Gregory Rodrigues went into enemy territory and pulled off the upset in a grueling fight with Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez.<\/p>\n
Rodrigues defeated Hernandez via unanimous decision (48-47, 49-46, 48-47) in the UFC Sacramento main event Saturday night at Golden 1 Center. Hernandez is from Dunnigan, California, less than 40 miles outside Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Rodrigues and Hernandez were ranked No. 11 and No. 6, respectively, in the middleweight division coming in. After the victory, Rodrigues called for a matchup against a former champion.<\/p>\n
“Dricus Du Plessis, where are you?” Rodrigues said in his postfight interview. “I want you. Let’s go. No. 1 contender to fight for the belt.”<\/p>\n
Rodrigues pummeled Hernandez on the feet throughout the fight, landing the heavier strikes and doing more damage.<\/p>\n
Hernandez stole the momentum in the third round, scoring an early takedown, looking for a rear-naked choke, and then grinding Rodrigues against the fence for much of the frame. But Rodrigues once again took over in the fourth and fifth rounds to seal the deal.<\/p>\n
With the victory, Rodrigues is now riding a four-fight winning streak and is 7-1 in his last eight Octagon appearances. The 34-year-old Brazilian hasn’t lost since facing Jared Cannonier in February 2025.<\/p>\n
Hernandez has now lost two in a row following an eight-fight winning streak that catapulted him into title contention. The 32-year-old suffered a TKO defeat to current middleweight champion Sean Strickland in the UFC Houston main event in February. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gregory Rodrigues went into enemy territory and pulled off the upset in a grueling fight with Anthony “Fluffy”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-865153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}