Marcel Fortuna made his UFC debut at UFC Fight Night 104, where he defeated Anthony Hamilton by second round knockout.
Hamilton came into the fight with a 50 pound weight advantage over Fortuna, but that didn’t stop the UFC debutante from scoring the first knockout win of his career.
“The goal was to try to keep the distance and find opportunities to try to take him to the ground,” Fortuna told MMA Junkie. “But I got to work the distance and work my hands, and it worked well even before I got to take him to the ground. It’s a dream. I’ve been working my whole life to get here, and my debut being a victory and my first knockout, it’s like a dream. Surreal.”
Fortuna was also competing for the first time in nearly twenty months, due to a mix of injuries and the lack of fights being offered to him. However, despite the long layoff for Fortuna, he states that it was his calm demeanor that helped him in his UFC debut.
“I think it’s because I was so calm,” Fortuna said. “So when I felt my hand landed on him, and then he went down and I saw that he was really loose and his arm turned when he was on the floor, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s out.’ And then I walked. And a few seconds later, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I won.’ And then I started screaming and stuff.”
Fortuna wasn’t the only fighter to make making his promotional debut at UFC Fight Night 104, as Volkan Oezdemir and Ricardo Lucas Ramos also did that night as well.
