Hitman halts Alves with guillotine choke in UFC

MANILA, Philippines - Danish Martin “Hitman” Kampmann rose from the grave to finish off an aggressive Thiago Alves with a guillotine choke in the final minute of their three-round welterweight fight at UFC on FX 2 at the Allsport Arena in Sydney, Australia yesterday.

Overpowered and bloodied on the face by the more aggressive Alves, a former title contender, Kampmann didn’t give up and reversed a takedown by his complacent foe for the decisive guillotine choke that forced the latter to tap with 48 seconds remaining.

The win was Kapmann’s 19th against five losses and more importantly earned him a potential title shot against Carlos Condit, the reigning champion in the division.

“Thiago (Alves) got me with some good shots, I’ll be honest,” said Kampmann after the bout. “He was catching me.... I was eating too many punches.”

Alves, called “The Pitbull” after being one of the best welterweights a few years back and even once knocked out mixed martial arts legend Matt Hughes in a fight in London, England four years back, was leading all the judges scorecard after landing the more hurting punches majority of the way.

Alves, in fact, led in the first two rounds, 20-18, and appeared headed to dominating the third and final round but decided to play Kampmann a bit by taking the fight down to the mat.

Big mistake.

Kampmann, who is more known for his knockout power but also owns an underrated ground game, managed to reverse the takedown attempt and caught the Brazilian with that choke.

Alves fell to his ninth defeat against 19 wins.

Kampmann’s come-from-behind win though was overshadowed by the match pitting Demetrious Johnson against Ian McCall. The bout was first called a split decision win for Johnson but was later declared a majority draw because of a scoring error discovered after the match.

“We have another controversy,” said UFC president Dana White.

White said the judges’ scorecards had not been tabulated correctly by the fight commission after Sal D’Amato’s 10-8 for McCall in the third round had been marked as a 10-9 that led to a draw.

Actually, UFC had made a provision that once the three-round bout is still tied after three rounds, a fourth will be given. But since the correction was made an hour after the fight, UFC was forced to have a re-match a couple of months from now, with the winner taking on Joseph Benavidez for the first UFC lightweight title.