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05th Jun 2016

Epic UFC 199 opener ends with suitably vicious knockout

What a haymaker

Ben Kiely

An epic lightweight war for the ages opened up the Fight Pass exclusive prelims for the stacked UFC 199 event on Saturday night.

The big news of the night was Michael Bisping becoming the first British champion in UFC history after he dismantled Luke Rockhold to claim the middleweight belt, but before any of that there were already some crunching battles on display.

Polo Reyes extended his win-streak to three by stopping the very durable Dong Hyun Kim (the other one) in the third round after a gruelling back and forth battle where both men seemed happy to absorb as much punishment as possible.

Both fighters dug deep eating trading heavy shots in the first stanza and by some minor miracle, they both managed to make it to the second round standing.

The fight ended in the third when Reyes delivered a punishing coup de grace on the exhausted Kim who just simply couldn’t take any more damage.

It was a right haymaker that sent the Korean crashing down to the canvas in a heap, which was swiftly followed up by another heavy punch before the referee intervened to stop the fight at the 1:52 mark of the final round.

The connection was so powerful you can almost feel it yourself.