The main event stole the show at UFC 234, and picked up Fight of the Night honors for Anderson Silva and Israel Adesanya in the process.
It wasn’t the main event that was originally planned. It wasn’t necessarily a PPV worthy card. But at UFC 234, Adesanya vs. Silva delivered. For parts of their three-round battle, it felt as if we’d gone back in time. Anderson Silva turned back the clock in Melbourne, and while he came up short against ‘The Last Stylebender,’ he gave Israel Adesanya his best. It was enough, ever so briefly, to make fans forget the loss of Robert Whittaker vs. Kelvin Gastelum, after Whittaker, the UFC’s luckless middleweight champ, was forced to withdraw with a hernia hours before the fight.
💰 B O N U S E S 💰
POTN: @MontanaMarie211 & @K_O_E_KINGKAGE
FOTN: @Stylebender vs @SpiderAnderson pic.twitter.com/dTPWeBJAkT
— UFC (@ufc) February 10, 2019
That picked up Adensanya and Silva the UFC 234 Fight of the Night bonus. For ‘The Spider,’ it was his first Fight of the Night since facing Michael Bisping in 2016.
On the Performance of the Night side, Montana De La Rosa picked up an extra $50,000 for her submission of Nadia Kassem. That fight ended in a number of transitions leading to a final arm-bar that forced Kassem to tap.
The second Performance bonus, meanwhile, went to Devonte Smith, for his devastating finish of Dong Hyun Ma. After breaking into the UFC on the Contender Series, Smith has now won two straight.
