Adrian Yanez knew he was going to have a serious fight on his hands Saturday night as he went to war with Randy Costa on the UFC Vegas 32 main card.
The highly anticipated matchup lived up to expectations with the bantamweights blasting away at each other from the start of the fight. But it was Yanez with constant pressure and a blistering three-punch combination capped off by an uppercut that spelled the beginning of the end for Costa. As soon as Costa dropped to the mat after eating that punch, Yanez followed him to the floor to continue chipping away until the referee had no choice but to stop the contest.
The end came at 2:11 in the second round.
“Honestly, my last two fights I came out flawless but this one I got touched up a bit,” Yanez said after notching his seventh win in a row overall. “I started out way too close and he came out fast. It should have been way cleaner.
“I was predicting the second-round knockout this whole camp. I’m really disappointed with my first round performance.”
Using his reach advantage, Costa was quick to establish a nasty jab that was just mashing Yanez in the face over and over again while he also fired a number of kicks to the head. Costa was like a sniper on the outside as he kept snapping off that same jab as blood began trickling down Yanez’s face.
While Yanez was absorbing a lot of damage, he started to connect with some combinations of his own, refusing to backdown when it came time to exchange strikes with Costa.
As the fight moved into the second round, Costa was still throwing with volume, but he had to deal with an aggressive Yanez, who was in his face at all times throwing two and three shots in a row without slowing down.
With Yanez starting to connect with a jab of his own, he was coming forward and throwing punches without much fear of reprisal from Costa. That’s when Yanez pushed Costa back against the cage and he unleashed two nasty shots to the body and then followed with a brutal uppercut right up the middle.
As soon as his fist made contact with the face, Costa dropped to the mat and Yanez just continued to throw punches until there was no choice but to stop the fight.
Undefeated in the UFC with three straight wins — all by knockout — Yanez seems ready for a step up in competition as he appears to be a threat to anyone in the world competing at 135 pounds.
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