Imagine you operated one of the largest MMA organizations in the world and just for the hell of it you let your newly crowned bantamweight champion compete in some small Shooto event in Brazil only to be supremely knocked out by a relatively no-name fighter out of Portland, Oregon. Now imagine the amount of Excedrin you would have to take to alleviate the migraine that would form directly inside your brain after realizing that your champion lost in under two minutes in the first round in a fight that no one outside of Brazil witnessed in real-time.
We’ve seen it before in MMA, and in 2012 Bellator bantamweight champion Eduardo Dantas was knocked out by Tyson Nam at Shooto Brazil 33. Since then, Bellator realized they should never let their champion fight anywhere else — ever.
Perhaps Anthony Leone tried to employ the same technique that Tyson Nam used to defeat Dantas a couple years ago, unfortunately it didn’t work for the bantamweight from Phuket Top Team. Although Leone did grab the first round by scoring an early takedown and pinning the champion there for nearly five minutes, he was ultimately victim to one of the slickest rear naked choke transitions that was ever pulled off inside the Bellator cage. Check out the .gif of the finish, compliments of ZProphet.
