5 biggest winners from UFC Fight Night: Paulo Costa vs. Marvin Vettori

#2. Alex Caceres – defeated Seungwoo Choi in a UFC featherweight bout

Alex Caceres picked up his fifth UFC win in a row by defeating Seung Woo Choi

Alex Caceres has now been in the UFC for well over a decade. Although he’s done far better than many fans expected him to, he’s never really moved into title contention.

Could that change in the future for ‘Bruce Leeroy’? Stranger things have happened. After all, last night’s win over Seungwoo Choi not only saw him pull off a beautiful submission, but it moved him onto a five-fight win streak, his best in the UFC thus far.

It wasn’t easy going for Caceres. He found himself badly outgunned on the feet and suffered some serious punishment throughout the fight. He may well have been stopped had Choi not made the error of throwing an illegal knee following a first-round knockdown.

But the TUF veteran managed to survive. When Choi made one mistake, he capitalized beautifully, somehow snaking onto the Korean’s back and choking him out, basically in one deft movement.

Caceres has now not lost since his February 2019 defeat to Kron Gracie. While he isn’t ranked in the top 15 yet, he probably deserves another shot at it. For a fighter once written off as a TUF gimmick, that’s not bad at all!

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#1. Marvin Vettori – defeated Paulo Costa in a UFC light heavyweight bout

Marvin Vettori picked up the biggest win of his UFC career by beating Paulo Costa

The biggest winner last night by a mile was Marvin Vettori, who picked up probably the biggest win of his UFC career. He did it by showing toughness, poise and skill and more impressively, he did it fighting out of his natural weight class.

That change came late on for ‘The Italian Dream’, as opponent Paulo Costa couldn’t make the middleweight limit. A fight at 205 pounds was agreed on instead. At the time, the decision from Vettori to agree to such a late change seemed ridiculous, but in the end, it didn’t make too much of a difference.

The Italian simply outfought Costa in all areas, taking the Brazilian’s heaviest shots with no real issue and giving back far better than he got. ‘The Eraser’ didn’t come close to being finished at any stage as he was last year by Israel Adesanya, but he was clearly second-best in all areas.

Despite taking his own failed shot at Adesanya earlier this year, Vettori had never really beaten a top-level opponent in the UFC until last night. He’s now achieved that and he did it in such a style that he could well find himself at the front of the queue for another title shot in the future.

Will the Italian ever be good enough to dethrone Adesanya and claim UFC gold? It’s highly debatable, but stranger things have happened. Vettori is only 28 years old, after all, and few people expected him to beat Costa here.

One thing is certainly not in doubt, ‘The Italian Dream’ was easily last night’s biggest winner.