UFC Fight Night 69 results: Taylor Lapilus upsets Yuta Sasaki via second-round TKO

Taylor Lapilus

BERLIN – With a pair of hard left hands, Taylor Lapilus put Yuta Sasaki down early in the second round.

With the jackhammering series of lefts that followed, Lapilus (10-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC) put Sasaki (18-3-2 MMA, 1-2 UFC) away, bringing a violent end to the contest at the 1:26 mark of Round 2.

The bantamweight bout opened up the preliminary card of today’s UFC Fight Night 69 event at O2 World Berlin in Germany’s capital city. It streamed on UFC Fight Pass.

Early on in this fight, it became clear that Sasaki didn’t want to have much to do with Lapilus in toe-to-toe exchanges. Sasaki tried repeatedly to get Lapilus to the floor, or at least stifle him in the clinch, though he didn’t succeed at either venture for very long.

At the start of the second round, Lapilus shrugged off a Sasaki takedown attempt and then immediately fired back with a two-punch combo before walking his opponent back toward the fence. As Sasaki floated to his right to avoid his advancing opponent, he moved straight into a straight left from Lapilus that popped his head back and set his legs to wobbling. A followup left caught him on the jaw, and soon Sasaki was down.

As the Japanese fighter sat with his back to the fence, Lapilus posted on his head with his right hand and flung one left after another at Sasaki’s face. With no response from Sasaki, referee Wolf Menninger had no choice but to step in and call it off.

The win makes it two in a row in the UFC for Lapilus, who’s now won five straight overall. Sasaki loses his second consecutive bout inside the octagon.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 69 results include:

• Taylor Lapilus def. Yuta Sasaki via TKO (punches) – Round 2, 1:22

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 69, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s Matt Erickson contributed to this report on site in Berlin.)