The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday brought its hallowed Octagon to Washington, D.C., where former Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem locked horns with the unbeaten Jairzinho Rozenstruik in the UFC on ESPN 7 main event at Capital One Arena. While there were a number of memorable performances, five stood out.
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5. Billy Quarantillo
Quarantillo obliterated Jacob Kilburn in a legitimate contender for “Beatdown of the Year,” as he submitted the 24-year-old organizational newcomer with a triangle choke in the second round of their featherweight confrontation. A short-notice fill-in for Chris Fishgold, Kilburn raised the white flag 3:18 into Round 2 but not before he absorbed a horrendous beating that was difficult to watch. A former King of the Cage champion, Quarantillo bit down on a guillotine choke early in the first round, settled in top position and achieved full mount before he uncorked a sustained burst of punches and elbows. He hunted a rear-naked choke at times but returned to battering Kilburn when an opportunity to finish did not present itself. Quarantillo delivered a takedown to start the middle stanza, applied ferocious ground-and-pound once more and then transitioned from an arm-triangle choke to an armbar before cinching the triangle.
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4. Rob Font
Font won for the fifth time in seven appearances, as he took a unanimous decision from former Legacy Fighting Alliance champion Ricky Simon in a three-round bantamweight feature. All three judges sided with Font: 29-28, 29-28 and 30-27. Simon had the Leominster, Massachusetts, native reeling midway through the first round, as he corralled him with a half nelson and landed a series of knees to the face along the fence. Font withstood the adversity, extended the fight and allowed his skills to do the rest. He countered with chopping right hands and uncorked uppercuts at opportune times, but he did his best work with the jab, routinely snapping back Simon’s head and bloodying his nose.
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3. Tim Means
Means created an opening and exploited it to the fullest, as the former multi-division King of the Cage titleholder submitted Thiago Alves with a guillotine choke in the first round of their featured welterweight prelim. Means sealed the deal 2:38 into Round 1, authoring his first submission victory since April 2015. Alves enjoyed some early success with a right cross-left hook combination and a wicked body kick that left a footprint on the left side of his counterpart’s torso. However, Means was undeterred. “The Dirty Bird” marched forward, floored Alves with a straight left, swarmed him with follow-up punches and snatched the guillotine with the Brazilian in a seated position.
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2. Aspen Ladd
Ladd rebounded from her first professional defeat—a 16-second technical knockout loss to Germaine de Randamie in July—and did so in resounding fashion, as she put away Yana Kunitskaya with punches in the third round of their featured women’s bantamweight encounter. Ladd drew the curtain 33 seconds into Round 3. Kunitskaya extracted some fleeting hope with knees from the clinch and occasional leg kicks, but she lacked the weaponry necessary to give her hyper-aggressive opponent real pause. Ladd leveled her with a left hook at the start of the third round, followed up with punches and advanced to the back. From there, a volley of unanswered shots to the side of the head forced referee Keith Peterson’s hand.
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1. Bryce Mitchell
The former V3 Fights champion submitted Alliance MMA export Matt Sayles with a rarely seen twister in the first round of their featherweight scrap. Mitchell closed the door 4:20 into Round 1, executing the second successful twister in UFC history. Chan Sung Jung performed the first at Leonard Garcia’s expense in 2011. Once Sayles hit the deck, the writing was on the wall. Mitchell floated from one dominant position to the next, as the Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt moved from side control to mount to the back before he triangled his counterpart’s legs, isolated an arm and cranked on the neck for a quick tapout.
Photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC (Getty Images)
