Song Yadong, UFC Vegas 72

Song Yadong batters Ricky Simon, picks up TKO stoppage in round five of UFC Vegas 72 main event

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to us tonight, April 29, 2023, for UFC Vegas 72, going down live from the UFC Apex in Enterprise, Nevada.

Headlining the event was a clash of bantamweight contenders between no. 8 ranked Song Yadong (19-7-1-1) and no. 10 ranked Ricky Simon (20-3).

Yadong came into the bout having lost his most recent outing to no. 3 ranked Cory Sandhagen in the first main event of his career. That was just the second defeat of his promotional tenure, as he came into tonight’s main event with a UFC record of 8-2-1. Simon on the other hand came in having won his last five-straight, he too had gone 8-2 thus far into his UFC career, and he was participating in his first main event slot tonight himself.

Continue reading to see how this epic bantamweight main event went down:

Official Result: Song Yadong def. Ricky Simon via TKO (punches) at 1:1o of round five

Both men open up the bout slightly tentative in respect of the others power.

Simon lands the first strike of the fight, a solid leg kick, and he follows it up with some good jabs and right hands later on. Yadong lands some good leg kicks of his own through the opening round, and does a great job of stuffing Simon’s takedown attempts and winning the clinch exchanges.

It’s not often you see Simon get out-muscled.

Yadong really finds his range in round two, as he begins to box Simon up with heavy punches.

Simon gets dropped about two minutes in, though dropping to his knees aided him in taking Yadong down immediately following, right into side control. Yadong gets back to his feet shortly thereafter and continues to bust Simon up with nasty combinations until he’s taken back down in the final 15 seconds.

Yadong is baffling Simon with his technical, yet devastating strikes; Simon is as much of a bruiser as we’ve seen in the sport, and he hasn’t been able to get much of anything going tonight against Yadong, who is picking him apart with heavy punches and kicks.

Simon is also a great chain wrestler, and Yadong continues to stuff his takedowns as the fight goes on.

Yadong drops Simon with a vicious left hook in the final seconds of round four, it appears it’s his fight to win at this point.

Yadong cracks Simon with an overhand-right seconds into round five and drops him again.

Simon returns to his feet, only to be dropped again by another left hook, and eventually stopped due to Yadong’s onslaught.

Song Yadong looked absolutely incredible tonight; many of us believed he had the potential to be a future champion early on in his UFC tenure, and at 25 years of age he just put on the best performance of his career against a real threat in Ricky Simon. He was on his way to a 49-46 or 50-45 unanimous decision, and he decided he wanted a finish so he got it.

Interesting fact:

Song Yadong and his head coach Urijah Faber are the only two men to ever finish Ricky Simon via knockout.

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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!