MMA Fighting Global Rankings<\/a> with Hernandez defending his No. 5 (tied) spot.<\/p>\nFollowing the emotional victory, Rodrigues celebrated winning his first-ever five-round decision and called for a bout with former UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis.<\/p>\n
\u201cDricus du Plessis, where are you, man?\u201d Rodrigues said in his post-fight interview. \u201cI want you. Let\u2019s go. No. 1 contender to fight for the belt. Dricus du Plessis, I want you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodrigues certainly put on a performance worthy of championship chatter as he overcame a vintage effort from Hernandez to secure the victory. Fighting just a short drive south of his hometown of Dunnigan, Calif., Hernandez immediately put the pressure on Rodrigues by shooting for takedowns early and often. Rodrigues showed excellent takedown defense even as Hernandez muscled him against the cage, changed levels, and changed grips to work to put Rodrigues on his back.<\/p>\n
Despite Hernandez\u2019s attempts to smother him, Rodrigues found success in the first two rounds, doing more damage when they were separated and chopping Hernandez down with leg kicks that appeared to have Hernandez severely compromised. However, Hernandez charged back in the third, finally grounding Rodrigues, and seemingly wearing him down as he started to find his own success on the feet.<\/p>\n
Hernandez is known for thriving in the later rounds, but on Saturday, it was Rodrigues who made the right adjustments to turn the tide back in his favor. Rodrigues\u2019 corner told him to stop backing up and he followed their advice precisely, marching forward in the fourth and forcing Hernandez to battle him in the middle of the octagon. That limited Hernandez\u2019 leverage when it came to setting up takedowns, and instead Hernandez had to trade punches with Rodrigues, a challenge he didn\u2019t shy away from.<\/p>\n
Rodrigues sealed the deal with a strong fifth round, consistently outscoring Hernandez on the feet, despite Hernandez somehow never being rocked or knocked down by Rodrigues\u2019 on-point punches.<\/p>\n
With the win, Rodrigues improved to 11-3 in the UFC and is knocking on the door of a title shot. Hernandez has now lost two straight fights for the first time in his career following an eight-fight win streak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gregory Rodrigues might just be championship material after all. The Brazilian veteran won his fourth straight fight, outstriking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1979,121,123,122,18873,152122],"class_list":["post-440977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-latest-news","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}