Kai Kamaka III felt right at home in Las Vegas and comfortable back under a familiar banner.<\/p>\n
In his first UFC appearance since 2021, the 31-year-old Kamehameha graduate from Pearl City defeated Dakota Hope by split decision in a three-round lightweight fight at UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Duncan at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Both fighters accepted the bout on just a few days\u2019 notice. Kamaka (18-7-1) weathered an early barrage from Hope (11-2) and steadily asserted control in a battle of strikes to get his hand raised.<\/p>\n
Kamaka had fought with the Bellator MMA and Professional Fighters League organizations in recent years. He won a fight against Michel Lima under the Tuff-N-Uff banner in January and rejoined the UFC.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was a blessing,\u201d Kamaka, who lives in Las Vegas with his wife and five children, said in a post-fight interview with the UFC. \u201cMy fifth fight (in Las Vegas). I\u2019ve been through a lot. I had a parallel career outside, growing, a lot of adversity. But this is kind of my home. I cornered a lot of my teammates here. Trained here a lot. Came to a lot of grappling events, came to a lot of fights. It\u2019s good to be in Vegas because you get the opportunity to see this place a lot and be comfortable with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the opening fight of the undercard.<\/p>\n
All three judges scored the first round 10-9 for Hope and all three gave Kamaka the second 10-9. Two of three judges gave the third round to Kamaka by a point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew (his early rush) was going to happen and I was going to push right after that and try to pick up my pace as fast as I could and as smart as I could,\u201d Kamaka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I was landing cleaner shots,\u201d he added. \u201cA lot of stuff that he was (bringing) was trying to barrage and trying to make something crazy happen. First round, I felt a bunch of punches to the back of my head. But a fight\u2019s a fight. You gotta kinda work through that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he looked forward to spending time with his wife on her birthday and their children; the Kamakas had a week of regular family time disrupted by the sudden fight invitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just put my foot back in the door and I gotta go back in the gym and get better,\u201d Kamaka said. \u201cA lot to work on from here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kai Kamaka III felt right at home in Las Vegas and comfortable back under a familiar banner. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[112843,1014,3550,26891,49,48,641,266,638,82,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-583628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-brian-mcinnis","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-fighting","15":"tag-hawaii","16":"tag-mma","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}