Ateba Gautier made it look easy in the featured preliminary bout Saturday in Las Vegas at UFC 320.
The 23-year-old knockout artist from Cameroon improved to 3-0 in the UFC and earned yet another first-round stoppage victory by putting away short-notice opponent Treston Vines by technical knockout in under two minutes.
Gautier was originally scheduled to face Ozzy Diaz, who withdrew earlier this week due to injury. The rising star is now 9-1 in mixed martial arts with eight consecutive KO/TKO wins with all but one occurring in the opening round.
“The Silent Assassin” earned a UFC contract with a second-round stoppage of Yura Naito one year ago on the Contender Series and is off to a red-hot start to his UFC career after stopping Jose Medina with a knee in March and knocking out Robert Valentin with punches in just 70 seconds in July.
Gautier has faced almost zero adversity through his first three UFC appearances.
Vines was outsized and outmatched, getting dropped with a knee early and rocked again with a series of elbows and punches along the fence before the referee stepped in to halt the action. The 29-year-old American fighting out of Alabama fell to 10-4 as a pro with all four of those losses being via first-round KO/TKO.
JooSang Yoo was full of confidence against Daniel Santos and showboated early on but got caught in the second round and lost via knockout. Yoo was coming off a highlight-reel 28-second knockout of Jeka Saragih in his UFC debut in June. Santos has now won four in a row in the UFC. The bout was originally scheduled as a featherweight contest but was changed to a 153-pound catchweight at Friday’s weigh-in.
Patchy Mix fell to 0-2 in the UFC after dropping a split decision to UFC newcomer Jakub Wiklacz. Mix relied mostly on his strong grappling base to control the action for most of the three-round bantamweight matchup but Wiklacz landed more strikes and did enough throughout the bout for two judges to give him the edge in two of the three rounds.
Wiklacz, 29 from Poland, was the bantamweight champion in the Polish organization KSW prior to signing with the UFC. Mix, 32 from New York, is a former Bellator MMA champion with notable wins over Sergio Pettis, Magomed Magomedov and Kyoji Horiguchi. Mix lost his UFC debut in June when he dropped a decision to Mario Bautista at UFC 316.
Yana Santos (née Kunitskaya) overcame a late comeback attempt from Macy Chiasson to hang on and get her hand raised via unanimous decision. Santos fought angry as this was the fourth time of her UFC career that saw her fight an opponent that had missed weight. Chiasson missed the non-title bantamweight limit by a pound and a half on Friday and was fined 25 per cent of her purse.
Ramiz Brahimaj came through as an underdog for the third consecutive fight as he extended his winning streak and submitted Austin Vanderford in the second round of their welterweight matchup. Vanderford had never previously been submitted in his mixed martial arts career. Brahimaj landed a head kick that split his opponent’s forehead open and later locked up a tight guillotine choke that forced a tap.
Edmen Shahbazyan kept rolling, picking up his third consecutive win as he stopped Andre Muniz late in the opening round of their middleweight bout.
Punahele Soriano is known for his punching power but the welterweight decided to rely on his wrestling advantage against Nikolay Veretennikov. Soriano was able to repeatedly take the fight to the mat, land ground strikes and avoid Veretennikov’s submission attempts en route to sweeping the scorecards.
Farid Basharat got a unanimous decision win over fellow bantamweight Chris Gutierrez by taking the first two rounds and dropping the third.
Veronica Hardy opened the preliminary card with a unanimous decision win over Brogan Walker. It was the seventh consecutive appearance for Hardy that saw her compete in the first fight of the night.
