
Magalhaes Takes Light Heavyweight Title with an Incredible Sub of the Night Honor
M-1 Global’s newly crowned Light Heavyweight Champion, decorated Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner, Vinny ‘Pezao’ Magalhaes (8-5) revealed his credentials last Thursday night in his title bout versus Viktor Nemkov (10-3) at M-1 Challenge XXV. In a back and forth battle that spanned into the early portion of the third round, Magalhaes finally threw down the pocket aces hand he was holding and locked in a rare Mounted Gogoplata/Neck Crank hybrid, forcing Nemkov to tap at the 1:42 mark. With the win, Magalhaes improves his current win streak to four and sports the hardware identifying him as the King of the 205-pound division.
As the evening’s co-main event inside the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russian, both fighters took to the ring in front of a capacity crowd with the crowd marking the 24 year old Nemkov as the hometown favourite. In a back-and-forth first round, the pair jostled to assert and impose their game plans with evenly matched striking but from the first instance on the canvas, it was clear that Magalhaes brought far superior ground skills, working through seamless submission attempts from a textbook rubber guard.