Knocking out Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson was no easy task for Joaquin Buckley.
Just a couple of months ago, ‘New Mansa’ scored the biggest win of his career, KOing Thompson in the third round of their entertaining scrap at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City.
“We had to get ‘Wonderboy’ out of there,” Buckley told The MMA Guru while looking back on his latest victory. “He’s an OG, right? With the ‘Wonderboy’ fight, everybody loves ‘Wonderboy’ and they were excited for him to come back. They thought he’d have an easy time with me, especially if we stayed standing. But this is mixed martial arts, so you take the fight wherever you need to. I switched it up, used my wrestling, backed him up against the cage, and we were able to transition and find the knockout.
“It’s not easy to knock out ‘Wonderboy.’ The last person to do it was Anthony Pettis, and he was getting whooped the whole fight before he came off the cage with some ‘Showtime’ stuff. But I feel like I systematically beat ‘Wonderboy’ to get that knockout, and that was the difference.”
Joaquin Buckley gunning for the 15th kO of his career at UFC Tampa
On Saturday night, Buckley returns to the Octagon to headline the promotion’s final event of 2024, UFC Tampa. There, he’ll look to land another highlight-reel finish against another fighter who has proven difficult to put away inside the distance — Colby Covington.
Making his first appearance since a lackluster loss against Leon Edwards around this same time last year, Covington has only been stopped twice in his mixed martial arts career, both coming under the UFC banner. The last time was five years ago when ‘Chaos’ came up short against then-welterweight titleholder Kamaru Usman in their inaugural title tilt.
Covington went the distance with Usman two years later but still came up short on the scorecards.
