There are some fights that just make sense long before they come to fruition.
on Saturday night, Neal thought often about a matchup with one of the promotion’s most explosive welterweights.
“It feels good. It’s one of those fights that I’ve been playing in my head for years. You can ask my coaches, I’ve been talking about that fight for a long time,” Neal said in a post-fight. “We knew one day it was gonna happen. The way I envisioned it is the way it happened, and I’m just so glad I finally got that demon off my back. Because I’ve been thinking about fighting him for years and we finally got to match up and fight.
Neal was both technical and violent in the co-main event. He rattled Luque with left hands repeatedly in the opening stanza, dropping “The Ultimate Fighter 21” cast member on one occasion. In the final stanza, another left put Luque on the retreat, and Neal went for the kill, teeing off with a volley of uppercuts and one final left that sent his foe plunging face-first to the canvas at the 2:03 mark of Round 3.
“That’s what we and my coaches wanted to do, we knew we had to finish, whether it was taking him down or striking with him,” Neal said. “Actually, the game plan was to take him down, but that changed after the first round. I was going to take him down, ground him out and maybe get a submission. Once I felt how much faster I was than him on the feet and how I was avoiding his shots, I was like, ‘I’m going to keep it right here.’ And we got the finish in the third round.
After earning a UFC contract on Dana White’s Contender Series, Neal began his promotional tenure with five consecutive victories. Adversity then struck in the form of back-to-back decision losses to
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