Following Saturday’s UFC 302 event at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, UFC officials announced the recipients of the performance-based bonuses.
Lightweight champion Islam Makhachev double dipped, earning bonuses for ‘Fight of the Night,’ and a ‘Performance of the Night’ bonus for his fifth-round submission win over Dustin Poirier.
Fight Of The Night: Islam Makhackev vs Dustin Poirier
As we get a little distance from this fight, the magnitude of it will start to sink in a little more. Are we in the midst of the greatest lightweight championship run of all time? Did we just watch the great Dustin Poirier fight for the last time?
It’s too much to contemplate on this beautiful evening in Newark, so we’ll just have to bask in the glow of an outstanding title fight that exemplified—over and over—why these two warriors will own a huge percentage of the UFC’s most memorable moments of this generation.
Performance Of The Night: Islam Makhachev
That’s three straight title defenses and 14 straight wins overall for the great Islam Makhachev, who is now poised to become the most dominant lightweight champion in the history of the sport. Khabib Nurmagomedov beamed proudly from the champ’s corner as he watched his star pupil survive a game Dustin Poirier, and once again prove that Makhachev is a puzzle that can never quite be solved. The champ has been considering a run in the welterweight ranks, and watching him tonight, it’s hard to imagine who could stop him.
Performance Of The Night: Kevin Holland
He called himself the UFC’s “best gatekeeper” in his post-win speech, but Kevin Holland is far more than that. A pure menace across both the welterweight and (like tonight) middleweight divisions, tonight he showed off his largely unsung submission skills, locking Michal Oleksiejczuk into a positively gruesome first round armbar to the sheer delight of the Prudential Center crowd.
Attendance: 117,834 (Sold Out)
Gate: $7,255,040 (Highest grossing event in Prudential Center history)