Noche UFC 306 bonuses and aftermath: The Sphere massively outdoes two historic Conor McGregor cards, four fighters take home $50K, and more
Noche UFC 306 lived up to its long wait. The promotion's magnum opus at the famed Las Vegas Sphere featured exceptional production quality rivaling that of the best sporting events in history.
The card celebrating Mexican Independence Day featured spectacular fights, granting the audience brutal slug fests and displays of peak technical prowess.
Moreover, the Noche event has proved quite lucrative for the promotion. In fact, it now boasts the largest gate of any UFC event and has vastly outdone two historic Conor McGregor fight cards.
UFC 306 racked in a live gate of $22 million as opposed to UFC 205, headlined by a lightweight tile fight between McGregor and Eddie Alvarez, which brought in $17.7 million, and UFC 229 headlined by McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov which grossed close to $17.2 million.
Check out the live gate stats of Noche UFC below:
In comparison, the promotion's second most successful event of the year, UFC 300, had a live gate of $16.5 million.
The Fight of the Night award for the event went to the lightweight contest between Dana White Contender Series 2022 breakouts Daniel Zellhuber and Esteban Ribovics.
After a three-round slugfest that saw both men soldier through brutal punishment from their opponent, 'El Gringo' edged out the Mexcian via split decision, to register his third win in the world's premier MMA promotion. Both fighters will take home an extra $50K.
The Performance of the Night bonuses of $50K, went to Ketlen Souza and Ignacio Bahamondes.
Souza pulled off a Round 1 rear naked choke submission win over surging strawweight Yazmin Jauregui in the prelims card of the event. Meanwhile, Bahamondes fetched the POTN award with a first-round TKO over Manuel Torres.
Furthermore, newly crowned bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili is now tied with Raphael Assuncao for the most decision wins at 135 pounds, following his win over Sean O'Malley in the main event.
If 'Sugar' had successfully defended his title at Noche UFC via knockout, he would've tied with T.J. Dillashaw for the most knockouts at bantamweight.
Noche UFC 306 also featured the first-ever women's trilogy fight in the promotion's history. In the bout, former champion Valentina Shevchenko used expert offensive wrestling to score a unanimous decision over Alexa Grasso and reclaim the women's flyweight gold.
'Bullet' is now tied with bantamweight queen Raquel Pennington for the third most wins in UFC women's history. Both women have 13 wins in the organization.