Fight Facts: UFC Fight Night 149

Fight Facts is a breakdown of all of the interesting information and Octagon oddities on every card, with some puns, references and portmanteaus to keep things fun. These deep stat dives delve into the numbers, providing historical context and telling the stories behind those numbers.

TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC FIGHTS: 5101
TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC EVENTS: 475

The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday headed to St. Petersburg, Russia, for the first time and brought with it a show filled with thrilling knockouts. UFC Fight Night 149 featured an unusually rare spinning back kick knockout, a bevy of fighters losing their unbeaten luster and the most experienced headliner in organizational history.

RED VS. BLUE: At UFC 236 on April 13, all five winners on the main card came out of the blue corner. At this event, all five main card victors fought out of the red corner.

SINISTER SIX: Six fighters made their UFC debuts at UFC Fight Night 149 -- Arman Tsarukyan, Alen Amedovski, Movsar Evloev, Sung Woo Choi, Alex da Silva Coelho and Rafael Fiziev -- and only Evloev recorded a win.

NOT-SO-FANTASTIC FOUR: Evloev was also the only undefeated fighter to keep his record intact at the end of the show, Amedovski (8-0), Fiziev (6-0) and Antonina Shevchenko (7-0) were each handed their first career defeats.

AHHH, MOTHERLAND!: Nine Russian fighters competed at this event, and seven emerged victorious. Alexey Oleynik and Gadzhimurad Antigulov were the only two who did not prevail in front of their countrymen.

TRUE EXPERIENCE: With 131 total fights between the two leading up to their clash, Oleynik and Alistair Overeem combined for the most MMA experience of any UFC headliner.

A-OK: Alistair Overeem and Alexey Oleynik share the same initials in their names, making this the second main event in promotional history to feature two combatants with identical initials. This first occurred at UFC 189, where Conor McGregor met Chad Mendes.

THE PERFECT NICKNAME: Overeem earned the 40th finish of his lengthy career with a first-round knockout of Oleynik. “The Demolition Man” held more stoppage wins than any fighter on the card other than Oleynik held in total victories. It was also his 33rd finish in round one.

O-WIN-NIK: With 57 victories under his belt, Oleynik held the most wins of any fighter to ever compete in a UFC main event. He is also one of the winningest fighters to ever compete inside the Octagon, trailing the likes of Jeremy Horn (80 wins) and Travis Fulton (58 wins) at the times in their respective careers.

PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE: Sergei Pavlovich leveled Marcelo Golm in 66 seconds, earning his 10th career stoppage. All of his finishes have come by knockout, and each has taken place in the first round.

SULTAN SIGNOFF: After scoring a decision win over Keita Nakamura, Sultan Aliev retired in front of home country fans. The four-fight promotional veteran leaves the sport with a record of 15-3, as he began his career at light heavyweight before dropping to middleweight to compete in Bellator MMA and then to welterweight to fight for the UFC. Aliev never lost in Russia, going 8-0 in his native country.

MAGOMANIA: Magomed Mustafaev landed a spinning back kick to Fiziev’s head and finished his counterpart with follow-up punches, earning the sixth victory by spinning back kick in company history. With the bout contested at lightweight, half of the spinning back kick stoppages in UFC history have come in this division.

STARTING THE NIGHT OFF RIGHT: Mustafaev picked up a “Performance of the Night” bonus for ejecting Fiziev from the ranks of the unbeaten with a spinning back kick in the UFC Fight Night 149 opener. He became the first fighter to earn a post-fight bonus in a card opener since Claudio Puelles pulled off a kneebar on Felipe Silva at UFC Fight Night 129 in 2018.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into UFC Fight Night 149, Tsarukyan (14 fights) and Choi (eight fights) had never lost on the scorecards, Coelho (21 fights) and Golm (eight fights) had never been finished and Amedovski had never fought beyond the second round (eight fights).

M-M-M-M-MONSTER!: Golm and Nakamura both chose unrelated songs named “Monster” as their walkout music, with Golm using a track by rockers Meg & Dia and Nakamura coming out with a song by Japanese rapper Osuman featuring Rino Latina II. Both men lost.

NOW WE ARE FREE: Amedovski walked out to “Nelle Tue Mani” by Andrea Bocelli from the “Gladiator” soundtrack before facing Krzysztof Jotko and suffered a dominant decision loss. The previous nine uses of Bocelli were all his duet with Sarah Brightman: “Time to Say Goodbye.” Fighters accompanied by Bocelli songs have lost seven of those 10 recorded bouts.

Sherdog contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the “Eminem Curse” in 2012 and working for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.