UFC Fight Night 96 results: Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos gets hard-fought decision over Keita Nakamura

PORTLAND, Ore. – From the opening moments on, Keita Nakamura dedicated himself to getting Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos down and taking his back.

Nakamura (32-8-2 MMA, 2-5 UFC) did that, several times, but what he couldn’t do was finish dos Santos (16-5 MMA, 2-1 UFC) or stifle his offense once dos Santos escaped and returned to his feet, resulting in a narrow unanimous decision victory for dos Santos after three fast-paced rounds.

The welterweight bout was part of the preliminary card of today’s UFC Fight Night 96 event at Moda Center in Portland, Ore. It aired on FS2 following additional prelims on UFC Fight Pass and ahead of a main card on FS1.

Nakamura’s desire to get this fight to the floor was so strong that he walked right through a dos Santos head kick in the opening seconds just to do it, and managed to get what he was looking for. Within moments of hauling dos Santos down he had moved to his back, sunk his hooks, and was searching for a rear-naked choke.

That’s where his strategy faltered, however, because despite several attempts Nakamura was never able to latch onto a choke against the wily dos Santos. Several times in the first two rounds he got into the position he was looking for, but when he proved unable to finish he didn’t seem to have a backup plan. Soon, dos Santos would be back on his feet, battering Nakamura with leg kicks and heavy punches, treating the recent grappling exchange as nothing more than an inconvenient delay.

In the final round, it was dos Santos who came the closest to a submission, taking Nakamura down and nearly finishing an arm-triangle choke before Nakamura defended. That left the fight up to the judges, all three of whom saw it for dos Santos by scores of 29-28.

With the win, dos Santos has now won two straight in the UFC. Nakamura has lost two of his last three.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 96 results include:

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 96, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s John Morgan and Steven Marrocco contributed to this report on site in Portland.)