Fight Facts: LFA 65

Fight Facts is a breakdown of all of the interesting information and cage curiosities on every card, with some puns, references and portmanteaus to keep things fun. These deep stat dives delve into the numbers, providing historical context and telling the stories behind those numbers.

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TOTAL NUMBER OF LFA FIGHTS: 568
TOTAL NUMBER OF LFA EVENTS: 66

The Legacy Fighting Alliance on Friday returned to the high elevation of Vail, Colorado, with a card that provided wild action from start to finish. LFA 65 featured yet another headliner ending in the first round, an exceptionally late guillotine choke and one of the fastest knockouts in the promotion’s featherweight division.

I WANNA TO TAKE YOU TO AN ARM BAR: Brandon Royval tapped Joby Sanchez with an armbar, and only one other LFA main event has ever ended with that maneuver. This previously occurred when Erick Silva armbarred Nick Barnes in the LFA 45 main event.

GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD: With Royval securing the submission victory in the first round, each of the last four LFA headlining bouts have ended by first-round stoppage. This is the longest streak of main events ending in Round 1 in LFA history.

TUBULAR ‘TUBARAO’: Joanderson Sa de Brito demolished Jose Mariscal with punches in the first round. Across his 11 career wins, he has stopped 10 opponents. He now holds five wins by knockout and another five by tapout.

THEIR NAMES ALL END IN ‘O’: It took Brito 44 seconds to level Mariscal, and in doing so, he earned the fourth-fastest knockout in LFA featherweight history. Austin Lingo holds the fastest at 13 seconds, while Toninho Gavinho holds the second- and third-fastest at 32 seconds and 40 seconds.

THE POWER OF THE PITA: Pauline Macias beat Sarah Shell on the scorecards to remain unbeaten at 3-0. “Pita” now holds one win by knockout, one by submission and one by decision.

STOP, DROP AND ROLL: Adam Stroup unofficially dropped Hayward Charles a whopping five times in their bout. Charles survived in a losing effort, with all three judges rendering 30-27 scores. Across over 5,100 fights in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, only two resulted in five knockdowns: Jeremy Stephens over Gilbert Melendez and Forrest Petz over Sammy Morgan.

CAN’T ESCAPE THE GUILLOTINE: After trading knockdowns in the third round, Adam Martinez put away Cory Galloway just over halfway through the final round with a guillotine choke. The only guillotine choke to come later in a bout came when Jimmy Flick tapped Johnny Bedford at 3:09 of Round 3 at LFA 16 in 2017.

ALWAYS PUT YOUR BEST FIST FORWARD: In the first professional bout on the card, Dan Argueta made his successful pro debut at the expense of Max Rojas by knocking out his fellow neophyte in the first round. Just over 74 percent of all LFA opening pro bouts end via finish, well above the organization’s finish rate of about 61 percent.

LIKE A PROFESSIONAL: No professional fighters missed weight for LFA 65, and no bouts were contested at a catchweight, making this the first event since LFA 48 to have every pro fight take place in a standard weight class.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into LFA 65, Brito had never competed outside of South America (13 fights), Youssef Zalal had never lost consecutive bouts (seven fights) and Galloway had never been finished in the third round (nine losses).

Sherdog contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the “Eminem Curse” in 2012 and working for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.