Nicolae Negumereanu brutally stops Ihor Potieria at UFC 277

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us tonight, July 30, 2022, for UFC 277, going down live from the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, Texas.

Headlining the event is a bantamweight championship rematch between current champion Julianna Pena and former champion, no. 1 ranked Amanda Nunes.

Co-headlining the event is also a championship rematch, this one going down in the flyweight division between former champion, no. 1 ranked Brandon Moreno, who faces no. 2 ranked Kai Kara-France for the interim title in the co-main event of the evening.

Our second fight of the night came in the light-heavyweight division between a pair of promising prospects in Nicolae Negumereanu (12-1) and Ihor Potieria (19-2)

Continue reading to see how this lightweight encounter went down:

Official Result: Nicolae Negumereanu def. Ihor Potieria via TKO (knees & punches) at 3:33 of round two

One thing that’s evident once the fight begins is Potieria has solid leg kicks, though he isn’t throwing many effective strikes aside from those. Negumereanu backs Potieria up into the fence, before securing a takedown. His wrestling and grappling is clearly superior to Potieria’s.

However, Potieria is able to work his way back up, before being single legged back down to the mat.

The second round appears to be better for Potieria, at least the start of it, as he begins to let go of his strikes. He’s landing a lot of solid punches to the head of Negumereanu, as well as more leg kicks.

Negumereanu then bites down, secures the clinch, and started landing nasty knees to the head and body of Potieria.

This backs Potieria up to the fence, where Negumereanu absolutely unloads with punches, knocking Potieri ‘s mouthguard out of the cage with a vicious uppercut, before landing a series of even more nasty knees to the face of Potieria.

Potieria took an absurd amount of damage without a mouthguard in, and after continuing his vicious assault, Negumereanu is declared the victor in the second round as the referee is forced to stop the action.

Nicolae Negumereanu improves his record to 13-1 (4-1 UFC) at UFC 277, this being the 11th finish of his career.

If you enjoyed this piece, feel free to share it on social media!

Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

See Full Bio