Curtis Blaydes eked out a closely contested split decision victory over DWCS alum Rizvan Kuniev at UFC Baku on Saturday night.
It was a relatively uneventful opening round with Blaydes relying on his grappling to limit Kuniev’s offense. With a minute to go in the first, Kuniev managed to finally break away, but failed to land anything substantial, and ended up back in the clinch seconds before the horn.
After surrendering the first five minutes to Blaydes, Kuniev finally started to find his timing, landing combinations at will and causing some swelling on the face of the former interim title challenger.