Face Off Fight Night 3 Recap And Results

Prior to the event, combat sports fans were looking for fight events to attend or watch during the holidays, and the African Knockout, owners of the Face Off Fight Night series did not disappoint the fans by putting on fights at the right time when no other promotion was putting on fight events. The event was spectacular, surpassing all expectations with fight fans not knowing Nigeria MMA spaced has grown this far. Others went as far as comparing the event to the likes of Bellator and the UFC events, which says a lot about how pleased the fans were with the fights.

Face Off Fight Night 3 was graced with celebrities and dignitaries from the Nigeria Entertainment industry to MMA fans in attendance all enjoying a brilliant night of fights. The fans watching from home or streaming online were also very pleased with the skillset and talent of the fighters coupled with the overall broadcasting quality of the show this time around compared to the two previous series. At some point in time, no one wanted the show to come to an end, but as the saying goes every good thing must come to an end.

All fights on the card were high-level fights despite having 4 debutants. Nine fights ended in a finish with four first-round finishes and three fights going to the distance settled on by the judge’s scorecard. The event set the pace for what is to come ahead for the year 2023 and the promotion has won a lot of hearts with this one.

RECAP

The preliminary card started off with a mixed variety of finishes.

Firstly, it was Richard Muzaan who used his incredible striking and knees to TKO Omega Bassey in just 2 minutes of the first round. Next, the Cameroonian Franklin Esoe submitted Goodluck Opara in the second round. In the heavyweight fight, John Ezeibe defeated Samson Kazeem by TKO in the third round. Ananias Mulumba also submitted Commey Ansieku in the second round of a highly contested featherweight fight. To close out the prelims, one of Nigeria’s finest finishers Melvin (Nicotine) Ugochukwu put on a highlight reel with a beautiful overhand right to knock out Dennis Johnson in the second round.

The women’s bantamweight fight kicked start the main card, an experience high-level striker, Juliet Chukwu dispatches her opponent Pamilerin Akintayo in the first round.  The next fight was in the lightweight division, one of the most exciting fighters out of Nigeria, Cornel Thompson who was on a 4 fight-winning streak took on highly rated and undefeated Congolese MMA lightweight champion Billy Nyembo. Thompson dominated Nyembo landing a record-breaking 8 takedowns to win the fight via unanimous decision.

Josias Musasa continued his unbeaten run with a first-round TKO win over Emmanuel Bernard just 39 seconds into the fight. Setting a record for the fastest knockout in the African Knockout (AKO) history. The next fight was the co-main event and a highly anticipated rematch between rivals Ndidi Alonu and Daniel Emeka. The fight was entertaining, but a series of groin shots and timeouts slowed the pace of the fight. At the end of the day, Ndidi won the fight via Split-Decision (SD).

The main event was between home favourite Segun Ogunniki and Beninese Cherif Drame. Ogunnoiki started the fight with great intensity and was clearly scoring points with his kicks, punches, and jabs but Drame on the other hand was the aggressive fighter throwing big punches and connecting a couple of times and it did not take long before he threw a massive overhead right that clipped and dropped an unaware Ogunnioki to finish the fight via KO in round one. The Arena was stunned, everyone was in shock with hands on their heads. Seconds after, the fans began applauding the brilliance of Cherif’s strategy and his knockout win.