Four knockdowns, sixteen stuffed takedowns
Anthony Hernandez shoots. That is what he does. On Saturday night at Golden 1 Center he shot 16 times, and 16 times he ended up back on his feet with nothing to show for it.
Gregory Rodrigues took the decision, 48-47, 49-46 and 48-47, over five rounds in the UFC Fight Night main event. Hernandez was fighting less than two hours from where he grew up. He was also the betting favorite. Neither helped.
Rodrigues put him down four times. He set a personal record for strikes landed in a single fight, doubling his previous best. Two of the three cards had it inside a round, which tells you the Californian never stopped trying to drag the fight back to the mat.
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Robocop goes the distance for once
The nickname says everything about how Rodrigues built his name. Seven of his 10 UFC wins came by finish. Nobody had him pegged as the guy who wins a 25-minute chess match against one of the division’s better wrestlers.
That is four in a row now. Jack Hermansson, Roman Kopylov, Brunno Ferreira, and now Hernandez. It was his second UFC main event, and he leaves Sacramento with a Fight of the Night bonus split with the man he beat.
Hernandez’s climb at 185 pounds had been built almost entirely on ground control. Rodrigues spent five rounds proving that plan has a hole in it.
Du Plessis, and a queue-jump
Rodrigues grabbed the mic and named Dricus du Plessis. The former middleweight champion, in a title eliminator. After a performance like that the ask is not unreasonable, though it does put the Brazilian in front of a handful of contenders who have been sitting in line considerably longer.
Elsewhere on the main card, Serghei Spivac met Vitor Petrino at heavyweight and Reinier de Ridder returned at light heavyweight against Roman Dolidze. Sacramento had waited years for the promotion to come back. It got a division rearranged in one night.
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