Brundage vs. Marquez: Co-Main Event Chaos Unleashed
Cody Brundage and Julian Marquez met in the middleweight co-main event at UFC Fight Night: Kape vs. Almabayev, known as UFC Vegas 103, on March 1, 2025. Their bout ended in a first-round technical knockout after a fast, hard-hitting exchange. The official finish came at 4:45 of Round 1, when Brundage stopped Marquez with strikes. The UFC’s official event report confirms the result and time.
A co-main event built around striking
Brundage and Marquez were assigned a prominent place on a card headlined by flyweights Manel Kape and Asu Almabayev. The UFC described the middleweight pairing as an action-oriented matchup in its fight-by-fight preview. The placement put their bout directly before the main event, but it did not make the winner an automatic title contender: it was a standalone three-round middleweight contest scheduled for up to 15 minutes.
How Brundage secured the stoppage
The first round developed into an open exchange, with both men throwing heavy punches rather than spending long stretches against the fence or working from the ground. A round-by-round account from Sherdog described the contest as back-and-forth before Brundage landed the more damaging shots and forced the stoppage. The official UFC record lists the method as TKO (strikes) at 4:45 of the opening round. The ending left only 15 seconds before the scheduled bell.
The official result and contemporaneous fight coverage agree on the key details: Brundage earned a striking stoppage at 4:45 of Round 1. The UFC provides the commission-backed result, while the independent round-by-round report describes the back-and-forth action that preceded it. Readers can consult both records directly: the UFC’s official scorecard page and its fight record both support this account.
What the result means
For Brundage, the win added a stoppage to his UFC record and closed the card’s co-main event. Marquez absorbed the first-round loss, while the result itself says nothing about either fighter’s future matchmaking. Their next assignments are decisions for the promotion, so the historical account is best kept to the bout and its verified outcome.
Brundage’s post-fight Octagon interview is available from the UFC’s verified YouTube channel. In a later UFC profile, Brundage reflected on the fight and the process of continuing his career. Those first-party materials provide a direct record of his comments without relying on anonymous social-media reactions or assigning statements to Marquez that were not independently reported.
UFC Vegas 103 in context
Brundage’s stoppage was one of several decisive moments on the card. Kape defeated Almabayev by third-round TKO in the main event; Nasrat Haqparast and Esteban Ribovics went the distance in a split decision that earned both Fight of the Night; and heavyweight newcomer Mario Pinto stopped Austen Lane in Round 2 to claim a Performance of the Night bonus. The UFC’s main-card report and MMA Fighting’s bonus report document those results and awards.
Brundage defeated Marquez by first-round TKO at 4:45. The official result, the UFC’s post-fight interview, and contemporaneous coverage together provide a clear record of the co-main event and its place on the March 1 card.
