Kai Kamaka III had no thought he could be cornering at UFC 303.
Kamaka fought in South Dakota within the PFL on Friday night time as he beat Pedro Carvalho by resolution to punch a ticket to the playoffs. The Hawaiian acquired on the airplane to return to Vegas on Saturday morning and anticipated to spend the day at residence along with his household watching UFC 303.
Nonetheless, whereas he was outdoors within the pool along with his youngsters, Kai Kamaka had a few missed calls from Eric Nickick to say he wanted him to nook Dan Ige for a brilliant quick discover battle. What transpired subsequent was a busy couple of hours for everybody concerned.
“The fights begin at 3 and I’m not even actually watching the fights as a result of I simply acquired to my youngsters. I had simply gotten residence from my battle, they usually had been swimming within the pool and spending time with them, and checking on the fights. I checked my cellphone and had two missed calls from Eric Nicksick, and I’m considering we simply gotten again, everybody goes to their households, I do know he was going to the world to nook Roman. Like why the f**okay is he calling me. Then, I had a textual content message, mentioned name me ASAP. I referred to as him and he instructed me the scenario, and he mentioned we might should go,” Kamaka mentioned to BJPENN.com.
“We get to the world, the safety checkpoint, and the safety comes up and asks for our names, Dan is driving, and he doesn’t know what to inform them as a result of he acquired instructed to maintain it on the down low. He was stuttering, Ali came to visit and was like ‘Brother, we don’t have a lot time.’ We see UFC personnel operating to the safety so we drive previous the safety,” Kamaka mentioned.
“At that time, I used to be like that is on. They begin filming us strolling in and that’s simply getting there. We began strolling in and he has to go weigh in, Dan didn’t even know he needed to weigh in, he simply instructed them he was 165. He didn’t learn the contract, however he didn’t know he was weighing in, however fortunately he was like 164.5. He was nonetheless on weight. They requested him concerning the battle and he mentioned 165 randomly and wasn’t even 100% positive,” Kamaka added.
As soon as the weigh-in and the battle was confirmed, Kai Kamaka mentioned one particular person began watching tape on Diego Lopes whereas the others had been simply serving to Dan Ige work out and get free. They knew they didn’t have time to coach something particular.
Though Ige misplaced a choice to Lopes, Kamaka was nonetheless pleased with what his fellow Hawaiian achieved at UFC 303.
“Dan was dictating the battle, he wasn’t successful the battle, however he was making an attempt to create the motion. He didn’t need to go in there and simply maintain Diego down. He got here to battle. He wished to ship to the group, however he additionally wished to win,” Kamaka concluded.