Friday night Houston’s Legacy Fighting Championship headed north on I-45 to the Dallas suburb of Allen. Boyed by a stacked fight card that featured some of the area’s brightest talent in addition to the Legacy debut of former WEC/UFC banger Anthony Njokuani, Legacy 38 had all the makings of an unforgettable night of MMA action.
In many respects, the card did the impressive and lived up to the hype.
As mentioned before, the main event of the evening featured the much anticipated promotional debut of Anthony Njokuani. Njokuani, who coincidently grew up in the Dallas area, brought with him a ton of promise and a shot at redemption after being released from the UFC earlier last year. Standing in the way of this plan was the unheralded Dave Burrow.
Burrow, presented a level of toughness but little else was known about him. For most fans, this fight was to serve as little more than a showcase for the Njokuani. Over the course of the first two rounds it seemed that this would be the case. Njokuani’s speed and Muay Thai skills were a thing on beauty as he peppered Burrow over the first ten minutes of the fight. But Burrow kept on coming behind an iron chin and some inadvertent eye pokes. Njokuani began to get flustered and frustrated and thrown off his game of control and pace. Burrow was able seize the shift in momentum in the third catching Njokuani in a text book arm bar that forced the tap and the upset win.
The time of the submission was 1:28 in the third round.
The co-featured bout of the night featured Bellator vet and Dallas native Jason Sampson in what was to have been his 125 lbs flyweight debut. However, when his opponent Joseph Sandoval was unable to make the weight the fight was quickly changed to a catchweight slightly south of the bantamweight limit of 135 lbs.
Undaunted, Sampson took his frustration out on Sandoval, dropping him early and then using his uncanny ground game to deftly take the back and rain down shots until the fight was waived off mercifully in the opening round. Jason Sampson via TKO.
Steven “Ocho” Peterson made his return to the cage triumphant with a first round guillotine choke of the highly acclaimed prospect Caio Machado. Peterson wasted no time in taking the fight to Machado, hitting the Brazilian with some hard punches before jumping into guard and slapping on the guillotine submission.
Augusto Mendes and Evan Martinez waged a closely fought war over the course of the fight. However, it was Martinez who would eventually drop the fight after Mendes was able to take mount in the second round and land a number of unanswered shots that left the referee with little choice but to stop the fight.
Charles Byrd looked impressive stopping Evan Thompson with a first round TKO stoppage.
Eli Tamez and Saul Elizondo waged a brutal three round war but it was Tamez who was eventually awarded the split decision.
Andrew Parker used his tremendous wrestling ability to score a submission victory over Bilal Williams.
PRELIM RESULTS
Mark Delarosa defeated Keeton Gorton via spit decision.
Tristan Grimsley scored an upset victoriy over George Pacarariu via split decision.
Cameron Couch defeated Kris Bickman via unanimous decision in an amateur fight.
Jarrod Trotter defeated Federico Olivera vian unanimous decision in an amateur fight.
Dylan Ashburn defeated Donis Francois via twister submission in an amateur fight.
** Levi Mowles was supposed to fight JP Cole on the night’s undercard but that fight was scrapped when it was discovered that Mowles had an active staph infection.
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