Marlon Vera picked up his signature win this past Saturday at UFC on ESPN 41.
Vera was in a highly competitive fight with former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz in the main event in front of Cruz’s home fans in San Diego. In fact, Cruz was up 2-1 on the scorecards heading into the fourth round.
But almost out of nowhere, Vera found an opening and landed a left kick to Cruz’s face that put the ex-champ on the canvas and knocked out for just the second time in his career.
The 29-year-old Vera now has knockout wins over Cruz and another former champ, Frankie Edgar, as part of his four-fight winning streak, and also has a TKO win over Sean O’Malley on his resume. He’s now No. 5 in the UFC’s official bantamweight rankings.
So is it time for the MMA world to take Vera seriously as a bantamweight title contender? That’s what we asked our “Spinning Back Clique” panel of Simon Samano, Brian “Goze” Garcia and Danny Segura, along with host “Gorgeous” George Garcia.
Check out their reaction in the video above, and don’t miss this week’s full episode below.
“Spinning Back Clique” is released each Tuesday on MMA Junkie’s YouTube channel. You can watch the full episode in the video below.
