The Real Winners and Losers From UFC on ESPN 57 (2024)

On Saturday night, the UFC visited Louisville, Kentucky for a second time — and the first time since way back in 2011. The Louisville fans in the building, who had no doubt been waiting eagerly for the promotion's return, were rewarded for their patience.

The card featured some highlight-reel stoppages and performances that will change things quite a bit in some of the UFC's most popular divisions. That includes the main event.

The headliner was contested at middleweight, with No. 4 contender Jared Cannonier taking on the seventh-ranked Nassourdine Imavov in a match with title implications. Cannonier was favored to win, but in the end, Imavov sprung the upset with a TKO victory in the fourth round.

The co-main event, meanwhile, was contested at light heavyweight, and was arguably even more impactful, as former title challenger Dominick Reyes bounced back from four straight losses with a first-round knockout of former kickboxer Dustin Jacoby.

Earlier on the card, we witnessed a big win from bantamweight super-prospect Raul Rosas Jr., who picked up steam with a second-round submission of the dangerous Ricky Turcios. Several other fighters also made big statements on the card, which will keep fight fans chattering for days.

Scroll on for the biggest winners and losers of the UFC's long-awaited return to Louisville.

Russian-born Frenchman Nassourdine Imavov scored one of the biggest wins of his career in the main event of the UFC's stop in Louisville, stopping former title challenger Jared Cannonier with a salvo of punches and knees in the fourth round of their middleweight fight.

Unfortunately, the win comes with an asterisk. While Imavov was definitely in control of the action at the stoppage, the stoppage itself was dubious, as Cannonier was neither down nor out when the ref jumped in. The American had only just fired back with a big punch, and still had his hands up — in other words, he was intelligently defending himself.

Cannonier was quick to protest the stoppage, and Imavov acknowledged it wasn't a perfect finish in his post-fight interview with commentator Paul Felder.

"I was ready to continue," the victor said. "The referee, that's his job, so I think he made the right decision, but I was ready to keep going."

Despite the circ*mstances, it will go down as a win for the Frenchman, and one that will shake up the middleweight rankings, as Cannonier was ranked three spots ahead of him in the Top 15, at No. 4.

It remains to be seen how the UFC matches Imavov up from here, but he is now one of the top contenders in the middleweight division — neck and neck with the likes of Israel Adesanya, Sean Strickland, Robert Whittaker and Khamzat Chimaev in the race of a crack at champion Dricus Du Plessis.

If he gets his way, it'll be a fight with the former champ Strickland next.

"I'd like to fight Sean Strickland in Paris [in September]," he said.

He might just get his wish, but it's too bad his win over Cannonier came under such questionable circ*mstances. If it was a cleaner victory, he'd be much harder to deny.

If the pre-fight discourse was to be taken seriously, Dominick Reyes' career was already over heading into his main card clash with Dustin Jacoby. Despite giving Jon Jones the toughest test of his iconic light heavyweight title reign, "The Devastator" had lost four straight, including knockout defeats against Jan Blachowicz, Jiri Prochazka, and Ryan Spann.

He was washed, they said. Spent.

Not so.

After getting pushed back by Jacoby in the early moments of their main card light heavyweight fight, Reyes surged back and flattened his foe with a volley of punches and a knee right at the two-minute mark. Jacoby protested the referee's intervention, but the replay revealed the stoppage was justified.

It was a career-saving win for Reyes. Had he lost, he almost certainly would have been cut by the UFC, and after five straight losses, likely would have struggled to find serious fights anywhere else — even under bare-knuckle rules.

With his win over Jacoby, however, he has affirmed that he is still indeed a top-15 light heavyweight. It's doubtful he ever works his way back to the title, and more doubtful still that he wins the belt he narrowly missed when he fought Jones, but for the moment, none of that is set in stone.

He's clearly still got some fight left in him. Don't doubt The Devastator.

There aren't many fighters with as much hype behind them Raul Rosas Jr.

At just 19 years old, he is widely considered a future champion at bantamweight, and is getting the same push that names like Sean O'Malley and Khamzat Chimaev did in the early days of their UFC careers.

Hype, of course, is a dangerous thing. Some fighters live up to it, but others fail to do so — often in the worst way.

For a moment, there was reason to believe Rosas would fail to live up to his hype. After a submission win over Jay Perrin in his UFC debut, he suffered a deflating decision loss to Christian Rodriguez in his next fight — a loss some fans saw as proof that he wasn't good as advertised.

Rosas has now bounced back from that loss with two straight wins. First, he got back on track with a first-round TKO win over Terrence Mitchell, and on the main card of the UFC's return to Louisville, he built on his momentum with a second-round submission of the dangerous Ricky Turcios.

"What happened with Christian Rodriguez just made me grow a lot," he said in his post-fight interview with Paul Felder.

It remains to see how far Rosas can get in the jam-packed bantamweight division. His loss to Rodriguez is still wholly visible in the rear-view mirror, and he had to fight his way out of a tight rear-naked choke attempt in the first round of his fight with Turcios. He clearly still has plenty of room to grow. That being said, at 19, he has plenty of time to evolve, and there's no question he is a natural talent.

For the moment — and despite his recent loss — his hype is alive and well.

Some of the best KOs in MMA history have been the product of spinning strikes. Remember Edson Barboza's KO of Terry Etim? Or that time Vitor Belfort flattened Luke Rockhold with a spinning kick? Barboza is in the final chapter of his MMA career, and Belfort is long retired, but those knockouts still regularly feature in highlight reels and promo packages.

The problem with spinning KOs, of course, is that they're rare. We don't see them very often, but as luck would have it, we got one in Louisville.

It happened on the main card, in a middleweight fight between Brunno Ferreira and Dustin Stoltzfus. Early in the first round, Ferreira threw a spinning back elbow. His first attempt wasn't a fight-ender, but soon after, he tried it again, and that time, he popped out his foe's batteries. The ref intervened at 4:51 of round one.

If the UFC commentators are to be believed, it was just the eighth spinning-back elbow KO in the promotion's long history. Even if Ferreira never turns into a serious middleweight contender or champion, he has earned his place in the promotion's history books with a stoppage we'll be watching for years after his career.

Of course, flashy finishes are very on brand for the Brazilian. This was his ninth KO in 12 victories, and his seventh in the first round.

There were no knockouts on last weekend's 12-fight UFC 302 card in Newark. Six fights into Saturday's card in Louisville, the only knockout or TKO to occur came by way of a body shot, when Carlos Prates put Charles Radtke away with a knee to the gut in round one.

After 18 fights without a real knockout, fans were getting ravenous. There was even speculation that the UFC's new glove design, which was introduced at UFC 302, was the culprit.

Who knows why we went so long without a good old-fashioned clobbering, but the new gloves are evidently not the problem. Zachary Reese proved that in the second bout of Saturday's main card, blasting Julian Marquez with an uppercut and follow-up punches just 20 seconds into an alluring middleweight scrap.

"I kind of fight like white trash sometimes, but I am pretty skilled," Reese said in his post-fight interview with commentator Paul Felder.

Skilled, indeed.

Reese, who earned his roster spot on Dana White's Contender Series, lost his UFC debut, suffering a stoppage defeat to Cody Brundage inside two minutes. His win over Marquez isn't going to erase the memory of that debut loss, or turn him into a serious middleweight contender, but it puts him back on track, and it was a sorely needed reminder that we're watching MMA, not wrestling or jiu jitsu.

India's Puja Tomar used to fight in ONE Championship, which is one of the top combat sports promotions outside the UFC. Her career there did not go well. She did manage to get a single win under the ONE banner, but after a loss to future atomweight champion Stamp Fairtex, was sent packing by the Asian organization.

For a lot of fighters, that would be the end of it, but Tomar pushed on. After her release from ONE, she rattled off four straight wins in India's Matrix Fight promotion — including a victory over her former foil Bi Nguyen — which turned out to be impressive enough to earn a call from the UFC.

Tomar made her UFC debut in the opening bout of Saturday's card in Louisville, taking on Brazil's Rayanne dos Santos at strawweight. The Indian talent had to work hard in the fight, and arguably didn't deserve the split decision she left the cage with, but she will fly out of Louisville with a UFC win all the same, which frankly would have seemed unthinkable when Stamp chased her out of ONE a few years back.

Debate the decision all you want, but this just goes to show that young fighters should never be counted out. With the right blend of diligence, confidence, and youth, it's always possible for them to turn things around.