Former UFC women's bantamweight Holly Holm scored a spectacular TKO win over Bethe Correia in the main event of UFC Singapore.
"The Preacher's Daughter" had lost her last three fights ever since beating Ronda Rousey to become champion in 2015.
Reverses at the hands of Miesha Tate, Valentina Shevchenko and Germaine de Randamie had seen her career prospects plummet but this latest win halts that slide.
A boring fight, which even saw the referee warn both fighters due to the lack of action, eventually sprang into life when the Brazilian landed a spinning kick late in the second round.
Correia landed a couple of punches in the third before she decided to showboat and encouraged Holm to engage.
"I'm going to enjoy victory, I'm going to enjoy this night" -@HollyHolm back in the win column pic.twitter.com/T3KlVBhiv7
— UFC (@ufc) June 17, 2017
Holm obliged, landed a crunching left shin to her opponents face which dropped her to the canvas. The former champion followed up with one more punch before the bout was called to a halt.
Speaking afterwards she said: "You know, this fight I know that she could make look messy and I know I heard a lot of boos from the first round but what I wanted to do was make it look as clean as I could.
"She can make a messy fight. That was the goal, that was the plan, bait her into something and make a clean shot."
FYI for fighters. When taunting a fighter to move forward to engaged.....don't get your head kicked off 5 seconds later. #UFCSingapore @ufc
— Ian McCall (@Unclecreepymma) June 17, 2017
Elsewhere on the night, Marcin Tybura beat Andrei Arlovski by unanimous decision in an exciting fight in the heavyweight division while Colby Covington also won by unanimous decision against Dong Hyun Kim.
Former lightweight champion Rafael Dos Anjos started his campaign at welterweight with a victory over Tarec Saffiedine.
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