It's difficult to tell who loves who more.

Florida and the UFC have been locked in a mutual display of public affection for several years, particularly since the COVID era when the Sunshine State was the first to open its doors amid widespread lockdowns and other mandates.

Dana White and Co. brought the octagonal roadshow to Jacksonville three times in a week during the chaotic days of May 2020 and they've returned several times since, including once again Saturday for a 13-bout show at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.

Top-10 featherweights Josh Emmett and Ilia Topuria had the main event in the latest go-round, whose first undercard punches and kicks were thrown before midday with a main card that went live on ABC and ESPN+ at 3 p.m.

Topuria won their five-rounder by unanimous decision.

The B/R combat team was in the building for all the action with designs on assembling the definitive real-time list of the show's winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and feel free to drop a thought of your own in the comments.

Loser: Toughness vs. Talent

Josh Emmett is, by any measure, a rugged individual.

By the time his main event with Ilia Topuria had reached its halfway point, the area around his left eye was a ghastly mix of swollen flesh and flowing blood.

But the 38-year-old California-based featherweight showed no signs of retreat, and exhorted the crowd to full-throated enthusiasm as the fight's fourth round began.

Still, while he won the admiration of the building's most mayhem-thirsty elements, simply being resilient in the face of mostly one-way violence is not a winning formula on the highest level.

Which is why Topuria, who arrived ranked ninth to Emmett's fifth, was the one campaigning for bigger names after he was officially awarded a hard-earned unanimous decision that came via scores of 50-44, 50-42 and 49-45.

"I'm the next guy," he said. "I want (champion) Alex (Volkanovski) to defend the belt so I can show the world when his run is gonna end and mine is gonna start."

It was the unbeaten Georgian's 14th straight win as a pro and sixth in a row in the UFC since he arrived in 2020. For Emmett, who'd lost to now-interim champ Yair Rodriguez in his most recent bout, it was a fourth loss in 13 bouts since his octagonal debut in 2016.

"I was expecting to knock him out in the first round, but the guy is really, really tough," Topuria said. "The guy brings so much energy inside the cage. But I showed once again that no one can match my level of skill."

Winner: Patient Brutality

Maycee Barber was clearly in the mood for a fight.

She arrived to the cage with what seemed to be little emotion and paced as the music for opponent Amanda Ribas blared and the crowd cheered upon the popular ninth-ranked flyweight's arrival.

But once they were waved together by referee Keith Peterson, she had her chance.

"It feels like I just won the whole 125-pound division," she said, shortly after a particularly brutal second-round TKO of Ribas in Saturday's bloody co-main event.

"I'm coming for all these b—ches."

Barber was calculating and patient through the opening half of the first round against a more frenetic and energetic Ribas, but when the Brazilian emerged from a takedown scramble with blood coming from her nose, the 25-year-old born and based in Colorado found another menacing gear.

"I saw the blood," she said, "and I'm gonna come for that blood when I see it."

She was more aggressive and violent following that exchange and into the second round, eventually landing a left kick to Ribas' head followed by a right hand that sent her foe reeling backward. The clearly damaged fighter went for a desperation takedown but was pummeled on the ground until Peterson intervened to end matters at 3:42.

It was Barber's eighth win in 10 UFC fights and fifth in a row as she campaigns to boost the No. 11 ranking she arrived with.

"My coach kept telling me 'I see a head kick. I see a head kick," she said. "I'm gonna keep warning these girls. The future has arrived."

Loser: Prolonging the Party

Well, there's your heavyweight champion of anticlimaxes.

The UFC debut/homecoming of ex-Jacksonville NFLer Austen Lane lasted precisely 29 seconds until his opponent, Australian-based big man Justin Tafa, was rendered unable to continue after taking an inadvertent finger to the right eye in the first round of their scheduled three-rounder.

Lane, who was drafted by and played with Jaguars before seeing time with three other teams, took up MMA upon retiring from football in 2015 but missed out on an initial chance to reach the UFC when he was finished in one round by another former NFL player, Greg Hardy, on Dana White's Contender Series in 2018.

He went back to the regional drawing board and won seven of nine fights before returning for another Contender Series shot, this time getting a contract after a first-round defeat of Richard Jacobi last September.

Lane and Tafa looked primed to exchange heavy blows in their main-card showdown and Lane had just missed a long right hand when he pivoted with his left hand and had his fingers extend directly into Tafa's eye. The eye immediately swelled and was noticeably reddened as Tafa chatted with a cage-side physician.

The delay extended more than four minutes before the fight was waved off and declared a no contest. The fighters embraced and shook hands as the announcement was made, though members of their respective corner teams exchanged words from opposite sides of the cage as UFC security personnel stood by to prevent an altercation.

Winner: Neutralizing the Ref

This time, Keith Peterson's role was limited.

In fact, all the embattled referee had to do was leap in to protect a stricken Gabriel Santos from further damage after the Brazilian was knocked silly by a pair of right hands from David Onama in Round 2 of their scheduled three-rounder on Saturday's main card.

Peterson, you may remember, had run into some recent controversy with a premature wave off of a bout on a Fight Night show in Las Vegas, and members of the early-arriving Jacksonville crowd reminded him of it with jeers during a bout on the preliminary card.

It was Onama who made Saturday's end academic, though, when he emerged from a strategic first round-and-a-half with a right uppercut that immediately stiffened his foe.

He landed another right as Santos tumbled backward, prompting him to hit his head on the canvas and leaving him vulnerable to the two additional ground shots Onama was able to land before Peterson vaulted in. The official time was 4:13 of Round 2.

"That was exactly the game plan to come out to show my skills," said Onama, who won for the third time in five bouts since arriving in 2021. "Why brawl when I have all the skills I can use?"

All three UFC wins have come by finish, with two by KO and another by arm-triangle submission.

"I didn't expect to do that. It just kinda happened," he said. "My coach told me 'Don't rush things. Just let it happen.' I'm gonna get better. Go back to the gym on Monday and keep working. I've got a long way to go. Just keep shining."

Winner: Feeding the Frenzy

The raucous were getting restless.

A Jacksonville crowd that had seen just one finish—prompted as much by injury as violence—through eight prelim fights was clearly on the hunt for action when middleweights Brendan Allen and Bruno Silva began their main-card opener shortly after 3 p.m.

And though boos and groans were evident within 30 seconds when the fighters tied up along the fence, it was the only moment of dissension in the in-house ranks.

Allen and Silva quickly emerged from their clinch in a full-on brawl, with both fighters getting stung and wobbled before Allen, a brash 27-year-old from Louisiana who arrived ranked No. 13 at 185 pounds, landed a right hand that changed things.

The hook sent Silva tumbling backward to the floor along the fence and Allen quickly pounced with a barrage of ground strikes, some of which connected. Nevertheless, the volley was enough to prompt Silva to give up his back, allowing Allen to seize and lock in the rear-naked choke that ended things with the Brazilian's tap surrender at 4:39.

"I'm the youngest guy in top 15 and I will be the next champion," he said, before specifically mentioning champion Israel Adesanya as an imminent future target.

"Izzy, in 2024, I'm coming."

Loser: Intermittent Effectiveness

Phil Rowe went three rounds with Neil Magny on Saturday.

And he won parts of each of those three rounds with flashy, effective activity.

But it was the periods between those flashes that did him in.

The Orlando-based welterweight wasn't able to get it done in front of his home-state fans in the prelim finale, ultimately dropping a split decision to the 11th-ranked contender as Magny picked up his 21st octagonal victory since debuting with the promotion a decade ago.

Rowe wound up with a 34-29 edge in significant strikes and scored the fight's lone takedown across 15 minutes, but it was his inability to string together prolonged stretches of effectiveness that did him in.

Magny had an edge in overall strikes in each of the three rounds and was successful in compromising his foe's gas tank thanks to a grinding approach that saw the fighters tied up along the fence for at least part of each round—drawing the ire of a restless crowd that saw only one finish in eight prelim bouts.

Two judges saw Magny a 29-28 winner, with one giving him the first and second rounds while the other gave him the second and third. The dissenting judge saw it 29-28 in Rowe's favor after seeing him superior in rounds one and two.

It was his second loss in five UFC fights and first since his official debut at UFC 258 two years ago.

Winner: Maintaining Momentum

In old-school fight parlance, it was a crossroads bout.

Both Tabatha Ricci and Gillian Robertson are 28 years old, but Ricci arrived having won three straight fights since an unsuccessful UFC debut in 2021, while Robertson had won more than she'd lost—but lost the ones that mattered most—in a 14-bout octagonal stay that began four years earlier.

As it turned out, momentum still matters.

Ricci was the faster, busier, and generally more effective fighter throughout an intermittently violent 15-minute prelim, ultimately doing enough to earn a unanimous decision that'll more than likely allow her to maintain her No. 15 ranking among contenders to UFC strawweight champ Zhang Weili.

Two judges saw it 29-28 for Ricci—one gave Robertson the first round and another the second—while a third gave the winner all three rounds to make it 30-27.

Ricci was statistically busier in terms of striking in the first and third rounds and scored her three takedowns across rounds one and two. Robertson out-landed her in the second and found her only takedown success, across four overall tries, in the third.

It was a ninth win in 10 pro fights for Ricci, who was born in and still fights out of Brazil, while Robertson, who's based in Florida was born on the Canadian side of the international border at Niagara Falls, is 12-8 since her 2016 debut at 9-6 in 15 UFC outings.

Winner: Going Off Script

It wouldn't be a UFC show, or at least not a usual one, without significant lineup changes.

Flyweight Zhalgas Zhumagulov had a would-be bout at last week's Fight Night show in Las Vegas scrubbed so he headed across the country to engage a new foe in Josh Van, who made his UFC debut after compiling a 7-1 record in another promotion—including all seven wins in two rounds or less.

Van went the distance for the first time to get a split decision triumph, earning two 29-28 verdicts to offset a dissenting 29-28 score for Zhumagulov.

Lightweight Trevor Peek got another newcomer in Chepe Mariscal after his scheduled opponent, Victor Martinez, was removed from the lineup. The 30-year-old Mariscal was 13-6 as a pro and had earned his last four victories inside the distance, but went the full 15 minutes to surprise the previously unbeaten Peek by a well-deserved unanimous decision.

Last but not least among the altered fights was a middleweight bout in which Pensacola's Sedriques Dumas was scheduled to face Punahele Soriano but was instead matched with Cody Brundage, whom he defeated by a unanimous nod to open the prelim show.

A flyweight match between Tatsuro Taira and Kleydson Rodrigues was pulled entirely after Rodrigues missed the contracted 126-pound weight limit by three pounds.

Additionally, lightweight Loik Radzhabov was docked 20 percent of his purse after weighing in 1.25 pounds beyond the agreed-upon limit for a bout with Mateusz Rebecki. Radzhabov wound up on the short end of the afternoon's first finish, too, sustaining a leg injury that limited his movement on the way to a TKO loss via strikes at 2:36 of Round 2.

Full Card Results

Main Card

Ilia Topuria def. Josh Emmett by unanimous decision (50-44, 50-42, 49-45)

Maycee Barber def. Amanda Ribas by TKO (punches), 3:42, Round 2

Austen Lane no contest with Justin Tafa (eye injury), 0:29, Round 1

David Onama def. Gabriel Santos by KO (punches), 4:13, Round 2

Brendan Allen def. Bruno Silva by submission (rear-naked choke), 4:39, Round 1

Preliminary Card

Neil Magny def. Phil Rowe by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)

Randy Brown def. Wellington Turman by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)

Mateusz Rebecki def. Loik Radzhabov by TKO (strikes), 2:36, Round 2

Tabatha Ricci def. Gillian Robertson by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27)

Joshua Van def. Zhalgas Zhumagulov by split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28)

Chepe Mariscal def. Trevor Peek by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Jack Jenkins def Jamall Emmers by split decision (27-30, 29-28, 29-28)

Sedriques Dumas def. Cody Brundage by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 30-27)