UFC Belgrade: Cepo and Janicic Lose Inside a Round

Vlasto Cepo spent the first minute of his UFC Belgrade debut walking forward. He pushed Gilbert Urbina toward the fence, traded with him and kept hunting for one clean hand. In one of those exchanges his guard dropped, and that was all it took.

Urbina landed a straight left to the head and put him on the floor. Cepo curled up and covered, Urbina stayed on top with elbows and punches, and referee Marc Goddard stepped in at 1:01 of the first round. Technical knockout, middleweight, one debut done.

For Urbina it was a return to middleweight and a first win after two straight losses. Cepo, who fights under the nickname El Chapo, walked into the promotion’s cage and back out of it in the same round.

Why did the Janicic fight end after 81 seconds?

Because Noah Gugnon went after the legs from the opening seconds. He chopped at the lead leg of Milos Janicic with low kicks, and when Janicic switched stance to take it away, Gugnon started working the other one. After a few of those kicks Janicic could no longer put weight on the damaged leg and went down.

The rest was quick. Gugnon passed into mount, took the back and locked up the choke. The tap came at 1:21 of round one, in the lightweight division, in the fight that opened the main card.

Who is Noah Gugnon

A 25-year-old Frenchman who arrived in the UFC after fights in Bellator and the French promotion ARES FC. The win over Janicic was his sixth in a row and his first in the new organization. Janicic came to Belgrade from Montenegro with two recent MMA wins and three in Dirty Boxing, and with a slot debutants rarely get, the opening bout of a main card.

Of the three fighters making their promotional debut across these two bouts, only Gugnon left with a win.

Nine debutants and the rest of the card

Nine fighters stepped into a UFC cage for the first time on the Belgrade card. The rest of the main card looked like this:

• Uros Medic knocked out Daniel Rodriguez 30 seconds into round one in the main event
• Navajo Stirling stopped Jan Blachowicz with strikes at 2:56 of round one
• Aleksandar Rakic beat Marcin Tybura by unanimous decision, 30-27 on all three cards
• Robert Valentin submitted Dusko Todorovic with a guillotine at 4:14 of round one

Five of the six main card fights ended in the opening round. Rakic’s was the only one that reached the judges, and the only bout of the night in which anyone had to count points at all.

Add up the stoppage times and the main card ran shorter than a single full three-round fight. Cepo and Janicic were inside the cage for 142 seconds between them.

What comes next

We previewed both of these bouts, Janicic as the man opening the main card and Cepo ahead of his first appearance in the promotion. Both of those stories resolved in the same round the fights did.

The promotion’s next European date is Paris in September, and after a night this short Gugnon is a candidate for a fast turnaround. For Cepo and Janicic the next step is not a date but a tape: a guard dropped in an exchange and a leg left standing in place are mistakes that cost a round in regional promotions and a minute here.