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Events · UFC Fight Night 272: Moicano vs Duncan · Kai Kamaka III vs Dakota Hope
Red corner Kai KamakaIIIXtreme Couture · Waipahu, Hawaii
VSSettled
Blue corner DakotaHope4oz. Fight Club · Houston, Texas
Lightweight3 rounds4 Apr 2026
The story going in
  • Carries 23 points more striking defence than Hope.
  • Carries 45 points more takedown defence than III.
18-8-1
Record
11-2
31
Age
−2 yr29
+1″5' 7"
Height
5' 6"
+1″69″
Reach
68″
Xtreme Couture
Gym
4oz. Fight Club
Waipahu, Hawaii
From
Houston, Texas
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

The call vs the fight

What we published before the card, next to what happened in the cage.

Our call
Dakota Hope
53.9% confidentTOSS-UP
Method calledDEC 44%
Vs the market+11.4pp
Market had our pick at43%
The fight
Kai Kamaka
LOSS
How it endedDEC
Round3 of 3
Clock5:00
Missed We called Dakota Hope at 53.9%Kai Kamaka won. We had the method right and the man wrong.
Graded against the official UFC result, from the same record every other page on this site is graded from. The tick beside the verdict is the method call — a correct winner with a wrong method is a partial hit and reads as one. See the full public record →

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them, and how the three judges scored that round.

UFCStats · per round

3 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action⚡ 1 KD Hope
Kai Kamaka III21 sig landed
HEAD19%4 of 17BODY48%10 of 12LEGS33%7 of 7
Dakota Hope42 sig landed
HEAD55%23 of 68BODY45%19 of 21LEGS0%0 landed
21 of 36
Sig.
strikes
42 of 89
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:05
Control
0:35
0
Knock-
downs
1
Distance 18Clinch 3Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 19Clinch 22Ground 1
Judges · this round · Kamaka III firstMichael Bell9–10Sal D'Amato9–10Bryan Miner9–10
Round 25:00 of action
Kai Kamaka III41 sig landed
HEAD44%18 of 30BODY46%19 of 20LEGS10%4 of 4
Dakota Hope32 sig landed
HEAD59%19 of 64BODY41%13 of 18LEGS0%0 of 1
41 of 54
Sig.
strikes
32 of 83
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:10
Control
0:19
0
Knock-
downs
0
Distance 32Clinch 9Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 20Clinch 12Ground 0
Judges · this round · Kamaka III firstMichael Bell10–9Sal D'Amato10–9Bryan Miner10–9
Round 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Kai Kamaka III43 sig landed
HEAD51%22 of 47BODY42%18 of 19LEGS7%3 of 3
Dakota Hope32 sig landed
HEAD62%20 of 69BODY34%11 of 15LEGS3%1 of 2
43 of 69
Sig.
strikes
32 of 86
0 of 0
Take-
downs
1 of 3
0:08
Control
0:24
0
Knock-
downs
0
Distance 33Clinch 10Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 22Clinch 10Ground 0
Judges · this round · Kamaka III firstMichael Bell9–10Sal D'Amato10–9Bryan Miner10–9

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

The cards, totalled

The judges’ final totals, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score. Their round-by-round 10–9s are with the rounds above.

Official card

Split Decision

Referee · Keith Peterson
Kai Kamaka IIIDakota Hope
Official totals — Kai Kamaka III first
JudgeTotal
Michael Bell28–29
Sal D'Amato2.1 avg spread · 46% wide29–28
Bryan Miner2.0 avg spread · 42% wide29–28

Each judge’s round-by-round scores sit with the round they belong to, in the round-by-round section above — switch a round there and the three cards for it change with the stats.

Media cards — 15 scored, Kai Kamaka III first · unofficial

Jake Noecker Home of Fight29–28
II I Seán Sheehan SevereMMA.com29–28
II I CombatPress.com29–28
II I Keith Shillan Sherdog.com29–28
II I Ryan Frederick WrestlingObserver.com29–28
II I Dayne Fox Sherdog.com29–28
II I Danny Segura MMAJunkie.com29–28
II I Steve Duncan mma.uno29–28
II I Nolan King MMAJunkie.com29–28
II I Simon Samano MMAJunkie.com29–28
II I MMA Latinoamerica28–29
Jay Pettry Sherdog.com28–29
Tristen Critchfield Sherdog.com28–29
Tyler Treese Sherdog.com28–29
Dan Levi Best Fight Picks28–29

Fan vote · unofficial

29-28 Kamaka III · 57%29-28 Hope · 28%30-27 Hope · 9%29-27 Hope · 3%30-26 Hope · 2%

65 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Takedowns

Takedowns

The level change — head to head

Career UFC takedown rates. Red corner left, blue corner right.

Kai Kamaka III

1.51takedowns / 15 min
1.51 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
1.00 / 15m
2.85 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
3.03 / 15m
53%
ACCURACY
33%
0.20 / 15m
SUB ATT
0.00 / 15m

Dakota Hope

1.00takedowns / 15 min

Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on him that he stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average. Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (5.32 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked roster-wide

The market story

Where the price started and where it finished — the sportsbook consensus, with the vig removed. We captured no price series for this bout, so there is no chart to draw.

Kai Kamaka IIIclose only
no opening line on recordclose 58.6%
Dakota Hopeclose only
no opening line on recordclose 41.4%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

We hold the closing consensus for this bout but no opening line, so the strip marks the close alone: Kai Kamaka III 58.6%, Dakota Hope 41.4%, vig removed.

Our published call had Dakota Hope at 53.9%. At the closing consensus, the de-vigged market had him at 41.4% — our number sat 12.5pp above the market’s. Two numbers, side by side. How our calls have actually done is the public record, not one bout.

Show the numbers
CornerOpen (US)Close (US)Open %Close %Move
Kai Kamaka III-15958.6%
Dakota Hope16513141.4%
Opening and closing moneylines from BestFightOdds (data/refs/bfo_fighter_moneylines.csv), one row per fighter per bout, de-vigged pairwise so the two corners sum to 100% · scraped 2026-06-10 · BestFightOdds has no fighter page scraped for Kai Kamaka III, so that corner’s CLOSE is read from the opponent’s row, which names it explicitly. No opening line exists for that corner and none is shown.. No price series was captured for this bout, so no line is drawn between the two points.
← Back to the public record