UFC Stockholm Bonuses: Gustaffson among big time $50k winners

There was plenty of $50,000 bonus potential at this weekend’s UFC event in Stockholm, Sweden. Find out who was rewarded for their performances on this finish-heavy European card.

Performance of the Night was bagged by Damir Hadzovic and Bojan Velickovic. Hadzovic was facing a losing fight on the cards – he offered creative, versatile striking in the beginning of his first round against Marcin Held, but it very quickly became apparent that he was helpless to stop the veteran grappling of the German jiu-jitsu black belt.

After spending half of the first, and the entirety of the second round on his back, Hadzovic had to pull out something spectacular to get the win. And so he did, punishing Marcin Held with a crushing knee to stop the Imanari roll attempt – and the fight – in its tracks.

Bojan Velickovic came later with his fight against Nico Musoke, and he followed up with another rare third round finish that came with less than 30 seconds to go on the clock.

After stunning Musoke with a right hook (wobbling him in rather amusing fashion,) he pounced on his eventually downed opponent for the TKO victory, after a well fought back and forth contest.

Unsurprisingly, Fight of the Night went to the main event match-up between Alex Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira. Gustafsson took the lead in what was to become a one-sided dissection of Teixeira, piercing the Brazilian’s guard with uppercuts and peppering him with shots that were largely too quick for his opponent to see coming.

While Teixeira was largely too content to let his hometown hero opponent fight according to his own terms, there’s no doubting the respect he earned that night for his unrelenting will. Teixeira was on the receiving end of several shots that could have easily been fight-enders, but his warrior spirit and determination carried him through adversity that would have overwhelmed lesser men far sooner.