Fight Facts: UFC Fight Night 146
Fight Facts is a breakdown of all of the interesting information and Octagon oddities on every card, with some puns, references and portmanteaus to keep things fun. These deep stat dives delve into the numbers, providing historical context and telling the stories behind those numbers.
* * *
Advertisement
TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC EVENTS: 470
The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday traveled to Wichita, Kansas, for the first time in the promotion’s history, bringing along a fun card with some solid matchups. UFC Fight Night 146 featured an incredibly unusual verbal tapout, a powerful striker tying the all-time knockout record at heavyweight and a gritty veteran getting knocked out for the first time in his career.
10 MILLION STRONG AND GROWING: After heading to
Kansas for the first time, the UFC has now touched down in 38 of
the 50 states in America. Compared to Bellator
MMA, the UFC has been to four more states, although Bellator
traveled to West Virginia in 2012 and Hawaii in 2018 -- two
destinations in which the UFC has not yet appeared.
SO MUCH FOR THE HOMECOMING: Seven American-born fighters competed against fighters born outside the United States -- Beneil Dariush was born in Iran but moved to the U.S. when he was 9 -- and six were defeated by foreign-born opponents. Only Anthony Rocco Martin won against a non-American fighter, beating Brazilian Sergio Moraes by decision.
MUST-SEE TV: By earning a “Fight of the Night” bonus for their main event tilt, Junior dos Santos and Derrick Lewis moved themselves into a first-place tie with Mark Hunt and Stipe Miocic for the most FOTN bonuses won by a heavyweight in UFC history. They have three each. Dos Santos is the only one of the four fighters to have won all of his “Fight of the Night”-winning battles.
CLASH OF THE TITANS: The “Fight of the Night” scrap between dos Santos and Lewis was the first heavyweight bout to earn that bonus since Alexander Volkov tussled with Stefan Struve at UFC Fight Night 115 in 2017.
TENS FOR EVERYONE: By knocking out “The Black Beast” in the second round, dos Santos scored his 10th KO as a UFC heavyweight, tying Lewis and Cain Velasquez for the most in divisional history.
SENIOR DOS SANTOS: In picking up his 15th win inside the Octagon, dos Santos is now one victory shy of the all-time UFC heavyweight record, which is held by Andrei Arlovski and Frank Mir.
NUCLEAR NICO: After a back-and-forth first round, Niko Price scored a knockout of Tim Means. In his 13 career victories, Price has finished 12 of those opponents -- including nine in the first round -- and has gone the distance only once in his career.
THE DURABLE BIRD: In getting finished by Price, Means suffered his first loss by strikes in his 41-fight career. In his previous 10 losses, he had lost by technical knockout one time, although it was the result of an injury sustained against Luke Caudillo in 2004.
ORGANIZED OMARI: When he took a unanimous decision from Tim Boetsch, Omari Akhmedov picked up his sixth career win on the scorecards. He now owns seven knockout victories, six decision wins and five submission victories, while having suffered four losses.
HE MADE HIM SAY ‘MATTE’: Zak Ottow verbally submitted with Alex Morono raining elbows upon him, earning a rare submission-to-strikes loss. He is one of the few fighters inside the promotion to verbally tap from strikes and the first to submit to strikes since David Branch tapped out to Luke Rockhold’s punches at UFC Fight Night 116 in 2017.
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into UFC Fight Night 146, Lewis (28 fights) and Rothwell (46 fights) had never lost back-to-back bouts, Grant Dawson had never fought beyond the second round (13 fights) and Jeff Hughes had never lost on the scorecards (11 fights).
HIGH-FLYING MAN: In every one of his UFC bouts other than his debut, dos Santos has walked out to Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” from the “Rocky” soundtrack. Dos Santos now celebrates a record of 14-4 with the track, including nine knockouts.
RIP KEITH FLINT: Akhmedov walked out to “Diesel Power” by The Prodigy and won against Boetsch. Over the years, several other fighters, including Travis Browne, Takanori Gomi and Vernon White, have walked out to songs by influential British electronic band The Prodigy. Akhmedov is the first to use a song by the group since Gomi used “Firestarter” at UFC on Fox 16, where he faced Joe Lauzon in 2015.
THE AC/DC CURSE?: Dan Moret made his walk to the cage accompanied by “Hells Bells” by AC/DC and dropped a decision to Alex White. Throughout UFC history, no band or artist with at least 25 recorded uses has a win percentage below .400, other than AC/DC (.362).
Contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the "Eminem Curse" in 2012, and writing for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.
Related Articles