Andre Fili threw a right high kick 22 seconds into the second round on Saturday night and Kai Kamaka III was unconscious before he hit the mat. It is the leading knockout-of-the-year candidate in the UFC and it earned Fili a $100,000 Performance of the Night bonus.
Fili, 36, moves to 26-14 with one no contest. Kamaka, 31, falls to 18-9-1. The featherweight bout was on the main card at UFC Fight Night 290 at the UFC Apex.
What He Did After the Kick Is the Story
Fili had Kamaka out cold and a free shot available. He declined it and walked away.
“I didn’t land the extra shot at the end because it wasn’t necessary,” Fili said afterward. Shown the replay, he did not want to watch. “I don’t even want to see that. I love Kai. Shout out to Kai. That’s rough.”
That is a 36-year-old veteran with 28 UFC appearances making a decision in a fraction of a second that a lot of fighters do not make. The highlight is the kick. The thing worth remembering is that he stopped.
This Was a Career Save
Fili came in on a two-fight skid and had not won since April 2025. His UFC record now sits at 14-13 with a no contest across 28 fights, which is a long, honest career spent mostly against good opposition.
Two more losses and that career probably ends. Instead he produced the best finish on the card.
“I’m 36. I’m still here,” he said. “Y’all going to be stuck with me for a long time.”
The Card Was Violent Start to Finish
UFC Vegas 122 produced nine finishes, eight of them consecutively. That is not a normal Apex Saturday.
Four fighters took home $100,000: Fili, Brendan Allen, Otari Tanzilovi and Alice Pereira. Five more earned $25,000 finishing bonuses, going to Niko Price, Julius Walker, Francisco Prado, Brendson Ribeiro and Allen Frye.
No Fight of the Night was awarded, which makes sense on a card where almost nothing went the distance.
Where Kamaka Goes From Here
Kamaka is 18-9-1 and now on the wrong side of a knockout that will be replayed for the rest of his career. His medical status has not been reported.
At 31 he has time, and a highlight-reel loss is not the same as a decline. It is a brutal way to spend a Saturday night and a worse way to end up on a year-end list.
Fili gets the bonus, the reset and the goodwill. For a fighter who was one bad night from being released, that is about as good as an October gets.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.