Some history was made during the featured preliminary bout Saturday night at UFC 313.
Flyweights Joshua Van and Rei Tsuruya went toe-to-toe in the first fight in UFC history that featured two opponents both born in the 2000s with Van walking away with his hand raised after a unanimous decision victory.
The youngsters gave a good account of themselves and their respective skill sets over the course of the 15-minute contest in the 125-pound division.
Van, born in October 2001, showed off his slick boxing, takedown defence and ability to counter-grapple en route to his third consecutive win and sixth in his seven UFC appearances.
Tsuruya, born in June 2002, used more of a wrestling-first attack and mixed in some unconventional strikes, yet it was not enough to remain unbeaten in mixed martial arts. Tsuruya fell to 10-1 in MMA.
In other preliminary action, Brunno Ferreira got the better of Armen Petrosyan at 185 pounds.
Petrosyan was deducted a point in the opening round for a pair of inadvertent low blows on Ferreira that occurred in quick succession. The fouls ultimately didn’t factor into the outcome of the middleweight contest as not only were the judges not required, but Ferreira was able to recover and pick up a second-round submission victory.
Ferreira has won three of his past four all by stoppage and bounced back from an October submission loss to Abus Magomedov.
Petrosyan, meanwhile, has now lost three consecutive bouts and has been finished within two rounds each time.
Carlos Leal added another stoppage win to his record by making relatively quick work of Alex Morono in welterweight action.
The 30-year-old Brazilian put Morono away late in Round 1 with a barrage of strikes.
Morono, 34, has been in the UFC since 2016 but is now on the first three-fight losing streak of his professional fighting career.
The Ultimate Fighter 32 featherweight tournament winner Mairon Santos improved to 15-1 with a narrow split decision over Francis Marshall in which one judge had Marshall winning all three rounds.
Marshall dropped Santos with a step-through left hand late in Round 1 to pull ahead after five minutes and continued his steady work in a closer second round. The third was also close, but Santos out-landed Marshall in each of the final two rounds.
The UFC broadcast team of Jon Anik, Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier all commented that they believed Marshall should’ve gotten his hand raised. Rogan and Cormier called it “bad,” while Anik described it as a “trash” decision.
Santos, 24 and from Brazil, knocked out Kaan Olfi to win TUF 32 last August and is considered a high-ceiling prospect, but he was not given an easy out in his first non-TUF UFC bout.
Marshall, 26, is a well-rounded fighter who has lost three of his past four UFC appearances with two of those losses coming by split decision.
Middleweights Djorden Santos and Ozzy Diaz went the distance to open the card with Diaz getting his hand raised as the underdog following what was essentially a high-volume boxing match.
Diaz ended up out-landing Santos 135-131 in significant strikes and 119-115 on head strikes alone and gained momentum as the fight progressed. All three judges scored the fight 29-28 for Diaz, with Santos taking Round 1 and Diaz edging out Round 2 and Round 3.
There ended up only being five preliminary bouts at UFC 313 after two were cancelled in the hours leading up to the event.
A heavyweight contest between Curtis Blaydes and Rizvan Kuniev plus a featherweight matchup between John Castaneda and Chris Gutierrez were pulled from the card after Blaydes and Castaneda fell ill.
UFC 313 took place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and was headlined by a light-heavyweight title bout between champion Alex Pereira and No. 1 contender Magomed Ankalaev.
