ANAHEIM — For three rounds, Mackenzie Dern and Amanda Lemos gave it everything at UFC 298.
With knockdowns and takedowns for each strawweight, the crowd at Honda Center gave its full approval at the end, as Lemos won a unanimous decision in the featured prelim fight Saturday night.
All three judges scored it 29-18 for the 36-year-old Brazilian, who was coming off a lopsided unanimous-decision loss six months to 115-pound champion Weili Zhang at UFC 292.
Dern (13-5) somehow found away to survive the second round as she was dropped twice, the second time bringing her hands to her face with what appeared to be a broken nose. Lemos (14-3-1) tried to end the fight, but Dern fended her off.
The third round saw Dern catch an off-balance Lemos and drop her with a wild overhand right. Lemos popped up and dumped Dern to the canvas, only to have the Brazilian jiu-jitsu whiz gain top control for much of the ground.
Dern, 30, had just a four-week camp – as opposed to her routine 10-week camp – after the Huntington Beach resident stepped in to replace the injured Tatiana Suarez. She has now lost consecutive fights for the first time in her UFC career, in which she has an 8-5 record.
Rogerio de Lima chops away for TKO
Marcos Rogerio de Lima attacked the legs of Junior Tafa from the start, wobbling the New Zealand heavyweight before finishing the job in the second round.
Tafa, filling in on a day’s notice for his injured brother Junior Tafa, was affected early by the heavy lumber ripping his left lead leg and ankle. He limped to his corner at the end of the opening round and referee Frank Trigg gave him a long look before starting the next round.
Rogerio de Lima (22-10-1) went back to the wounded limb, kicking it out from under a pained and fallen Tafa (5-2) and pausing, then closing it out with some hammerfists before Trigg stepped in at 1:14 of the second round.
Nakamura grinds out a win
Rinya Nakamura used his exemplary grappling to secure a unanimous…
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