UFC Vegas 60, The Morning After: A Bloodbath In The Apex

Here’s what you may have missed!

With the exception of a ho-hum Heavyweight clash between Tanner Boser and Rodrigo Nascimento, UFC Vegas 60’s ESPN+-streamed main card last night (Sat., Sept. 17 2022) was shockingly violent. Perhaps part of the shock came from a mostly underwhelming undercard, which did not at all prepare us for the chaos to come.

Anthony Hernandez started off the main card right, savaging his opponent, Marc-Andre Barriault, who has a reputation for toughness. And Hernandez gave him every opportunity to prove it. “Fluffy” split him open early in a three-round fight, broke one of his ribs, and spiked him on his brain stem. Then, he sealed the deal by choking him fully unconscious (watch highlights).

Brutal.

As mentioned the card slowed for a moment when the Heavyweights took the stage, but Joe Pyfer woke everyone back up with an execution. Seriously, he dropped Alen Amedovski and stood menacingly over his fallen foe, cracking him one last time for little reason at all in a Mortal Kombat finisher. Andre Fili vs. Bill Algeo had the canvas seeping further after Fili’s shin collided full-on with Algeo’s face, once again in the first round of a fight that lasted for quite some time longer.

As Fili said in the post-fight interview, the blood made everything sticky.

The river really flowed in the co-main event. In one of the very first exchanges of the fight, Chidi Njokuani’s knee opened up one of the gnarliest cuts you’ll ever see between Gregory Rodrigues’ eyes. “Robocop” didn’t seem affected by this third eye opening, promptly biting down on his mouthpiece and firing a whirlwind of right hands.

Again, the fight didn’t just stop because Rodrigues was bleeding all over the place. The doctor must have really been enjoying the display of hemoglobin, because he sent Rodrigues right back out there to keep fighting in the second round despite the fight that a chunk of his facing seemed to be evacuating the premises. In classic “Robocop” fashion, Rodrigues stormed back and battered his foe for the win anyway, but not before he managed to bleed everywhere.

By the main event, the commentary crew was audibly mentioning the smell of blood soaking the air — we’ve come a long way from when UFC was cleaning the mats between fights on FOX! Cory Sandhagen’s sneaky up elbow turned the tide against Song Yadong, also introducing the final and heaviest ripple of the evening.

Yadong kept fighting, but eventually even the fiendish Las Vegas doctor had seen enough. He let Yadong donate his life’s blood to the canvas for three rounds before calling the fight, cementing last night as the bloodiest night in UFC Apex history.

I hope UFC had its plastic surgeon on standby.

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For complete UFC Vegas 60: “Sandhagen vs. Song” results and play-by-play, click HERE.