Kai Kamaka III details hectic hours leading up to cornering Dan Ige at UFC 303

Kai Kamaka III had no idea he would be cornering at UFC 303.

Kamaka fought in South Dakota in the PFL on Friday night as he beat Pedro Carvalho by decision to punch a ticket to the playoffs. The Hawaiian got on the plane to return to Vegas on Saturday morning and expected to spend the day at home with his family watching UFC 303.

However, while he was outside in the pool with his kids, Kai Kamaka had a couple of missed calls from Eric Nickick to say he needed him to corner Dan Ige for a super short notice fight. What transpired next was a hectic couple of hours for everyone involved.

“The fights start at 3 and I’m not even really watching the fights because I just got to my kids. I had just gotten home from my fight, and they were swimming in the pool and spending time with them, and checking on the fights. I checked my phone and had two missed calls from Eric Nicksick, and I’m thinking we just gotten back, everyone is going to their families, I know he was going to the arena to corner Roman. Like why the f**k is he calling me. Then, I had a text message, said call me ASAP. I called him and he told me the situation, and he said we may have to go,” Kamaka said to BJPENN.com.

“We get to the arena, the security checkpoint, and the security comes up and asks for our names, Dan is driving, and he doesn’t know what to tell them because he got told to keep it on the down low. He was stuttering, Ali came over and was like ‘Brother, we don’t have much time.’ We see UFC personnel running to the security so we drive past the security,” Kamaka said.

“At that point, I was like this is on. They start filming us walking in and that is just getting there. We started walking in and he has to go weigh in, Dan didn’t even know he had to weigh in, he just told them he was 165. He didn’t read the contract, but he didn’t know he was weighing in, but luckily he was like 164.5. He was still on weight. They asked him about the fight and he said 165 randomly and wasn’t even 100% sure,” Kamaka added.

Once the weigh-in and the fight was confirmed, Kai Kamaka said one person started watching tape on Diego Lopes while the others were just helping Dan Ige work out and get loose. They knew they didn’t have time to train anything specific.

Although Ige lost a decision to Lopes, Kamaka was still proud of what his fellow Hawaiian accomplished at UFC 303.

“Dan was dictating the fight, he wasn’t winning the fight, but he was trying to create the action. He didn’t want to go in there and just hold Diego down. He came to fight. He wanted to deliver to the crowd, but he also wanted to win,” Kamaka concluded.