For Demetrious Johnson, a prolonged stretch of good fortune. On July 19, his wife Destiny gave birth to their first child. On Saturday, he retained his UFC flyweight championship with his first finish victory since 2010. And later in the night, he was awarded an extra $50,000 for the best submission of UFC on FOX 8.
Johnson stopped John Moraga with an armbar at 3:43 of the fifth round, making him only the fourth man in UFC history to stop an opponent in the fifth round.
He joined Ricco Rodriguez (against Randy Couture), BJ Penn (against Diego Sanchez) and Anderson Silva (against Chael Sonnen) on that short list.
The evening’s Knockout of the Night award was a fierce subject of debate, according to UFC president Dana White, but in the end, it went to Melvin Guillard.
Guillard knocked Mac Danzig cold with a stinging left followed by hellacious hammerfists on the ground.
The other contender for the award was Robbie Lawler, who crushed the durable Bobby Voelker with a head kick and ground strike.
The Fight of the Night award went to Ed Herman and Trevor Smith. The two landed an event-high total of 239 combined strikes, surpassing even the total of the five-round main event. The two traded bombs for the duration of the bout before Herman prevailed in a tight split-decision.
The split-decision was one of four on the night, tying a UFC single-event record.