Neal lands devastating knockout for second UFC win

By TJ MAXWELL
Cove Leader-Press

DALLAS - Copperas Cove alum and mixed martial arts fighter, Geoff “Handz of Steel” Neal, made a statement in his second fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship Saturday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas when he put Frank “The Crank” Camacho to sleep with a head kick in the second round of their bout in front of Neal’s hometown fans.
Neal was originally scheduled to fight on the pay site UFC Fight Pass but was bumped up to the preliminary card for the second fight and paid dividends with an impressive knockout victory.
“It was a matter of time,” said Neal in the post-fight interview with announcer Joe Rogan. “But, Frank is a tough dude and I’ve seen him come back from worse. He started coming back right before I threw the head kick and dropped him. He’s a tough dude.”
Neal looked near perfect as he picked apart his opponent with speed, quickness and precision punches and nearly finished Camacho in the first round due to strikes.
“Dallas, Texas, you guys have a top contender,” Rogan said to the hometown where Neal trains at Fortis MMA. “I was incredibly impressed with your performance here tonight Geoff. This is the first time I had a chance to call one of your fights live and the speed, the efficiency of your technique and everything was on point. It was a fantastic performance.”
He landed a right-left combo that sent Camacho to the canvas.
Neal resumed his dominant ways to begin the second round before landing a devastating left high kick to the head of Camacho for an instantaneous knockout.
“Me and my coach have been working on this back kick the entire camp,” said Neal. “I knew that when he goes against lefties, he dips his head. I didn’t see it at the time, but we have a code number for the kick (zero). He was like zero, zero, zero so I threw the kick and knocked him out.”
Neal nearly doubled the total strikes with 63 to 33 and more than doubled Camacho in significant strikes with 59 to 25. Neal also landed two knockdowns in the fight, including the knockout. Neal landed 62 of 105 total strikes for a 60 percent rate and he was 59 for 102 in significant strikes for 58 percent.
Camacho was only able to land six strikes in the second round.
Neal improves to 10-2 overall and 2-0 in the UFC.
“It feels good,” Neal said. “I probably had one of the hardest camps this camp. It just feels good to finally get it done and out of the way, get a win and hopefully, get the $50,000 bonus. That would help a lot.”
Welterweight Champion Tyron “The Chosen One” Woodley defended his crown with a submission win over Darren “The Gorilla’ Till with a D’Arce choke at 4:19 of the second round in the main event. Woodley’s performance earned him the $50,00 Performance of the Night bonus. Jessica Andrade won the other $50,000 performance bonus after her one-punch knockout of Karolina Kowalkiewicz.
Fight of the Night and the $50,000 bonuses went to Irene Aldana and Lucie Pudilova for their battle on the Fight Pass prelims card.