Brandon Moreno and Brandon Royval squared off in a Flyweight contest earlier tonight (Sat., Feb. 24, 2024) at UFC Mexico City inside Arena CDMX in Mexico City, Mexico.
Feints and movement began the fight. Royval looked to establish his left leg, while Moreno aimed to counter with wide left hooks. Moreno started looking to time the longer man, pulling Royval into big overhands and left hooks. The movement of the former champion worked well, keeping Royval’s landing percentage fairly low.
It wasn’t a particularly active round for either man, but Moreno landed the best shots.
Royval found some success with his left kick early in the second, but Moreno was starting to open up more with his counter punching, firing in combination. Several times, Moreno timed Royval’s step forward with a powerful swing. Royval did mix up his offense with some left knees, which was a good strategy to deter the overhand. Just as Royval’s kickboxing started to heat up, Moreno dumped him to the floor with a double leg takedown. He wasn’t able to do much with top position, however, as Royval attacked a gogoplata then scrambled to his feet.
It was a much more active and competitive round overall.
About a minute into the third round, Moreno scored his second takedown of the fight, but again, he struggled to contain “Raw Dog.” On the feet, Royval was letting his left leg fly to good effect. Moreno timed a spin to score a takedown, but Royval proved impossible to hold down. Though Moreno landed a couple good low kicks in the latter half of the round, it was overall Royval’s strongest round yet.
The outside low kick was becoming a really strong weapon for Moreno, who was having more difficulty finding Royval’s chin with his counters. Every time Moreno threw the right hand, he would shift hard into the left low kick, which dug into the thigh with a painful thud each time. In response, Royval fired a nice combo and finished with a surprising double leg takedown along the fence … though his top position didn’t last long. Both men started targeting the body more with their punches, and it really became a battle of Moreno’s quality vs. Royval’s quantity.
With five minutes remaining, it was anyone’s guess who was up on the cards, so the stakes were extremely high. Moreno started the fifth strong, landing a heavy overhand that got a reaction from his opponent. One more. Royval was throwing a lot of combinations without much stink on them, whereas Moreno was making his single shots count. Late in the round, Moreno found some heavy body shot and elbow connections, but Royval did manage to land that signature left knee also. The two finished the fight by brawling wildly!
This was an odd fight with an unusual rhythm. It was also hard to score! Moreno definitely landed the cleanest and hardest shots overall, but Royval threw about three times as much as the former champion. A lot of those shots were thrown at half power and bounced off Moreno’s gloves, but certainly, a fair amount did land with good effect too.
Ultimately, the judges awarded Royval the split-decision victory. When in doubt, volume tends to sway the judges!
Result: Brandon Royval defeats Brandon Moreno via split-decision
For complete UFC Mexico City: “Moreno vs. Royval 2” results and play-by-play, click HERE!