Darragh Kelly after stoppage win: ‘It was a great feeling when he tapped’

Darragh Kelly was delighted to maintain his unblemished record with his latest stoppage win on Friday night.

Kelly stopped Mike Hamel in the third round of their lightweight clash in Wichita, Kansas, moving to 8-0 as a pro and his overall records now stands at a fine 17-0.

Kelly locked Hamel in a bulldog choke in the third round and the American tapped out with three minutes and nine seconds remaining in the bout,

“It’s mainly just relief to get the job done,” Kelly said after the sixth stoppage win of his professional career. 

Kelly had been with Bellator, but was snapped up by PFL after they acquired the Bellator franchise. Last September, Kelly defeated Dmytrii Hrytsenko in London, but suffered a couple of injury set backs in the months since.

However, he was keen to make an impression on his first outing with PFL as part of the undercard to the PFL World Tournament fights at the Intrust Bank Arena.

The ‘Moville Mauler’ said: “You sign a contract 10 weeks out and every morning you get up and every night you go to bed it’s the first and last thing you think about, the fight. 

“I put everything into this game. This is what I live for. This is my life. If I lose a fight it will make my life slightly worse. I want to make my life slightly better so I want to keep that going for as long as I can.”

Hamel came to upset the odds and gave Kelly a real test.

Indeed, judge Stephen Farrigher had Kelly 20-18 in front while the cards of Travis Buesking and Greg Divilhiss were 19-19 at the time of the stoppage, both having given the first round to Hamel.

The Donegal man said: “I wanted a bit of a smoother path to victory. 

“He caught me in the first round. I wasn’t switched on and was a wee bit lazy and whatever way he hit me I was seeing two of him for the first four minutes of the fight. That really threw me off. I had to pull back, stay away and maybe even give up the first round.

“I came back out for the second, my vision came back and I could get going again. A win’s a win.”

Kelly really got to work in the second, but bided his time until the decisive moment arrived, almost two minutes into the third and final round. 

He said: “I knew it was only a matter of time. It was a great feeling when he tapped. I might’ve held it a wee second more, just to enjoy it. It was a great feeling.  

“That guy is a handful. I could feel him just being silly with his energy so I just let him work.

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“We knew he was going to come out strong, have a very strong first round as he always does. The game plan was to let him burn himself out. 

“When he was in the double leg situation, I could have escaped quicker, but I could feel that he was burning his energy up so I let him work and waste his energy. I could feel that he was breaking in between rounds."