Bo Nickal showed off some surprisingly good hands in his second UFC fight, and no one was more impressed with his performance than Bo himself.
Bo Nickal absolutely burned through his latest opponent at UFC 290 on Saturday night, finishing Val Woodburn via knockout just 38 seconds into the first round.
It was impressive because Nickal — a multi-time NCAA Division I champion — didn’t even have to use his wrestling to handle business. Instead he relied completely on his hands to bully Woodburn up. Woodburn was apparently so ready for the takedown that he never saw Bo’s big right hand coming. The punch stunned him, and all it took was a few more follow up strikes to put the late replacement down and out (watch the finish here).
Nickal’s lightning fast win kind of got lost in the shuffle of UFC 290 — there were so many big finishes and wild fights that his win over a heavy underdog was a bit unappreciated … by everybody but Nickal himself. A new video from BT Sports shows the middleweight prospect admiring his handiwork.
? “Dang I didn’t know I was that fast” ??@NoBickal rewatches his incredible 35-second KO over Val Woodburn at #UFC290 pic.twitter.com/V9C1cl67s8
— UFC on BT Sport (@btsportufc) July 9, 2023
“Faking the shot, feinting the shot, feint, there’s a hook,” he said as he watched a replay of the knockout. “I was fast as hell. Damnit, I didn’t know I was that fast. And then kind of an uppercut … and he’s out! That was fast, I gotta rewind it!”
“Hold on. Did I get freakin’ hit? Damn it, I think I got hit,” Bo continued. “So let’s see here … I gotta go slow-mo. Won’t count that one. Nah, I didn’t get hit, we’re good, we’re good. And then I finish him.”
“Watch this one, this one’s sweet right at the end. Sorry, Val. Bam. You’re done. And no sell it. That’s expected. I told myself I’m not gonna celebrate this one just because, I don’t know. You start celebrating everything, then it’s kind of like cliché to me. So. Got the win.”
Bo Nickal came into the UFC talking a big game, and for a hot minute it looked like he planned to ride a cocky persona to headlines, fame, and fortune. But at UFC 290 he showed off another, humbler side of himself. A lot of his interviews were focused around thanking his team at AKA for the time and effort they were putting into his development.
Everyone expected Bo Nickal to wrestle and instead he was sliding in and out of Val Woodburn’s range like Sub-Zero while knocking big chunks off Val’s health bar. #UFC290 pic.twitter.com/Z2tE0du6Hs
— Jake (@JakeChatty) July 9, 2023
“I’m just proud to represent my team in a positive way,” he said at the UFC 290 post-fight press conference. “It’s definitely exciting because I know how much work I put in, how much time and effort I put in to do that, and I’m just so happy that my work is paying off. And I’m happy for my team and those guys because I was able to execute all the things that we worked on together.”
“It’s really what I’m proud of the most is doing it together. Of course I won, but I really feel like in reality we all won.”
So what’s next for Bo? During his post-fight speech the wrestling standout implied he wanted to take some time off to go hunting and prepare for the birth of his first child. During the UFC 290 presser he simply said he’d take a few days to relax and then speak to his management about next steps.
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