Sage Northcutt’s ONE Championship debut didn’t go as “Super” as he would’ve liked, suffering a 29-second knockout loss at the hands of Cosmo Alexandre at the “Enter the Dragon” event in Kallang, Singapore, last Friday (May 17, 2019).
See the knockout here.
To make matters worse, Northcutt had to endure a nine-hour surgery immediately after to repair multiple fractures in his face caused by the single, massive blow. According to Urijah Faber — one of Northcutt’s coaches at Team Alpha Male — he had 30 pieces of bone fragment removed because of the multiple fractures.
“Twenty five seconds in, really, he got stalked — Cosmo, who’s an amazing kickboxer and a big, strong guy, came out and pressed the action right off the bat,” Faber told The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting). “Right off the bat, did like a couple of stutter steps, switch-step fakes to kind of corral Sage in. Sage went one way and then the other way, first time in a ring, and literally gets manhunted with the nastiest punch and crushes his whole face,” he added.
“Basically splintered his cheek into 30 pieces and broke his orbital bone. He had eight different fractures and literally they had to pick the pieces of the bone fragments out — 30 different pieces out of his face.”
The loss snapped Northcutt’s three-fight win streak going back to his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) days before inking a deal with ONE. Unfortunately, the new promotion didn’t get to see much of what Northcutt can do.
“So a bunch went wrong, 23, 25 seconds in we really didn’t see much of a fight. Cosmo’s a seven-time world champ, he’s dangerous, fighting at 185 pounds, under the impression that nobody cuts weight in ONE FC and they do hydration tests because of etc., and we didn’t get to see much of a fight to be honest.”
Indeed, Northcutt was fighting at Middleweight for the first time, and was obviously giving up a size and strength advantage to Alexandre, though Faber says he doesn’t put a ton of weight – no pun intended – in ONE’s weight-cutting policies.
“Sage is such a faith-based guy and takes things as they’re said. Of course, everybody’s cutting weight,” Faber said. “I was kind of trying to wrap my head around the thing and you have to do a hydration test and they weigh you in a couple of days in a row, so it makes it really difficult. But, I talked to multiple guys there that were cutting weight and it is what it is,” he said.
“That wasn’t the main problem there. Cosmo’s an incredible fighter, seasoned Muay Thai kickboxer, 7-1 as a mixed martial artist. Just came across the ring and landed a nasty punch and ended it for Sage there.”
Faber added that the team was hesitant to accept the match because Northcutt apparently was not 100 percent healthy. Still, “The California Kid” says at the end of the day Northcutt simply lost to a better fighter that night.
For now, Northcutt faces a lengthy road of recovery before he gets another chance to impress in his new company … perhaps as a Welterweight.