PFL 10: Championships at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, New York, Friday, Nov. 25, 2022. (Cooper Neill / PFL)
Brendan Loughnane TKO’s Bubba Jenkins in fourth round, wins featherweight championship at PFL 10
The Professional Fighters League returns to us tonight, November 25, 2022, for PFL 10: The Richest Night in Mixed Martial Arts.
Headlining the event is a women’s lightweight championship trilogy showcasing two-time PFL champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison (15-0), who faced Laressa Pacheco (18-4) in the main event of the evening.
Co-headlining is a featherweight championship bout between striking technician Brendan Loughnane (25-4) and NCAA Division I wrestling Bubba Jenkins (19-5), both men of which had gone 3-0 thus far into PFL’s 2022 season.
Continue reading to see how this featherweight championship bout went down:
Official Result: Brendan Loughnane def. Bubba Jenkins via TKO (punches) at 2:38 of round four
Both men look sharp through the first five minutes. Jenkins lands a nice left hook and attempts a takedown immediately following, though he’s unable to secure it.
Loughnane spends a good portion of the first round defending takedowns, but toward the end of the round he gets back to striking range where he batters Jenkins’ calf with nasty kicks.
Loughnane’s takedown defense holds up through the second round, as he continues to pick Jenkins apart.
Jenkins is landing some nice punches of his own, primarily jabs, but Loughnane is mixing his attack up beautifully from his punches to kicks. He’s kept up with the calf kicks, and he’s beginning to bring front snap kicks up the middle as well.
Loughnane’s nose is bloodied from the straight punches of Jenkins, but he really starts to beat Jenkins down later into the third round.
His combinations are nasty, he hasn’t neglected the calf kicks as he continues to throw and land them often, and he’s using that snap kick of his more and more, chipping away at Jenkins’ energy reserves little by little.
Bubba Jenkins is an absolute stud of a wrestler, he’s been able to out-wrestle just about everyone he’s fought thus far into his career; this man beat Michael Chandler 15-3 in a wrestling match, he beat Darrion Caldwell 12-8, both of which went on to become world champions in MMA.
Chandler is a two-time Big 12 Championships silver medalist, Caldwell, like Jenkins, is an NCAA Division I national champion, and he’s also a four-time ACC gold medalist.
What’s more, Jenkins pinned David Taylor, an Olympic champion, a four-time world champion, a two-time world championships/World Cup gold medalist, and a three-time Pan American Championships gold medalist. One of the greatest freestyle wrestlers of all-time, and Bubba Jenkins pinned him.
He also out-wrestled Lance Palmer quite handily, snapping his 10-fight undefeated streak in his PFL debut. Palmer was a 22-3 multi-time, multi-organization world champion going into that fight, and he’d won all 22 victories with his wrestling, being a NCAA Division I national championships silver medalist and Big Ten Championships gold medalist himself.
And even after doing all of that, Jenkins couldn’t take Loughnane down to save his life.
Brendan Loughnane is the real deal; he improves his record to 26-4 tonight, improving to 4-0 in the 2022 season to claim the PFL featherweight championship, as well as the million dollar gran prix prize as he becomes the first ever English-born PFL champion in history.
If you enjoyed this piece, feel free to share it on social media!
