UFC on Versus: Jones vs. Vera Results

In the UFC on Versus main event Jon “Bones” Jones stopped Brandon Vera with an elbow to the eye from the top. When the elbow landed Vera was clearly hurt and turtled, eating a few more shots before Herb Dean was forced to step in and stop the fight.

From the look of Vera’s eye after the fight it appeared that his eye socket may have been broken.

Jones controlled the majority of the action as he was able to use the clinch to get takedowns and work from inside Brandon Vera’s guard. With Vera unable to control the clinch it appeared that it would clearly be a bad night.

Early in the fight Vera threw an upkick that landed to Jones, who was still in a “down” position which made the blow illegal. A point was taken from Vera and the fighters were restarted in the same position which led to Jones opening up and landing the elbow that ended the fight.

The Junior Dos Santos hype train will keep on rolling with a knockout win over tough gatekeeper Gabriel Gonzaga. The early part of the fight was fairly even with both men looking for openings and landing occasional blows.

Eventually Junior found a way to get a big left hand to land which floored Gonzaga. Gabriel was able to briefly defend himself and try to gain guard, but eventually big punches from Junior turned his lights out and gave Dos Santos the KO win.

In a heavyweight bout, Cheick Kongo worked a ground and pound attack to wear down and eventually stop tough journeyman Paul Buentello. For three rounds Kongo used straight punches to close distance and get takedowns against the fence and follow up with punches to the head and body. In the third round Buentello had taken enough punishment and submitted to strikes.

The only real activity beyond the grinding offense of Kongo was an illegal knee to the head that resulted in a point being taken in the second round. Still, Buentello had no answers for the strategy that Kongo employed.

Buentello should have a one way ticket to Strikeforce with this one.

In the opening bout of the main card, James Irvin looked much too slow in his first fight at 185 pounds, getting systematically picked apart by the much quicker and technical Alessio Sakara before an odd ending to the event. As punches were landing for Sakara he landed directly to Irvin’s right eye causing Irvin to stumble and go down covering his eyeball.

A timeout was called to check Irvin and see if it was an eyepoke but following slow motion replays it was clear that there was no poke but a clean punch and as such the fight was stopped and it was ruled a TKO victory for Alessio Sakara. The win is his third straight in the UFC.

Irvin doesn’t appear to have a future at middleweight, looking sickly at the weigh-ins and dreadfully slow during the fight. His future would seem to be at 205 pounds and probably outside of the UFC.