Britain’s Callum Connor was given a UFC contract despite losing in Dana White’s Contender Series, but Norbert Novenyi Jr missed out despite winning.<\/p>\n
Six fighters from Tuesday’s five fights earned contracts in MMA’s leading promotion – four of the winners plus two losers, including 26-year-old Connor.<\/p>\n
Peru’s Piero Guaylupo earned a unanimous decision over lightweight rival Connor, who suffered the first professional loss of his career.<\/p>\n
UFC president White said it could be a fight of the year contender because it contained more significant strikes than any UFC lightweight three-round bout.<\/p>\n
“Both of these guys are in the hospital right now, as they should be,” said White.<\/p>\n
“One of the greatest fights you’ll ever see on Tuesdays or Saturdays or any other day.<\/p>\n
“For Piero to be 21 years old and fight the way he did, the fight was incredible. But it takes two guys to make a great fight. I’m taking them both.”<\/p>\n
Connor, from Manchester, now has a pro record of 8-1, including a four-fight win streak on UK promotion Full Contact Contender.<\/p>\n
Middleweight Novenyi, who was born in Hungary but now fights out of London, earned a unanimous decision over American Theo Haig to improve his pro record to 11-1.<\/p>\n
But the 26-year-old was the only fighter who won on Tuesday not to be given a contract. He was told by White that “tonight’s not your night, my friend”.<\/p>\n
“Norbert, both of you guys have great records,” White said. “You came in, fought a good fight.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything tonight that makes me say, ‘I got to have this guy in the UFC’.<\/p>\n
“Whatever you decide to do here, we would like to take another look at you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Callum Connor was given a UFC contract despite losing in Dana White’s Contender Series, but Norbert Novenyi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-902357","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\/902357","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=902357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}