While most eyes were on the main event scrap between Paulie Malignaggi and Artem Lobov last night (Sat., June 22, 2019) at Bare Knuckle FC 6 live on FITE.TV pay-per-view (PPV) from Tampa, Florida, former UFC middleweight contender Chris Leben also took to the ring for a five-round war with Dakota Cochrane.
Cochrane, who was coming off a second-round TKO win over former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks back at WBKFF 1 this past November, was making his BKFC debut. Despite Leben’s ferocity and striking expertise, Cochrane was able to push through the power of “Crippler” and eventually captured the unanimous decision win.
While Leben wasn’t completely outclassed the aftermath of the fight left him looking like Cochrane swung an ax into his head. Luckily for fight fans who like checking out disturbing images, Leben posted the following message via Instagram after the fight while in a nearby Tampa hospital:
“Well you drive a car long enough you go to get in a wreck it was a good fun fight thank you BKFC Way to go @dakotacochranemma I’ve been punched by a lot of people before but I don’t think anybody hit me quite as hard as the guy,” wrote Leben.
Leben, 38, was coming off a brutal 25-second knockout finish over Justin Baesman back at BKFC 5 and was hoping to parlay that success into a stoppage over Cochrane. Unfortunately for “The Crippler,” who clearly still has one of the most indestructible chins in combat sports, Cochrane was too quick to the punch and did more work over the course of five rounds.
The loss pushes Leben’s bare knuckle boxing record to 2-1 since making his debut this past November, but the knockout artist will most certainly get another chance to improve that mark under the BKFC banner.
For complete ‘Malignaggi vs. Lobov’ results and coverage click here.