UFC Sacramento results: Rodrigues survives, de Ridder erupts
UFC Sacramento results: Gregory Rodrigues outpoints Anthony Hernandez after three knockdowns, and Reinier de Ridder wrecks Roman Dolidze in round one.
Ten finishes in thirteen fights. That is what a Fight Night card looks like when it goes right, and UFC Sacramento went right for everyone except the two men in the main event, who fought 25 minutes so ugly and so good that the judges needed all five rounds to sort it out.
Gregory Rodrigues beat Anthony Hernandez 49-46, 48-47, 48-47 at Golden 1 Center. He knocked Hernandez down three times. He landed 174 significant strikes to 90. And two of the three judges still had him winning by a single round, which is a subject I will come back to in a separate piece, because it deserves its own argument rather than a bullet point here.
The number that explains the fight is 3 of 29. That is Hernandez on takedowns. He is the best wrestler in the top ten at 185 pounds and he shot 29 times for three completions, then spent 10:40 of control time trying to make those three count while Rodrigues got up and hit him.
On to the rest of the card
Photo: ReinierdeRidder / CC BY-SA 4.0
Reinier de Ridder fixed his career in four minutes and one second. He came into Saturday having lost two straight, stopped by Brendan Allen in October and outpointed by Caio Borralho in March, and the read on him after Borralho was that middleweight had solved the problem. So he moved to light heavyweight and put Roman Dolidze on the floor and hit him 68 times on the ground. De Ridder landed 71 of 83 significant strikes. Dolidze landed one. That is not a typo and it is not a rounding of a small number, it is the entire offensive output of a man ranked 15th at middleweight: one strike, from four attempts, in a fight he had every reason to expect to win. De Ridder is 22-4 and he did not get a bonus for it.
Vitor Petrino is four straight and nobody has noticed. He was 205 pounds and losing (Anthony Smith submission, Dustin Jacoby knockout, back to back, in 2024), then he went to heavyweight and beat Austen Lane, Thomas Petersen, Steven Asplund and now Serghei Spivac, the number six heavyweight, by unanimous decision on all three cards. Petrino is unranked. Petrino is 28 years old. Someone in matchmaking should be embarrassed that it took a co-main slot on a Fight Night for that streak to get a ranked opponent.
MarQuel Mederos knocked out Mason Jones and the market never saw it. Jones closed around -370. Mederos, at +305, put him away in the second round at 2:07 and took a Performance of the Night check. He is 12-1-1 now and unbeaten inside the UFC at 4-0-1, and I wrote a piece four days ago about Jones quietly going 3-0 in his second UFC run. So much for quietly.
Anthony Wint won two UFC fights in eleven days. He stopped Matt Adams on August 11 and submitted Terrance Chatman on Saturday at 4:29 of the first. He is 8-0 as a professional. Whatever the UFC is paying him for that turnaround, it is not enough, and I would love to see the itemized version.
Carli Judice is on four in a row. She finished Jeisla Chaves in 99 seconds for the other Performance of the Night bonus. Her last loss was a split decision in June 2024 and she has not lost since.
Chris Padilla is still unbeaten in the UFC. He submitted Nasrat Haqparast with one second left in the third round, which is a hell of a way to close a fight, and moves to 5-0-1 in the promotion. Haqparast has now lost two in a row after five straight wins.
Jamall Emmers is 37 and won as a +305 underdog. First round knockout of Lerryan Douglas, his third win in a row. The model liked Douglas. The books liked Douglas. Emmers hit him.
Shamil Gaziev needed 80 seconds to knock out Kennedy Nzechukwu, who had moved up to heavyweight for it.
Stan Dorsainvil won his UFC debut by unanimous decision over Gauge Young. Young was booked against Kody Steele until our card tracker logged the swap on August 15, one week out. Dorsainvil is 6-0.
Rounding out the prelims: Marcio Barbosa knocked out Ryan Kuse in the first, Jackson McVey knocked out Wes Schultz in the first to make it two straight after two straight submission losses, and Shanelle Dyer stopped Elise Reed in the third for her second UFC win in five months.
What it costs Hernandez
Hernandez arrived at number six in the middleweight rankings on the back of an eight-fight winning streak that included Roman Kopylov, Michel Pereira, Brendan Allen and Dolidze himself. He is now 15-4 with two losses in a row, both in main events, both against men who could stand in front of him. Sean Strickland stopped him in February. Rodrigues outstruck him by 84 significant strikes in August. The wrestling is real, and at the top of this division it is no longer enough on its own.
Rodrigues, meanwhile, is 20-6 with four straight and a Fight of the Night check, and at 34 he has beaten Jack Hermansson, Kopylov, Brunno Ferreira and now the number six man in the division. He was ranked 11th going in. He should not be ranked 11th going out.
The card everyone will remember is de Ridder's, though. Two losses, a division change, and a man whose only previous finish loss was a fourth-round submission lying on the canvas at 4:01. Light heavyweight has spent two years looking for someone new. It just got him, and it took less time than the walkout.