UFC stars fighting on the regional scene before making it to the big show is always fun to watch.
In 2012, Vicente Luque fought Thiago Santos at Spartan MMA 2012 in Maranhao, Brazil. Luque would knockout Santos in the first round. A few websites list the fight at middleweight; however, Luque remembered it was either at welterweight or a catchweight.
Footage of the fight eventually became available and spread all over social media.
Vicente Luque knocked out Thiago Santos on the Brazil regional scene in 2012. They fought at middleweight.#UFC260
pic.twitter.com/RFx8nI7CmI— Alex Behunin (@AlexBehunin) March 21, 2021
In an interview with Cageside Press, Luque would recall the fight and all of the events that surrounded it.
“So, that fight was a long time ago, and it was a different time. Everybody looks at Thiago now and says, ‘man, how did you fight him?’ I think we fought either 170 or catchweight; I don’t remember what it was,” Luque told us. “I remember when I flew over there to the city we were fighting in, I got there late, so I weighed in after everyone else, and I didn’t get to face off against him. I didn’t see him. I had never seen him. I watched maybe one or two fights because it was really hard to find any kind of tape on him.”
“So okay, I weigh in, recover and wait until the next day to go to the fight. And when I get to the fight, I see him inside the octagon. I’m like, “man, I can’t believe I’m gonna fight this guy,’ you know, he’s tall, strong. I’m like, ‘this isn’t right.’ I mean, he wasn’t as big as he is now, but he was big already at that time. I was thinking, ‘man, this guy’s not a welterweight. This guy’s a middleweight at least.’ At that moment, I thought I better finish him quickly because I didn’t want to get hit by him. And that’s what happened, I was able to knock him out maybe like 20 seconds into the fight.”
Luque then broke down the finishing sequence.
“I think he jumped in with a superman punch, and I caught him with a left hook. And that was it. I was glad that I was able to finish it fast because it would be a rough night. You know, I still think I could have beat him if it went the distance. But I definitely would have been hurt at the end. So it was a good one.”
Luque added that at the beginning of his career, he and his coach, Daniel Evangelista, “didn’t know how to pick fights very well” and would literally fight anyone no matter what.
Both Luque and Santos made it to UFC. Santos would be in the UFC one fight later, while Luque fought five more times on the regional scene before getting the call to compete on The Ultimate Fighter.
Santos is currently fighting at light heavyweight, and Luque is still at welterweight. He returns this Saturday at UFC Vegas 51, in a main event rematch with Belal Muhammad.
Watch the rest of our interview with Vicente Luque above.
