2<\/p>\n The referee missed the tap, resulting in Kelly going unconsciousCredit: PFL<\/p>\n The pair met at PFL World Tournament 8 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.<\/p>\n In the dying embers of the second round, Dupras locked in a standing guillotine choke, which Kelly tapped to almost immediately. <\/p>\n Despite this, Scano missed the tap after moving to the other side of the fighters to get a different view of the submission.<\/p>\n Both men then dropped to the canvas as Kelly went limp while commentators screamed at the referee to stop the fight.<\/p>\n The intervention was eventually made 11 seconds after Kelly first tapped out.<\/p>\n As the fight was waved off, Dupras kicked Kelly off him, resulting in the Irishman banging his head on the canvas as he lay unconscious on his back.<\/p>\n A video of the stoppage quickly made the rounds on social media, and fans didn’t disguise their anger.<\/p>\n One supporter wrote: \u201cRef doesn\u2019t pay any attention to the unconscious man, just lets the back of his head SLAM on the canvas. You can literally hear it,\u201d<\/p>\n Another tweeted: “Never let her ref a fight again.”<\/p>\n A third posted: “Worst stoppage of the year.”<\/p>\n 2<\/p>\n Kelly also banged his head on the canvas when he was kicked off by DuprasCredit: PFL<\/p>\n Meanwhile, somebody else commented: “What the f*** was that ref doing?”<\/p>\n Kelly, who trains at SBG Ireland with Conor McGregor<\/a>‘s head coach John Kavanagh<\/a>, falls to 11-4 in defeat, while Dupras improves to 9-2.<\/p>\n It marked the third straight setback for Kelly inside the cage following a 10-fight winning streak.<\/p>\n Elsewhere on the card, Khabib Nurmagomedov prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Movlid Khaybulaev was crowned the 2025 PFL featherweight tournament winner with a fifth-round submission win over Jesus Pinedo.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Thad Jean outpointed Logan Storley to win the welterweight tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A packed-out Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall bore witness to one of the worst stoppages of the year on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,4736,786,34607,785,34606,85],"class_list":["post-45080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-conor-mcgregor","tag-fighting","tag-frederik-dupras","tag-mma","tag-nathan-kelly","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pfl-stoppage.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Kelly](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pfl-stoppage-2.png\")
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