The Real Winners and Losers from UFC Fight Night 200

Into every busy sports night a little UFC must fall.

The MMA conglomerate was surrounded by the NHL All-Star Game, the Winter Olympics and a full slate of NBA and college basketball on Saturday afternoon and evening, but it dipped its toe into the live broadcast pool anyway with a jam packed 13-bout card from its headquarters Apex facility in Las Vegas.

Middleweights Jack Hermansson and Sean Strickland met in the Fight Night main event with their respective statuses as the No. 6 and No. 7 contenders to divisional kingpin Israel Adesanya on the line.

Adesanya will defend against former champ and No. 1 contender Robert Whittaker next weekend at UFC 271 in Houston and has already beaten the No. 2 and No. 5 contenders as well.

The three-man team of Brendan Fitzgerald, Michael Bisping and Paul Felder worked the broadcast table for ESPN, while Megan Olivi worked the rest of the room for feature pieces and breaking news.

The B/R combat sports team was in place as well and put together a definitive list of the show's winners and losers for your perusal. Click through to see what we came up with and go ahead and offer a viewpoint or two of your own in the comments section.

Strickland certainly has a menacing persona.

He speaks in measured terms about the severe damage he plans to inflict on opponents and coolly promises the sort of mayhem that'll leave those foes unconscious after the cage door closes.

But then the fights start, and he's downright clinical.

The 30-year-old Californian worked behind a consistently strong left jab, evaded return punches with minimum unnecessary footwork and defended every one of his foe's eight takedown attempts.

All of these factors contributed to an easy win—somehow scored a split decision—in Saturday's main event with Hermansson.

"He has such a knack for having everyone fight in the way and at the pace he wants them to fight," Felder said. "He moves just enough, defends just enough and punches just enough to get it done."

In fact, the only time Strickland fell back into character was when he slurped a few drops of blood that had begun trickling from his nose, then grabbed the mic afterward and thanked the fans for letting him make a living as a "piece of s--t with money."

Still, aside from the momentary leans toward gore and vulgarity, it was a one-sidedly artistic performance that earned the winner matching margins of 49-46 on two scorecards and presumably got him a step closer toward jumping the line for a title shot with Adesanya.

A third judge, for some reason, saw Hermansson a 48-47 winner despite a 161-137 deficit in landed strikes and the aforementioned 0-for-8 clip on takedowns.

"I was being a pansy," Strickland said. "I should have stayed in the pocket and thrown. I fought like a chump."

Nevertheless, he's now 12-3 in the UFC, has won his last six bouts and is 5-0 since rising to middleweight after a two-year hiatus to recover from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in late 2018.

He didn't outright demand a championship opportunity but made it clear he'd take it if offered.

"I'm a company man," he said. "I will fight who you throw in front of me. But if they have the belt, even better."

Looking to get in on the ground floor of a future UFC star?

You could do a lot worse than Shavkat Rakhmonov.

The first Kazakhstani fighter to reach the sport's biggest promotion, Rakhmonov won his third straight bout in the Octagon and 15th in a row overall—all by finish—with a methodically violent first-round KO of streaking Guyanese veteran Carlston Harris.

It was the eighth KO alongside seven submission wins for the 27-year-old, who turned pro in 2014 and fought in a pair of regional promotions before reaching the big stage with a first-round submission of Alex Oliveira at UFC 254 in October 2020.

He followed that up with a second-round finish of Michel Prazeres on a Fight Night show in June and has still reached the third round just once in his career.

Reaching the second round became a non-factor on Saturday from the instant Rakhmonov pivoted on his left leg and snaked a spinning right heel kick around Davis' guard and flush to the right side of his head.

The 34-year-old Harris immediately fell to his back and tried to defend a subsequent barrage of ground-and-pound shots, but he was stiffened and left semi-conscious by a pair of particularly vicious right hands that immediately prompted a rescue from Mike Beltran.

The official time was 4:10 of the first.

"It's the precision he has with every strike he throws," Bisping said. "Every shot he throws is with bad intentions. It's one thing to recognize it—it's another thing to be able to stop it."

Tresean Gore was telling anyone who'd listen.

Not only would he have won last fall's The Ultimate Fighter competition had he not been forced to pull out with a knee injury, but he also planned to parlay his formal UFC debut on Saturday night into a long career in which he'd win championships in not one but two divisions.

And even before his bout with Bryan Battle, the middleweight who won the TUF title in his absence, he was already yelling across the cage to let his foe know he was "about to find out."

Didn't happen.

Rather than falling at the feet of a foe dubbed "Mr. Vicious," Battle struck effectively from the outside in the first round and rallied gamely with a hideously swollen eye after a difficult middle round to pull out a narrow unanimous decision in which he won all three scorecards by 29-28 margins.

Not bad for a guy with a less menacing "Pooh Bear" nickname.

Upon hearing the official verdict from Bruce Buffer, Battle quickly grabbed hold of the Ultimate Fighter trophy and told Bisping in their post-fight chat that he'd had no problem finding motivation.

"Tresean's a tough mother f--ker, but so am I," he said.

"The only way he was winning the third round was if I let him win the third round, and that wasn't going to happen. I come in here to make a statement every time. It's my job to come in and whoop ass every time."

For Steven Peterson, it appears that old habits die hard.

The 31-year-old Californian has now missed weight in two consecutive fights, and his bank account has suffered as a result.

In June 2021, Peterson missed the limit by over two pounds before a bout with Chase Hooper and lost 20 percent of his earnings despite earning the win.

The lesson didn't stick as it happened again this week.

Another 30 percent went by the wayside on Friday night when Peterson weighed in at 149 pounds—three pounds over the contracted limit—for a three-rounder with fellow UFC veteran Julian Erosa.

Both Bisping and Felder chided Peterson for a lack of respect for the fans, the company and his opponent, and Erosa himself trolled Peterson on social media and promised to punish him in spite of the latter's promise to utilize the services of the UFC's Performance Institute for nutritional help going forward.

As it turned out, the two put on the night's most chaotic fight, with each experiencing moments of superiority while decorating the canvas with blood that stained the mat for the rest of the card. Erosa was deemed the winner by split decision, winning 29-28 nods from two of three judges.

"I did get the (three) takedowns, and I was hoping that was what did it for me," Erosa said. "I dug deep and got it done."

Sometimes ex-athletes get TV gigs on name value alone.

And sometimes they actually bring something to the broadcast table.

Bisping, on the fifth fight of a crowded seven-fight prelim card, proved the latter.

The ex-middleweight champ had no sooner suggested a match with Canadian export Marc-Andre Barriault was "tailor-made" for muscular 185-pounder Chidi Njokuani than the octagonal newcomer dropped a right-hand bomb that proved the UFC Hall of Famer's point.

Already a veteran of 27 pro bouts across myriad promotions, Njokuani finally earned a ticket to the MMA big show with a KO win on Dana White's Contender Series last September. 

He threw two range-finding kicks in the opening few seconds against Barriault, then landed a hard left jab and followed with an overhand right that landed flush on the left side of his foe's head that sent him tumbling to the floor on his right side.

Njokuani immediately pounced as Barriault covered up, landing eight consecutive left-hand blows that drew Herb Dean's intervention after just 16 seconds.

It was the second-fastest middleweight debut victory in UFC history and the second-fastest finish in the career of the fighter known as "Chidi Bang Bang," who stopped Andre Fialho in 21 seconds in 2016.

"That's how you make a debut right there," Felder said.

Main Card

Sean Strickland def. Jack Hermansson by split decision (49-46, 47-48, 49-46)

Nick Maximov def. Punahele Soriano by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 30-27)

Shavkat Rakhmonov def. Carlston Harris by KO, 4:10, Round 1

Brendan Allen def. Sam Alvey by submission (rear-naked choke), 2:10, Round 2

Bryan Battle def. Tresean Gore by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Julian Erosa def. Steven Peterson by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)

Preliminary Card

John Castaneda def. Miles Johns by technical submission (arm triangle), 1:38, Round 3

Hakeem Dawodu def. Michael Trizano by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 20-27)

Chidi Njokuani def. Marc-Andre Barriault by TKO, 0:16, Round 1

Alexis Davis def. Julija Stoliarenko by unanimous decision (29-27, 29-27, 30-27)

Jailton Almeida def. Danilo Marques by TKO, 2:57, Round 1

Phil Rowe def. Jason Witt by TKO, 2:15, Round 2

Malcolm Gordon def. Denys Bondar by TKO, 1:22, Round 1