Renato Moicano and Chris Duncan have trained together frequently over the years on the mats at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Fla., however on Saturday night in Las Vegas they served as main event opponents.
The lightweights headlined a 13-bout card at the Meta Apex with Moicano dominating his younger teammate and earning a second-round submission victory.
“He (expletive) me up many times in the gym when I first started going there, so I learned a lot from him,” Duncan said of Moicano three days prior to their fight. “He was kind enough to share some (wisdom and techniques). He’s a good guy and we’re just going to fight on Saturday night.”
Moicano, 36, acknowledged this week he felt the atmosphere in gym while preparing for Duncan “was not great because to be seeing your opponent (constantly while training) was not good.”
If knowing Duncan affected Moicano at all, he hid it well in the cage because he had his best performance in a couple years.
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Brazil’s Moicano started off strong by checking Duncan with low kicks and finding a home for his jab in the opening round then he rocked Duncan in Round 2 with a check left hook before taking back control and working for a rear-naked choke.
Scotland’s Duncan, 32, was looking for his fifth consecutive win and defended Moicano’s first choke attempt but the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt was relentless and capitalized on a Duncan mistake and locked up a fight-ending face crank.
The win snapped a two-fight skid for Moicano. He had lost consecutive fights to Beneil Dariush and Islam Makhachev, the latter of which was a title fight Moicano accepted on just one day’s notice in January 2025.
Moicano was supposed to begin his 2026 campaign with a rematch against Brain Ortega but an injury to Ortega freed up Moicano to accept this main event spot against Duncan.
There was plenty of mutual respect in the buildup Saturday’s featured bout.
Moicano, who should maintain his spot as the No. 10 contender in the 155-pound contender rankings, described Duncan as “very dangerous, a very good striker and has a good guillotine. … I don’t take anything from him. He’s younger than me and he’s hungry.”
This was Moicano’s seventh submission victory of his UFC career and his first such win since 2022.
Virna Jandiroba returned to the win column with a unanimous decision over Tabatha Ricci in the co-main event. Jandiroba, 37, fell short in her vacant title fight with Mackenzie Dern this past October but should maintain her No. 3 spot in the UFC’s strawweight contender rankings. Ricci had been riding high off the first KO/TKO win of her UFC career. She entered the weekend ranked No. 7 at 115 pounds.
Also on the card, hyped featherweight prospect Tommy McMillen stayed undefeated with a chaotic opening-round technical knockout win over Manolo Zecchini. McMillen is now 10-0 as a pro and a teammate of former men’s bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley. The 28-year-old earned a UFC contract in September through Dana White’s Contender Series.
Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev showed why he was the biggest betting favourite on the card by making quick work of Brendson Ribeiro in the 205-pound division. Yakhyaev tapped out Ribeiro with a rear-naked choke midway through the opening round to improve to 9-0 in mixed martial arts as Ribeiro’s UFC record dropped to 2-5 with his past three fights each ending in a first-round stoppage loss.
Ethyn Ewing became the first fighter to defeat Rafael Estevam, using a crisp liver shot to earn a third-round stoppage in bantamweight action. Ewing is making a habit of expelling foes from the ranks of the unbeaten after handing touted bantamweight prospect Malcolm Wellmaker his first loss in November on just two days’ notice. The 28-year-old who trains out of CSW Training Center in Fullerton, Calif., has won 10 consecutive fights since beginning his career 0-2.
It wasn’t the only finish on the card due to a body punch.
Alessandro Costa put fellow flyweight Stewart Nicoll away with a perfect left hand to the body that left Nicoll crumpled on the canvas. Costa, 30, is a member of the Legacy MMA/Brazilian Warriors team that trains out of Puebla, Mexico and had several high-profile teammates in attendance supporting him. He had two-time UFC featherweight title challenger Diego Lopes in his corner and teammate Alexa Grasso, the former women’s flyweight champion, cheering him on in the stands.
Alice Pereira earned her first UFC win with a second-round knockout of Hailey Cowan on the preliminary card. The 20-year-old Brazilian timed a step-in knee that put Cowan to sleep in their 125-pound bout.
Tresean Gore submitted Azamat Bekoev in the third round of their middleweight matchup. Gore used a guillotine choke to put Bekoev to sleep — each of his three most recent wins in the UFC have all been via guillotine.
Bekoev debuted in the UFC in 2025 as a Legacy Fighting Alliance champions and got off to a 2-0 start with first-round knockouts of Zach Reese and Ryan Loder, however he has now lost two in a row after also getting stopped in the third round by Yousri Belgaroui six months ago.
Kai Kamaka III and Dakota Hope had a spirited tilt to kick off the preliminary card. Kamaka, who was returning to the UFC for the first time in five years, got the split decision win over the debuting Hope.
from Sportsnet.ca https://ift.tt/vdDm0eY
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