1. Naoya Inoue: By fight time, Jamie McDonnell had rehydrated to 144 (!!) pounds, which means that Inoue was in there with a 5’10” welterweight. It didn’t matter. Two minutes later, McDonnell was on the canvas for the second time and Inoue was a three-division world champion. What an absolute monster and a monstrous performance.
2. Ken Shiro: Left no doubt this time around against Ganigan Lopez. It wasn’t a majority decision, it was a thunderous second-round body-shot KO that put away the cagey vet and kept the WBC junior flyweight title on Shiro.
3. Jerwin Ancajas: It wasn’t particularly close, as Ancajas dominated Jonas Sultan to retain his IBF Junior bantamweight title in a card full of 115lb title fights.
4. Khalid Yafai: After a brutal outing, David Carmona’s corner did what a corner is supposed to do (fuck you, Raquel Pennington’s corner), and save their fighter from more damage. Dominating outing from Yafai.
5. Gegard Mousasi: Routed Rafael Carvalho in the first round in the main event of Bellator 200 to become the new Bellator middleweight champion.
6. Kevin Aguilar: I’ve been talking up Kevin Aguilar for months on the site. Not to be Botter, but I’ve known he was the real deal for months. He unified the LFA featherweight titles in another fantastic performance. Let’s get some eyeballs on this man.
7. Argenis Mendez: Dropped Eddie Ramirez four times en route to a dominant decision win on FS1.
8. Qiu Jianliang: Decisioned the legend, Kaew Weerasakreck, in the main event of Glory of Heroes 31 and is on one hell of a run lately.
9. Tugstsogt Nyambayar: The Olympic silver medalist improved to 10-0 with a TKO of Oscar Escandon.
10. Kate Jackson: Nice win for the former TUF competitor, scoring a shutout (with a couple of 30-26s) over a relative name in Anastasia Yankova at Bellator 200 to set herself up for some title fights and bigger names and cards.
11. Phil Davis: A head-kick knockout?! From Phil Davis?!?!! OK! The Bellator LHW division gets more interesting.
12. Yinghua Tie: Turned Singdam’s lights off with some fantastic spinning shit.
13. Claudio Silva: Oh, so ring rust isn’t a thing anymore, apparently. Four goddamned years, and all it took was Nordine Taleb grabbing for an ill-advised heel hook for Silva to grab a first-round win.
14. Makwan Amirkhani: My personal favorite fight at UFC Fight Night, and Amirkhani was the victor of a wide split-decision over Jason Knight.
15. Darren Till: yawn Good lordy, that was brutal to watch. I can’t scream robbery, because usually in robberies, someone has to make some sort of a case for why they should have won. I wanted to give both fighters an L.
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