Paulo Filho (186) vs. Denis Kang (185)
Round 1: Tentative start to the round before Filho shoots weakly and tries to pull guard after a minute. Kang decides to follow him down and immediately gets wrapped up. Kang advances to deep half guard and punches away to Filho's ribs. Filho doing nothing but attempt to tie up from the bottom as Kang pounds away with punches and elbows. Kang looks to have an arm-triangle for a moment, but Filho escapes. John McCarthy implores the fighters to get active with a minute left. Crowd starts booing, and understandably so. Kang finishes the round in half guard. 10-9 Kang.
Round 2: Kang takes Filho down immediately, but Filho scrambles back up. Filho drags Kang down against the base of the cage with a single-leg and moves to half-guard, framing up an arm-triangle. Filho using elbows, positionally advancing at a glacial pace, but it's happening. Kang still has Filho's left leg trapped... and now Filho extracts it and gains full mount halfway through the round. Filho flattens Kang out, but Kang bridges and reverses! Now it's Kang working slowly from Filho's half-guard, landing a few nice punches but Filho's wrapping him up well. 10-9 Filho and 19-19 going into the final round.