“The Iron Turtle” Jun-yong Park improved to 9-3 in the UFC and overcame adversity in a victory over fellow middleweight Ismail Naurdiev on the preliminary card at UFC Fight Night: Hill vs. Rountree Jr., Saturday in Baku, Azerbaijan.
After a fun opening round that saw each fighter have their moments landing clean shots, the second round began with controversy. Naurdiev first inadvertently poked Park in the eyes then, moments after the action resumed, he landed an impactful illegal knee while Park was a grounded opponent near the cage.
Instead of Naurdiev being disqualified, Park was able to continue despite his left eye being damaged. Naurdiev was deducted two points for the foul.
The last time a fighter was deducted two points for a single foul during a UFC fight was when Jon Jones landed an illegal knee on Anthony Smith during their infamous 2019 light-heavyweight title fight. Smith had the option of becoming the new 205-pound champ and winning via DQ that night — the way Aljamain Sterling ended up initially winning the bantamweight title from Petr Yan in 2021 — but Smith elected to continue fighting and lost the bout by decision.
Although he could be seen wincing, Park dominated the final round en route to a decision win that had lopsided 29-26, 29-26 and 29-25 scorecards.
Seok-hyun Ko pulled off a significant upset over five-to-one betting favourite Oban Elliott in the featured preliminary bout, winning all three rounds of that welterweight contest.
A pair of women’s bantamweight bouts were also on the preliminary card.
Melissa Mullins vs. Daria Zheleznyakova was a rematch nearly three years in the making after the two met under the banner of French promotion ARES Fighting Championship. England’s Mullins beat Zheleznyakova, a Russian who trains out of France, in that 2022 bout, but Zheleznyakova evened the score with a unanimous decision victory.
Zheleznyakova came out of the gates strong, rocking Mullins with several hard punches within the opening minute of the fight. Mullins recovered, stayed composed and ended up dominating the final three minutes of the opening round. The pair went back and forth over the remainder of the bout with Zheleznyakova’s punching power ultimately being the difference.
Poland’s Klaudia Sygula pulled off the upset of Russia’s Irina Alekseeva with a sweep of the scorecards, controlling most of the action throughout and rocking Alekseeva with a spinning backfist in the third round.
Earlier on the prelims, Russia’s Tagir Ulanbekov edged out Kazakhstan Azat Maksum in an energetic three-round flyweight scrap. Maksum has now lost two consecutive decisions at the UFC level but showed well-rounded skills and excellent takedown defence.
All three judges awarded the bout to Ulanbekov and two even had Ulanbekov winning all three rounds, which was not reflective of how competitive the 15-minute contest at 125 pounds was. Ulanbekov had former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in his corner.
Heavyweights kicked off the action on the prelims with Mohammed Usman getting his hand raised by unanimous decision against Hamdy Abdelwahab in what was a low-level striking match.
Abdelwahab had success in Round 1 with leg kicks before Usman found a home for his straight right hand that ended up being the difference in the final two rounds. Usman, the younger brother of welterweight star Kamaru Usman, got back in the win column after dropping his previous two outings by decision.
A random little tidbit with this matchup, which was more interesting than anything that happened in the cage during the fight, is that with Kamaru winning last week’s Fight Night main event in Atlanta and Mohammed winning the first fight on the UFC Baku card the brothers technically had back-to-back UFC wins — and both happened to pull through as the listed underdogs.
Also, last week’s UFC Atlanta ended with six consecutive decisions and UFC Baku began with six consecutive decisions for a stretch of 12 consecutive UFC bouts that required the judges.
UFC Fight Night: Hill vs. Rountree Jr., took place at Baku Crystal Hall. It was the first UFC event to take place in Azerbaijan.
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