Dakota Cochrane (photo via AXS TV)

By Press Release

Dakota Cochrane made short work of his rematch against Jake Lindsey, and Daniel “Big Kansas” Gallemore retained his heavyweight title in style at Victory Fighting Championship’s VFC 55: Cochrane vs. Lindsey 2 held on Friday night.

The event, which aired live on UFC FIGHT PASS® from the Kansas Expocentre in Topeka, Kansas, was the wrap up of VFC’s #3Shows30Days campaign that had made previous stops in Waterloo, Iowa, on November 23rd and Omaha, Nebraska on December 9th.

Cochrane (27-10) won the initial meeting against Lindsey, but this time around he didn’t need to make a dramatic comeback like the one he pulled off back in January. The 30-year-old stunned Lindsey with a left-right combination and then pulled off a guillotine choke from a jumping guard to force the tapout only 54 seconds into the rematch.

With his fifth straight win and sixth victory in 2016, Cochrane could be first in line to face freshly crowned VFC welterweight champion Kassius “Killa Kayne” Holdorf.

“Maybe a title shot, that’d be nice,” said Cochrane, who come out victorious in nine of his last 10 outings.

Despite the loss, Lindsey (11-5) remains the VFC lightweight champion.

Gallemore (6-3) proved that all it takes is one – maybe two – punches to end a heavyweight fight. Challenger Derek “The Marshmallow” Bohi had Gallemore backed against the fence and was landing uppercuts and body shots until the champion fired off two uppercuts of his own. Those heavy shots dropped Bohi (8-5) and Gallemore rained down two more before the referee called a halt to the fight at the 1:34 mark of the first round. The stoppage came much to the delight of Gallemore as he was defending the belt in his home town.

“I’m always confident in my striking and it pulled through. I was going for the finish, gotta get that finishing money,” said Gallemore, who now has five knockout finishes.

The night’s only other finish came in the opening bout of the main card as Kenny Licea made quick work of home-town fighter Gary Westphal. Licea (4-2) backed Westphal into a corner, landed knees and uppercuts, and then rendered Westphal (2-4) unconscious via a rear-naked choke at the 2:09 mark of the first.

A catchweight tussle between Trey Ogden and Josh Pfeifer was an all-out jiu-jitsu affair. Ogden (6-1) was in control throughout and iced the decision in the third when he cut Pfeifer (5-3) open with elbow shots from the top. Ogden got the judges’ nod in convincing fashion – 30-27, 30-27, and 29-28.

In flyweight action, Kevin Gray used dominant wrestling, anchored by three hard slams, and some grinding ground-and-pound to pull away from Joey Diehl with a unanimous decision (29-28, 29-27, 30-26).

Featherweight prospect Yazan Hajeh (4-0) kept his unblemished record intact using an unorthodox offense to best Alex McGowan (1-1) in a split-decision outcome (30-26, 28-29, 30-27).

Victory Fighting Championship will return in 2017 with a full lineup of action. Details will be unveiled in the very near future on www.victoryfighter.com.