UFC Fight Night 58 results: Daniel Sarafian gets odd injury TKO vs. Antonio dos Santos Jr.

Daniel Sarafian

BARUERI, Brazil – The bout between Antonio dos Santos Jr. and Daniel Sarafian started with a bang, but ended with a whimper.

After an all-out slugfest in the first round, dos Santos Jr. (6-2 MMA, 0-1 UFC) suffered what appeared to be a dislocated finger early in the second, prompting him to try to call an impromptu timeout as he snapped it back into place – a big no-no according to referee Eduardo Herdy, who waved off the bout and declared Sarafian (9-5 MMA, 2-3 UFC) the winner via injury TKO at 1:01 of Round 2.

The middleweight bout opened today’s UFC Fight Night 58 main card at Jose Correa Arena in Barueri, Sao Paulo, Brazil. It aired on FOX Sports 1 following prelims on the same channel and UFC Fight Pass.

The way these two went at it from the start, it seemed all but guaranteed that this one would end with someone asleep on the mat. Sarafian and dos Santos Jr. took turns dropping each other early in the round, pausing to mix in a little grappling before going back to a striking shootout, with each man giving as good as he got throughout the opening frame.

Early in the second, however, dos Santos Jr. put his open hand out in an apparent attempt to block a punch, and when he pulled it back he had a finger pointing several degrees in the wrong direction. He appeared to ask for a brief pause as he quickly snapped the finger back into place, but unfortunately that’s not how the rules of MMA work.

As dos Santos Jr. looked on in confusion, the referee Herdy waved the bout off, explaining to the fighter that he can’t call his own injury timeouts without also forcing the referee to call off the fight. It marked a disappointing end to what had been an exciting fight, but at least there might be a lesson in it. Injury timeouts? No such thing in MMA.

Sarafian gets the win, snapping a two-fight losing streak in the UFC. For dos Santos Jr. the loss is his first since September of 2011.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 58 results include:

For more on UFC Fight Night 58, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s John Morgan contributed to this report from on-site in Barueri.)