UFC Vegas 67 video: Roman Kopylov punishes Punahele Soriano with nasty body shots leading to standing TKO

Roman Kopylov seems to be hitting his stride after securing a second straight finish, this time putting away Punahele Soriano at UFC Vegas 67.

The Russian displayed a nasty variety of strikes but it was a series of body shots that really started to hurt Soriano. Back-to-back kicks had Soriano wincing in pain and falling backwards towards the cage, which allowed Kopylov to surge forward with a barrage of punches that forced the referee to stop the fight.

The end came at 3:19 in the second round.

“A rough start to this fight but my coach was in my ear to straighten up,” Kopylov said afterwards. “The results speak for itself.

“With all due respect to my opponent, we were only worried about his back hand so once we were dodging it, we knew that we would do our work and we’d be able to get the victory.”

There was no feeling out between the middleweights with Soriano throwing sledgehammers with every single punch while Kopylov was tactical with his defense and then firing back with stiff shots of his own. Kopylov was also starting to establish a good lead jab that kept tagging Soriano on the outside.

Kopylov was consistently popping Soriano with slick combinations with the Hawaiian looking to throw a a big overhand punch as his counter.

While he had to regard his opponent’s immense power, Kopylov seemed to get more and more comfortable using his straight punches and then even exploding with a spinning back kick that landed right in the midsection. Kopylov then started targeting the body with punches, which potentially did even more damage than the kick as Soriano was really starting to feel the damage done.

With Soriano backing up and holding his midsection, Kopylov really started to unload including another devastating kick to the body that spelled the beginning of the end. Kopylov continued to throw bombs and Soriano was clearly trapped with no chance to escape.

That was more than enough for the referee to stop the fight and save Soriano from further harm as Kopylov picked up a second straight win while also moving his record at 2-2 in the UFC.