 14,212 fans in attendance. The next highest attendance for a “Fight Night” event was UFC Fight Night 18 which took place in Nashville, Tennessee back in April 2009. That event drew an attendance of 10,267 with a live gate of $626,077.
The “Korean Zombie” faced Leonard Garcia in a rematch of their “Fight of the Year” bout from last April. Both fighters seemed to have learned something from the last fight and were more technical, but it was Jung who used a Twister submission to end the fight with one second left on the clock in the second round. The Korean became the first fighter to successfully use the submission at a UFC event and was probably a big factor in securing the “Submission of the Night” bonus.
Hendricks took little time in stopping his opponent, T.J. Waldburger, by ending the fight at 1:35 of the first round by TKO. Unfortunately for fans, the bout was not replayed during the Spike TV broadcast.
Luckily, fans got to see McDonald and Figueroa slug it out for three rounds via the Facebook stream in the “Fight of the Night” winner. Figueroa took the fight less than two weeks ago after McDonald’s original opponent backed out due to injury. Both men pushed the pace for three rounds, but it was McDonald who got the better of his opponent, despite Figueroa’s ‘don’t quit’ attitude which prevented him from finishing the fight. McDonald would earn scores of 30-27 from all judges to win a unanimous decision.
HT: Yahoo! Sports for the photo