Ovince St. Preux Didn’t Fear Kennedy Nzechukwu’s KO Power in 'Phonebooth' Fight

Ovince St. Preux revealed that Kennedy Nzechukwu’s lack of one-shot knockout power gave him the confidence to keep going forward during their UFC Fight Night 239 clash on Saturday.

St. Preux put on an impressive showing, using forward pressure to derail Nzechukwu’s excellent distance management on his way to a hard-earned split decision win. After getting tagged by punches early, St. Preux knew he had to put his opponent on his heels. Without the fear of a one-punch KO, “OSP” didn’t hesitate before biting down on his mouthpiece and marching forward.

“I couldn’t give him the chance to go forward,” St. Preux said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “The thing about me is, I do good going backwards, I can fight going backwards. If you put Kennedy on his heels, he don’t do too good going backwards. But also too, with him, if you get him going, he can start letting his hands go. And there was a couple of times he started letting his hand go, I was like, ‘Alright cool,’ bite down on my mouthpiece, started going forward. When I started doing that, I started landing my shots.

“And even in that phonebooth situation that we were in — and I’ve knocked people out with one punch before — I’ve watched Kennedy fight, a lot of times when he hits somebody or finishes with a TKO, he kind of have to throw a couple of more punches after that. I know I don’t need to do that cause when I caught him with a good – was it an uppercut that I caught him with that kind of dropped him? I was going to try to jump on him and I was like, ‘Okay, be careful.’ Cause he is good at withstanding the storm and after that ,he comes back and starts picking people apart.”

While both fighters were slightly measured in the first two rounds, they appeared to be preserving their gas tanks for the final frame, which turned out to be a slugfest. Once again, St. Preux knew he could trade with Nzechukwu in the pocket for five minutes, and he did.

“Man to be honest again, like I knew he don’t have that one [shot] knockout power,” St. Preux said. “He was landing shots, I was landing shots. Actually my trainer’s wife, Taylor, probably about two weeks ago we were doing something, she [was] like, ‘You can do anything for five minutes. If you do it five minutes, you can do anything five minutes.’ [In the fight] I was like alright cool, ‘If you wanna be in a phonebooth for five minutes, we can do that.’”