Marlon Vera Gets Revenge, Wins Davey Grant Rematch At UFC Vegas 29
Marlon Vera victorious
The UFC returns to Las Vegas, Nevada once again tonight, June 19, 2021, for UFC on ESPN 25.
Headlining the event comes a bout in the featherweight division between top ranked contenders ‘The Korean Zombie’ Chan Sung Jung (No. 4) and Dan ’50K’ Ige (No. 8).
Co-headlining the card is a bout of heavyweight grapplers, as Alexey Oleinik faces Sergey Spivak, who’s coming into the fight on a two-fight win streak, while Oleinik himself is on a two-fight losing skid.
The feature bout of the evening came between Marlon Vera and Davey Grant, a bantamweight rematch of their 2016 showdown. Grant walked away the victor via unanimous decision the first time around.
Vera was just 7-2-1 going into that fight, it was his third UFC fight. Grant on the other hand was 9-2 going in, and was just coming off his TUF 18 finale defeat to season winner Chris Holdsworth.
Since then, Vera has improved to 16-7-1, securing a five-fight finish streak in the middle there, while Grant had a bit tougher of a going since that fight. He’s dealt with so many injuries, forcing him out of action for long periods of time.
Grant was coming off a two-and-a-half year layoff coming into their first fight. He fought again later that year in 2016, where he lost, and didn’t fight again until nearly two years later, where he also lost.
Since then, Grant returned a year-and-a-half later to win a split decision over Grigorii Popov, before securing second and third round KO’s in his last two bouts, improving his win streak to three-straight.
Grant also fought his last three bouts within eight months of one another, with his last being in March of this year.
It’s unfortunate he’s only been able to have five fights since their first, while Vera’s had 14. Does that play account?
Continue reading to see how this epic bantamweight rematch went down:
Official Result: Marlon Vera def. Davey Grant via unanimous decision (29-27, 29-28, 30-26)
Round 1
Grant is incredibly active early on, throwing heavy punches and kicks. He’s landing some of those loopy-like punches he throws, and it appears to be baffling Vera to an extent.
Vera is doing what he needs to do defensively, but he isn’t getting much offense going himself, not comparatively.
Round 2
Vera comes out in round two much more active than he did in the first, and he starts to make this a very violent fight with his persistent Muay Thai. He marches Grant down with his vicious elbows, one of which opens a nice gash on Grant’s forehead, and he’s landing some beautiful knees in the clinch.
Vera’s also chewing Grant’s lead leg up, but with about two minutes left, he gets hip tossed and can’t get up until about 40 seconds are left in the round. However, it’d appear he did enough early on in the round, and he did enough considering he didn’t end the round on bottom for the last two minutes.
Round 3
Grant comes out trying for a double leg at the start of round three, which Vera sprawls beautifully to and takes Grant’s back off of. He sinks in a rear naked choke momentarily, before Grant spun to his back. Vera then locked up an arm-triangle choke, but couldn’t quite secure the finish with it.
As Grant makes his way back up, he’s being viciously assaulted with punches and elbows from Vera, before he ends up back on his back, where he’s pounded on for the majority of the round.
The round ends with Vera on top of Grant pounding away. He also came close to securing a rear naked choke/neck crank in the last minute, but Grant stayed tough and fought to the end.
