UFC Belgrade bonuses: four payouts of $100,000
The UFC handed out four Performance of the Night bonuses after the Belgrade Arena card, each worth $100,000. No pair earned Fight of the Night, and the other finishers collected $25,000 apiece.
Vlasto Cepo came out of his corner in Belgrade Arena like a man in a hurry. He spent the sixty-first second of the fight on the canvas, under Gilbert Urbina’s elbows, and that single minute turned into a $100,000 UFC bonus.
The official awards landed after the card was over. The UFC named its Performance of the Night winners and the list ran longer than usual: four fighters, $100,000 each, $400,000 in total. No pair was given the Fight of the Night bonus.
Who collected $100,000
All four bonuses went to finishes, and every one of them came in the opening round:
- Uros Medic put away Daniel Rodriguez inside the first minute of the main event, his fourth straight first-round knockout
- Navajo Stirling stopped former light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz in under three minutes and stayed unbeaten at 11-0
- Gilbert Urbina dropped Cepo with a combination as the Croatian charged in, then finished with elbows and punches at 61 seconds
- Nina Nikolija Milosevic hurt Hailey Cowan to the body and forced a first-round stoppage, improving to 9-1
The rest of the finishers were not left out. Every other fighter who won by stoppage picked up an extra $25,000, a figure the promotion rarely advertises but one that matters far more on the preliminary card than any ranking does.
Why there was no Fight of the Night
Because almost nothing lasted long enough. The card produced 12 stoppages, 10 of them in round one, and the UFC said that set a company record for first-round finishes on a single card. When ten fights end before the judges have anything to score, there are not many candidates for a back-and-forth war.
The attendance figure matched the pace. There were 18,623 people in the building, and the UFC described the night as the highest-grossing event in the arena’s history, with roughly $2.5 million in gross revenue.
What Dana White said
UFC chief executive Dana White opened his post-fight press conference by going straight to the main event.
I don’t know how anything can be more impressive than what he did. He hit him with the first shot, then a few more on the ground, and finished the fight.
Asked to pick the best fights of the night, he named the same men who ended up on the bonus sheet.
The best fights were Stirling, Medic and Urbina. There were 18,623 fans in the stands, we broke the arena record.
On Medic he added the arithmetic that decides the next booking: the Serbian has the most knockouts in his division and ranks third in the sport for first-round knockouts, but the big names only come up once he climbs the rankings.
One part of the evening he did not enjoy. Flares burned in the stands, and he said so plainly.
This is the first time I’ve seen flares. Thank God, but I hope I never see them again.
Will the UFC come back to Serbia?
White answered that one without hedging: “Yes, we will absolutely come back to Serbia.” He gave no date and named no venue, which makes it a promise rather than a booking.
When we previewed the card on Friday, with the first bell at 4 p.m. and Medic closing the show, the assumption was that the main event would carry the night. It did, in a format nobody could have planned for: less time in the cage than the walkouts took.
For Medic this is a fourth consecutive first-round finish and a first bonus earned in front of a home crowd. For Nina Nikolija Milosevic, $100,000 arrived with her first walk to the octagon in the organization. If the UFC really does return, those two names are the first reason Belgrade Arena will fill up again.
