Earlier, Luke Riley, who trains with Pimblett at Liverpool’s Next Generation gym, opened the preliminary card in stunning fashion.<\/p>\n
Making just his third appearance under the UFC banner, Riley, 27, extended his perfect record to 14 victories with a TKO victory over Kai Kamaka III.<\/p>\n
The UFC has put a lot of faith in Riley – handing him a co-main event slot at UFC London in March – and he continued to deliver.<\/p>\n
Riley dropped Kamaka with a heavy right late in round one before forcing the referee to step in after unloading with knees and punches.<\/p>\n
“My past two fights I’ve been very harsh on myself but I’m very happy with this one,” Riley said.<\/p>\n
“When I hit someone it’s bedtime – they are going for a nap.”<\/p>\n
But Lone’er Kavanagh’s hopes of climbing up the flyweight rankings took a hit as he fell to a submission loss in a chaotic contest with Brandon Royval.<\/p>\n
The Londoner dropped Royval early in round two after landing a looping right but was unable to get the finish as he emptied the tank against the durable American.<\/p>\n
Royval recovered quickly and gained control in the third, taking Kavanagh’s back before sinking in a rear naked choke.<\/p>\n
Kavanagh, 27, had hopes of earning a title shot with victory, having upset former two-time champion Brandon Moreno in March, but will have to reset after his second loss in five fights since signing with the UFC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier, Luke Riley, who trains with Pimblett at Liverpool’s Next Generation gym, opened the preliminary card in stunning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-521890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}