UFC Fight Night 101 results: Damien Brown takes split call from Jon Tuck on decision heavy card

MELBOURNE, Australia – Damien Brown seemingly needed to get a little blood flowing on the outside of his body in order to feel fully motivated in his fight with Jon Tuck.

After Tuck (9-4 MMA, 3-4 UFC) obliged him with a hard right hand late in the first round, Brown (17-9 MMA, 2-1 UFC) rallied in the final two frames, doing just enough to win a close split-decision victory with scores of 28-29, 29-28, and 29-28.

The lightweight bout was part of the preliminary card of today’s UFC Fight Night 101 event at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It aired on FS1 following additional prelims on UFC Fight Pass and ahead of a main card on FS1.

For Tuck, this was a fight that slipped through his fingers by the narrowest of margins. After battling out of an early guillotine choke attempt by Brown to start the bout, Tuck scored the most significant blow of the fight when he caught Brown walking into a short right hand late in the opening frame.

The punch put Brown on the mat, and also split open a nasty cut on the bridge of his nose. But with time running out in the round, Tuck opted to move to Brown’s back and try for a rear-naked choke rather than pouring on the punishment, and that may have cost him.

Brown would survive the round and open the second with a renewed sense of urgency. That same urgency was largely missing from Tuck, who seemed to coast through the second round and never quite restarted his momentum in the third. Brown, meanwhile, continued chipping away at him with a consistent work rate that likely won the judges over.

The split-decision was popular with Brown’s many Australian fans, but left Tuck looking stunned and disappointed in the center of the cage, perhaps wondering how he let the win slip away.

Brown’s win makes it two in a row for him. Tuck has now lost two straight, and three of his last four.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 101 results include:

• Damien Brown def. Jon Tuck via split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
• Jonathan Meunier def. Richard Walsh via unanimous decision (29-28, 30-27, 30-27)
• Ben Nguyen def. Geane Herrera via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-26, 30-27)
• Jason Knight def. Dan Hooker via unanimous decision (29-28, 30-27, 30-26)
• Marlon Vera def. Ning Guangyou via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
• Jenel Lausa def. Yao Zhikui via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 101, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

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