Brandon Royval knows what it’s like to win an MMA title – he won the flyweight title for LFA before he came to the UFC.
If he keeps finishing people the way he did in his UFC debut Saturday, he might have taken the first step toward getting to title contention at the highest level.
Royval (11-4 MMA, 1-0 UFC) submitted longtime UFC fighter Tim Elliott (15-11-1 MMA, 4-9 UFC) with an arm-triangle choke in their flyweight fight on the prelims at UFC on ESPN 9 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Royval was a slight underdog in the fight and got the stoppage at the 3:18 mark of the middle round.
Afterward, Royval told UFC commentator Daniel Cormier that he wasn’t happy with his performance, particularly because Elliott landed four takedowns on him in a little more than eight minutes of fight time. Elliott also outstruck him.
But as you can see in the video below, the stats don’t matter all that much when Royval can pull off that kind of finish.
