It was as dramatic as any opening round of MMA that you’ll see.
Bruno Cannetti checked Andres Quintana with two leg kicks before dropping him onto the canvas with a big right hook. Cannetti smothered him with a barrage of punches, trying to end the fight, but Quintana willed himself up onto his feet.
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There, moments later, "The Bullet" exploded out of a clinch against the cage with a right-left combination that cracked Cannetti across the jaw and dropped him with a thud. He ended the show himself with a flurry of hammerfists.
Just like that, Quintana had turned the tides, narrowly avoiding defeat to finish his competition with an exclamation point. That was the stirring scene of Quintana’s first-round TKO of Cannetti in December, part of the Copa Combate featherweight tournament — a one-night, eight-man contest — which he won to secure $100,000.
Nine months later, Quintana and Cannetti are set to run it back at Combate 42: Tahoe. The two fighters will rematch Friday at the Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe, Nev., in the first Combate Americas world featherweight title fight.
Irking Quintana, however, is some chatter from critics and fans saying the referee stopped the bout too early — and arguably for the wrong fighter.
"I thought it was very fair,” Quintana told Sporting News of his Dec. 7 finish of Cannetti. "I thought if he let it go any longer, that boy might have been dead. He’s lucky that the ref stopped it.
“A lot of people even said that they should have stopped the fight when he dropped me, but I wasn’t even close to being out. I wasn’t face down," he continued. "I was intelligently defending myself. He didn’t land one clean shot on the ground after that."
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Quintana believes the opportunity to leave no doubts against Cannetti perfectly sets the table for this rematch. Walking away with Combate hardware doesn't hurt, either.
"It would be awesome," Quintana said of winning the inaugural Combate featherweight title. "It’s what I worked my entire life for, to finally become a world champion.”
Quintana, 28, has grown with Combate: January will mark his third year with the promotion, where he has never taken a loss. Defeating three fighters in one night at the Copa Combate tournament in December finally afforded Quintana the ability to train and fight full time. Well, just about.
"I teach private MMA," he said. "I still teach it, but not to the effect that, 'Oh, I have to teach it to make rent. I can really focus on MMA.”
Winning the Copa Combate's gauntlet-like tournament was a career-defining moment for Quintana. Strapping the featherweight title around his waist Friday night would mark the next chapter.
"I've proven myself over and over,” Quintana said. "It’s about time I get a world title shot."
