UFC Fight Night 84 results: Davey Grant overcomes fouls to beat Marlon Vera

LONDON – In a bloody and at times bizarre fight, Davey Grant outworked Marlon Vera to win a unanimous decision with help from a late point deduction.

It was a penalty that Vera (7-3-1 MMA, 1-2 UFC) brought on himself after repeated warnings from referee Marc Goddard, but it ultimately had little impact. Grant (10-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) cruised to the victory with scores of 30-26 from all three judges.

The bantamweight bout was part of today’s UFC Fight Night 84 preliminary card at The O2 in London. It streamed on UFC Fight Pass.

Things got off to a normal enough start, with Grant hurting Vera with heavy hooks in the opening minutes, and Vera attempting to use Grant’s aggression against him by dropping for a leg lock. That attempt was interrupted when Goddard halted the fight and chastised Vera for grabbing inside Grant’s gloves in order to set up the submission attempt.

The fight restarted from there, only to be paused again in the second round after Vera committed the same foul while working with Grant in his guard. That offense resulted in another warning and a stand-up that might have been beneficial to Vera, though by then he was beginning to look as if he was losing focus after all the interactions with the referee.

To his credit, Grant’s aggressive attack never waned, and he turned it up a notch at several points, hurting Vera late and smothering him with ground-and-pound in the third. But Vera simply couldn’t keep his fingers out of Grant’s gloves, and with Grant in his guard in the final round he committed the infraction a third time, causing Goddard to deduct a point without even pausing the fight to do so.

The point deduction hardly mattered in the end, however, as Grant won all three rounds on all three judges’ scorecards, giving him the unanimous decision victory after an unusual, though action-packed fight.

Grant’s victory gets him back in the win column after a submission loss to Chris Holdsworth in his UFC debut. Vera has now lost two of his last three.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 84 results include:

• Davey Grant def. Marlon Vera via unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-26)
• Scott Askham def. Chris Dempsey via knockout (punch and high kick) – Round 1, 4:45
• Arnold Allen def. Yaotzin Meza via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
• Krzysztof Jotko def. Brad Scott via unanimous decision (29-28, 30-27, 29-28)
• Rustam Khabilov def. Norman Parke via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
• Daniel Omielanczuk def. Jarjis Danho via majority technical decision (29-29, 29-28, 29-28) – Round 3, 1:31
• Teemu Packalen def. Thibault Gouti via submission (rear-naked choke) – Round 1, 0:24
• David Teymur def. Martin Svensson via TKO (strikes) – Round 2, 1:26

For more on UFC Fight Night 84, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s John Morgan contributed to this report on site in London.)