Song Yadong tapped out Deiveson Figueiredo early on Saturday in the main event of a UFC Fight Night in Macau, China, and he used his coach’s signature move to secure the victory.
Song’s longtime coach, former WEC champion and UFC star Urijah Faber, and his entire Team Alpha Male team are notorious for their top-tier guillotine chokes.
So when Figueiredo shot for a takedown late in the second round of a scheduled five-round bantamweight contest, Song used the maneuver to trap his opponent and his tight squeeze forced a furious tap from Figueiredo.
Ironically, the move has also been a go-to technique for Figueiredo, who has five wins via guillotine in his career, including one of his UFC title defences.
Faber finished seven of his 35 career wins using various guillotines and he was mere feet away in Song's corner during Saturday's feature fight.
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Figueiredo, 38, was a two-time champion at 125 pounds before moving up in weight late in 2023 and finding success at 135 pounds.
Despite being a smaller bantamweight, Figueiredo has exclusively fought top competition at 135 pounds the past few years. However, after starting off 3-0 in the weight class, Figueiredo has dropped four of his past five and is nearing the end of his career.
Heilongjiang, China’s Song was coming off a 29-28 decision loss to former bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley in January on the UFC 324 same card that saw Figueiredo lose a unanimous decision to Umar Nurmagomedov.
Adding this win over a fighter as accomplished as Figueiredo is quite the feather in Song’s cap. The Brazilian has defeated fellow champions Alexandre Pantoja, Brandon Moreno and Cody Garbrandt during his career.
Song, 28, entered the weekend as the No. 5-ranked contender in the division and will remain firmly in title contention after this impressive showing.
Just like the recent Fight Night event in Perth, Australia, at the beginning of the month, this UFC Macau card was not catered to a North American audience. Instead, the local crowd got to experience the event in primetime, while fans in North America had to wake up early to watch live.
The main event wasn’t the only 135-pound contest in the spotlight at Galaxy Arena.
Recent flyweight title challenger Kai Asakura made his bantamweight debut and he put Cameron Smotherman to sleep with a highlight-reel left hook.
Asakura sent Smotherman to the canvas early with a right hand and seconds later landed the fight-ending shot that turned off the lights.
The 32-year-old star from Japan is a former RIZIN champion at 135 pounds and he has past wins over former Bellator MMA champs Kyoji Horiguchi and Juan Archuleta. Asakura started his UFC career 0-2 down at 125 pounds, getting submitted by Alexandre Pantoja in their late 2024 title fight and was submitted by Tim Elliott last summer before deciding to move up in weight.
Asakura’s punching power clearly translates up a division and now that he isn’t draining himself as much to make weight, we could begin to see the best version of Asakura going forward.
In other action, Alonzo Menifield silenced the crowd as a two-to-one underdog with a first-round technical knockout of Zhang Mingyang, one of China’s most popular fighters.
Menifield took it to Zhang from the opening moments of the 205-pound contest and the pair traded haymakers until Zhang went down.
The 38-year-old American was put to sleep by Volkan Oezdemir in November but got back into the win column with his first KO win in nearly four years.
Zhang, 27, began his UFC tenure 3-0 with three knockouts, but he has lost two in a row by stoppage in front of the home crowd. Zhang was stopped by Johnny Walker in a Fight Night main event in Shanghai last August.
Sergei Pavlovich sent a reminder to anybody who had forgotten about his knockout power.
Pavlovich is the No. 3-ranked heavyweight contender and was on a two-fight winning streak entering UFC Macau, but he hadn’t finished an opponent in three years.
The 34-year-old needed only 39 seconds to put away his six-foot-eight opponent, Tallison Teixeira, who was also finished in less than 40 seconds last summer against Derrick Lewis.
Pavlovich has won three in a row and said during his post-fight interview he wants to face the winner of the interim heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane, which is the co-main event on the June 14 card at the White House.
“It doesn’t matter to me who wins (between Pereira and Gane),” the Russian said through a translator. “I want to get the winner. I work hard. I work every day. I want the belt.”
Pavlovich is 9-2 since 2019 with seven wins by first-round KO/TKO. His only losses were a three-round decision to countryman Alexander Volkov two years ago and a KO loss to reigning heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall (who remains out with eye injuries) in their 2023 title fight.
Australia’s Jake Matthews nearly finished Carlston Harris several times but had to settle for a one-sided unanimous decision win in welterweight action.
The main card opened with an unfortunate injury to one-time flyweight title challenger Alex Perez.
An inadvertent glancing low blow from Su Mudaerji on an inside leg kick attempt resulted in Perez not being able to continue. The kick caused Perez to begin retching into a bucket, and following a five-minute delay, he was in no condition to resume fighting.
The 125-pound bout was officially ruled a no-contest due to the referee deeming it an unintentional foul.
Saturday’s event was the fifth UFC event in Macau since debuting there in 2012 and the first since 2024, when Figueiredo lost an entertaining five-round Fight Night main event to current 135-pound titleholder Petr Yan.
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