In a marquee match on July 13, Michael ‘Mayday’ McDonald entered the octagon at UFC Fight Night, ultimately losing the bout to John ‘Hands of Stone’ Lineker. The event took place in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in front of a sold out crowd and worldwide on FS1.

McDonald (17-4-0) landed 14 of his 30 strikes in the fight, but was caught with a right hook that caused him to drop to the mat. McDonald quickly got back up and continued to throw punches of his own, both with his fists and delivering vicious kicks with his feet. Lineker then took over with a flurry of hard jabs and ended the fight with a hard left hand that caught McDonald on the chin and dropped him. From there Lineker delivered body shots and head shots to McDonald. With McDonald on the mat and Lineker on top of him, referee Herb Dean stopped the fight 2 minutes and 43 seconds into the first round.

Lineker (28-7-0) is now the fifth ranked bantamweight in the world, after winning nine of his last 10 fights. McDonald was ranked fifth in the world entering the fight and is now seventh in the very competitive division.

“When you have two of the top ten bantamweight fighters go at it, anything can happen in our sport. I personally would have wanted Michael to attempt to wear him down and stretch the fight out to the third, fourth or fifth round. But Michael was confident in his knockout abilities and went into a slugfest with him,” said trainer Professor Tom Theofanopoulos, who was in the corner of McDonald in Sioux Falls.

Theofanopoulos went on to add; “Everything went well, for Michael that day. He made weight, he was focused but like I said when you have two very talented top ten guys, anything can happen.”