It capped a strong night for Niagara Top Team. One fight earlier, Malott’s teammate Jasmine Jasudavicius beat Erin Blanchfield by unanimous decision, 29-28 on all three cards, in the women’s flyweight co-main event. Blanchfield entered ranked No. 3 on the Meta UFC Rankings board, three places above Jasudavicius, which makes the result one of the more significant shake-ups the women’s flyweight division has seen since Natalia Silva won the vacant title earlier this month.
The gym’s evening did not start the same way. Cody Chovancek, the unbeaten Contender Series graduate who also trains at Niagara Top Team, opened the card with his long-delayed UFC debut after 396 days out with a knee injury, and the tough assignment we described in our preview proved exactly that. SuYoung You, the Road to UFC Season 3 bantamweight winner, controlled the fight from top position and finished it with a kimura at 4:19 of the third round as Chovancek pushed to escape in search of a late comeback. Chovancek, the self-styled “Best Fisherman in MMA,” falls to 9-1 with the first loss of his career. You rebounds from his loss to Elijah Smith earlier this year.
The rest of the main card produced a run of finishes. Cristian Pérez, who earned his contract on the Contender Series in August, needed just 27 seconds to knock out Kyle Nelson in his UFC debut. Marc-André Barriault stopped Kyle Daukaus with elbows at 4:28 of the first round at middleweight, Mandel Nallo finished Nate Landwehr with a leg kick and punches 47 seconds into the second round at lightweight, and heavyweight Tanner Boser stopped Jhonata Diniz with punches at 4:26 of the third. Timothy Cuamba submitted Louis Jourdain with a neck crank at 2:48 of the second round at bantamweight.
The preliminary card was just as busy. Chelsea Chandler submitted Melissa Croden with a kimura at 4:52 of the first round, Katlyn Cerminara stopped Mackenzie Stiller with strikes at 4:46 of the first, and Joel Faglier finished Javid Mahjoub in the second round. Nick Galanti, stepping in on short notice for his UFC debut, submitted Julian Leblanc with a face crank at 1:26 of the first round.
For Malott, the win reshapes his place in the welterweight division. Buckley entered the night ranked No. 8 on the Meta board, and a second-round knockout over him in front of a home crowd is the kind of result that tends to move a fighter several places at once. For Niagara Top Team, it was a night of two statement wins at the top of the card and a hard first lesson for its newest UFC fighter. Next week’s Meta update will show how far the results travel.
