Photo: Cyril Chebot via Flickr, CC BY 2.0, cropped.
Alex "Bruce Leeroy" Caceres has knocked out Julian Erosa with a left head kick in the first round at UFC Vegas 66, earning a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus.
The featherweight bout at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on Saturday, December 17 was over at 3:04 of round one. After an exchange of leg kicks, Caceres threw a lead left hand that missed and followed it straight away with a left high kick that dropped Erosa. A few follow-up shots forced the stoppage (Cageside Press).
It was the bounce-back Caceres needed. A loss to Sodiq Yusuff had ended a five-fight win streak, the best run of his career, and Erosa had gone 5-1 in his current spell with the promotion. The event results list Caceres alongside Michal Oleksiejczuk as the night's Performance bonus winners.
Caceres overhauled his diet more than a decade ago after watching the documentary Forks Over Knives, cutting out dairy, processed foods and processed meat. He told UFC.com at the time that he wasn't "completely a vegan", and he has eaten mainly plant-based ever since. He credits the change for his energy and focus:
Now, I do have this excess amount of energy that I can't seem to spend all the time. I get into the gym and I'm not satisfied until I'm crawling out of the cage. One of the most profound things this diet gave me is the clarity of thought.
We've followed Caceres for a while. He beat Chase Hooper at UFC 250 in 2020 and made it five straight with a Performance of the Night submission last year. In September Nate Diaz submitted Tony Ferguson in his final UFC fight.
Plant-powered and still kicking.