Bryan Battle’s return to action didn’t last very long as his opponent seemed to quit almost instantly after being dropped.
Former UFC middleweight Battle was fired by the promotion two weeks ago to the day after missing weight for a UFC 319 undercard bout with Nursulton Ruziboev. It was his second consecutive weight miss despite moving up 15lb from welterweight to middleweight, and his third overall in ten efforts.
Within days, he had booked a first fight under the Dirty Boxing Championship banner for tonight’s event. Battle had no trouble making weight this time around, and was able to quickly put away Derik de Freitas inside a minute.
Bryan Battle’s opponent quits within a minute in bizarre Dirty Boxing debut
There was quite a bit of interest in how Bryan Battle would look as he very quickly swapped the octagon for the Dirty Boxing ring. However, fans didn’t get to see much as his rival Derik de Freitas flew out of the traps before deciding enough was enough.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the experiment was the weigh-ins yesterday as Battle seemed to make weight with ease just nine days after his drama in Chicago. He then made his way to the ring, but only managed to fight for about 58 seconds before the bout was stopped.
De Freitas and Battle shared exchanges early, but once the UFC veteran landed, his rival didn’t fancy the power. He went down and quickly grabbed Battle by the ankle, leading to a count which he refused to answer as the fight ended inside a minute.
Bryan Battle wants quick-fire Dirty Boxing return after winning debut
Following the victory, Battle gave a quick interview inside the ring where he claimed to still be ready to compete and called for a fight on the next DBX events.
“Brother, I’m just grateful for the opportunity to come out here and do what I love in front of all you lovely people from Miami,” Battle told Jason Anik in his post-fight interview. “The energy here is crazy, I love it, baby.
“I’m a rockstar, I’m used to this. The only person that can stop me is me, so I’m done getting in my own way… He was just throwing and I just threw back, there’s nothing too complicated to it, it was not a super tactical thing.
“I just wanted to hit him more and harder than he hit me. Put me on the next card, I still feel good. When’s the next card? I still feel good, homie.”