Nina Milosevic is now two fights into her UFC career with two finishes. At UFC Vegas 124 on Saturday, the bantamweight pinned Priscila Cachoeira to the canvas for most of two rounds and finished her with ground strikes at 3:40 of the second. UFC News posted the official result on X, and referee Jason Herzog was the man who waved it off.
The fight hit the mat almost immediately. According to Cageside Press, the opening exchange went to the ground and Milosevic took Cachoeira’s back right away, then went looking for a rear-naked choke. The choke never came. The punches did. Milosevic landed shot after shot to the face, and while none of them had real finishing weight, Cachoeira had almost nothing to offer in return. Milosevic tied up her wrists from a three-quarter mount, slid into half guard, and briefly got an arm around the neck again when Cachoeira nearly gave up her back. In the last minute of the round Cachoeira threw a couple of punches back over her shoulder. That was most of her offense for five minutes.
Aaron Bronsteter scored it 10-9 Milosevic on X, calling it “Incredibly dominant round, but not enough damage to tip it over to a 10-8 in my opinion.” Aljamain Sterling was less patient during the fight. He posted on X that Milosevic needed to do more and joked that a referee might stand them up.
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Milosevic fixed that in the second. She got back on top quickly and switched from punches to elbows and forearms from mount, which landed far heavier than anything she threw in Round 1. Cachoeira flailed underneath, then rolled to her knees, and she still wasn’t defending much. Herzog stepped in. Cachoeira argued the call, but nobody watching was going to side with her. Bronsteter’s verdict on X was short: “Good stoppage.”
(The Cageside Press recap lists Round 3 in its official result line, but its own fight report and the UFC’s official result both put the finish in Round 2.)
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Where they stand
Milosevic made her promotional debut earlier this year and stopped Hailey Cowan with a body shot, which earned her a bonus. The UFC’s own account posted “TWO FIGHTS, TWO FINISHES” moments after this one ended, so the promotion clearly knows what it has. This time she won by smothering an opponent on the mat instead of landing one perfect body shot on the feet, and that kind of range matters for a fighter this early in her UFC run.
Cachoeira’s spot is much shakier. She came in 1-5 over her previous six fights, and Saturday makes it 1-6 over her last seven. Cageside Press described her body language as beyond poor, and the fight backed that up.
View post on X
My take: Herzog got this one right. He gave Cachoeira a full round plus to show she could fight back, and when Milosevic started dropping elbows on someone who had stopped answering, he didn’t let it go on any longer than it needed to. Sterling had a fair point about Round 1, because Milosevic’s ground strikes there looked like she was keeping busy more than trying to hurt anyone. She figured it out between rounds, though, and the switch to elbows and forearms in the second is what earned her that 3:40 stoppage.
