Vicente Luque details 2012 TKO win over Thiago Santos: “It was really quick”

Vicente Luque has one win on his record that may surprise some people.

As Luque was 3-2-1 as a pro and struggling, he got an offer to fight Thiago Santos on three weeks’ notice in Sao Luis, Brazil. Santos, at the time, was 7-0, and although Luque didn’t know much about his opponent,  he knew it was going to be a striking fight.

Due to ‘Marreta’ arriving late for event, the first time Luque got to see Santos was in the cage. It was then that he realized how much bigger the undefeated fighter was than him.

Once he saw how big Santos was, the plan of making it a kickboxing fight changed. Instead, Vicente Luque and his coaches knew they had to go out and blitz Santos early and hope to get the KO. According to Luque, that is exactly what happened as he dropped the Brazilin and finished him early into the first round.

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“So that was early in both of our careers, I was training and I got this fight on like three weeks’ notice, something like that,” Luque said on Just Scrap Radio on BJPENN.com. “We knew he was a striker and that’s why we took the fight, I’m a striker as well. Okay, three weeks but it’s a striker, it makes sense it’s going to be the same game. We go there after flying in and when I get to the city we are fighting in, I arrived late so I wasn’t able to weigh in and make the faceoff, so I weighed in with the commission and went back to the hotel and did my recovery.

“The only time I saw Thiago was at the moment of the fight. He wasn’t like how he is now but he was a big guy and I looked at him and was like ‘man what did I get myself into? it didn’t make sense.’ I thought I had to go in there and knock him out as quick as possible and not get hit and it worked out,” Luque continued. “I think it was like 15 seconds, 20 seconds, it was really quick. It was a big win that was a win later on when they were considering putting me on The Ultimate Fighter they saw I had that win and Thiago was already in the UFC, so it made sense. It was a big win in my career.”

As Vicente Luque says, it was a massive win for him as it helped get him on TUF. Since entering the UFC, Luque is 14-3 and set to headline his first UFC main event on Saturday night against Belal Muhammad.

As for Thiago Santos, following the loss to Luque, he won his following fight and then earned his way into the UFC.

Obligatory Vicente Luque knocking Thiago Santos out on the regional scene post for #UFC265 😅

https://t.co/RFx8nI7CmI

— Alex Behunin (@AlexBehunin) August 4, 2021

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