The opening fight of UFC Vegas 61 was a bantamweight bout between Guido Cannetti and Randy Costa.
Argentina’s Cannetti is the oldest 135’er in the promotion at 42 years of age and was coming off of a quick TKO of Kris Moutinho earlier this year, finishing Moutinho two rounds faster than even ranked star Sean O’Malley did.
Meanwhile, the young, dynamic Randy Costa sits on a two fight losing streak against Tony Kelley and Adrian Yanez after a promising 2-1 start to his UFC career. Costa has displayed electric offensive capabilities but lackluster defense and cardio in this fight. After he took a year off it was interesting to see if he had fixed those issues and if he could beat the veteran Cannetti. Both men surely felt this was a must-win fight to keep their jobs as they currently have a losing record in the promotion.
Perhaps due to his age, Cannetti has finished as an underdog in all of his UFC fights, and that was no different here, but he would look to show the odds-makers the error of their ways once again.
When the fight began Costa got on the front foot to pressure Guido back to the cage but he was immediately dealing with continued round kicks from Cannetti that kept Randy from attacking with his characteristic aggression.
One of those kicks kicked out Costa’s back leg and allowed Cannetti to jump on on a takedown. He immediately locked up a rear-naked choke and even though he had no hooks in Randy Costa turtled up and was forced to tap after barely more than one minute of fight time. The tap came at 1:04 of the opening round.
At 42, Cannetti went first among the “old guys” on a night that also featured Franciso Trinaldo (44) and Aleksei Oleinik (45). If age has slowed Cannetti, he didn’t show it Saturday. Realistically, he didn’t have time to show it.
Official Result: Guido Cannetti def. Randy Costa by submission (rear-naked choke), Round 1, 1:04
