INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Mike Perry beat Nate Diaz in a two-round welterweight brawl Saturday night on the undercard of Ronda Rousey's comeback fight against Gina Carano.
Perry (15-8) earned his first victory in mixed martial arts since June 2020 with 10 minutes of steady punishment for the 41-year-old Diaz (21-14), who had been away from the MMA cage for nearly four years. Perry was quicker and more active than Diaz, whose face and chest were covered
in blood during the second round.
Perry threw a flying knee that sent Diaz sprawling at the second-round bell, and referee Mike Beltran waved off the fight moments later in agreement with Diaz's corner.
“He's the toughest guy out there,” Perry said about Diaz, who was the vocal crowd favorite in his native California. “There's no quit in him. ... The entire crowd was cheering for him so loud.”
Veteran heavyweight star Francis Ngannou finished Philipe Lins in the first round of just his second MMA fight in four years, and the former UFC champion immediately teased the possibility of a boxing match with promoter Jake Paul — or an MMA bout with fellow superstar Jon Jones, who also attended the show.
Earlier, former UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos was brutally knocked out by Cuba's Robelis Despaigne in the first round of the first fight of the main card.
Perry had been away from MMA for five years after his UFC career crashed with six losses in nine bouts, and he subsequently lost a boxing match to Paul. But Perry had too much power and precision for Diaz, who made his reputation in his two famous brawls with Conor McGregor a decade ago.
“Yeah, I had blood in my eye and I couldn't see, so it was all good,” Diaz said of the stoppage.
Ngannou exchanged strikes and clinches with Lins before finishing the Brazilian with a sweeping left hand to the head in the final minute of the first round.
Ngannou then engaged in some promotional banter with Paul, who has made a boxing career out of beating martial artists. Jones watched the proceedings from Netflix's commentary stage at Intuit Dome, and he told the broadcasters that he would fight Ngannou if he could get out of his UFC contract.
Ngannou won the UFC belt in 2021 and unified it in 2022 before walking away from the world's dominant MMA promotion. He had taken just one MMA bout since then, and he lost two big-money boxing matches to British heavyweight stars Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua in Saudi Arabia.
The 42-year-old Dos Santos' first MMA bout since 2024 ended disastrously when Despaigne caught him with a three-punch combo that left Dos Santos senseless on the canvas. Dos Santos won the UFC title in 2011 by beating Cain Velasquez in a 64-second fight that was the highlight of his successful 20-year career, but he has lost six of his past eight fights.
French lightweight Salahdine Parnasse made an impressive U.S. debut with a first-round stoppage of Kenneth Cross. Parnasse, who had fought exclusively for a Poland-based promotion since 2017, expertly battered Cross with dozens of standup strikes and controlled him on the ground before using body shots to finish.
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
