When Lando Vannata and Marcos Mariano woke up on Sunday morning (Australian time), their UFC 234 lightweight matchup was scheduled as the Fight Pass feature prelim bout.
Then Robert Whittaker’s middleweight title fight with Kelvin Gastelum was called off, and Vannata-Mariano was bumped up all the way to the co-feature slot of the pay-per-view main card at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena.
But Vannata proved to be the only one ready for the prime-time callup, as he made short work of his debuting foe. Vannata had his way before finishing things off with a Kimura submission at 4:55 of the opening round.