On the verge of participating in a playoff worth $1 million, Kamehameha alumnus Kai Kamaka made weight on Thursday for tonight’s Professional Fighters League event.
Kamaka, who is riding a four-fight winning streak and has won five of six since he was cut from the UFC, weighed in at 146 pounds for tonight’s featherweight fight against Pedro Carvalho at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Kamaka (13-5-1) can guarantee a spot in the four-man playoffs with a stoppage victory over Carvalho (13-9), who fought in Bellator for the past six years before losing via TKO against Brendan Loughnane in April in his first PFL fight.
Carvalho has lost his past three fights, while Kamaka is looking to score a win to advance to the PFL playoffs in the featherweight division.
The fight is the third bout on the preliminary card beginning at 12:30 p.m. on ESPN+.
“Growing up in Hawaii, we have a different Hawaii spirit,” Kamaka said in a pre-fight interview. “There is challenges, but those challenges make me who I am, drive me to make me work even harder. I’ve got to give everything to prepare as much as I can.”
Kamaka, who trains at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, has been through the ups-and-downs in his MMA career.
After winning seven of his first nine professional fights, Kamaka made his UFC debut during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, scoring a unanimous decision win over Tony Kelley in which he earned a Fight of the Night bonus.
He went 0-2-1 in his next three fights and left the UFC to sign with Bellator.
His only loss since then is a controversial split-decision loss to Justin Gonzales at Bellator 279 at Blaisdell Arena in 2022.
Now the father of five kids with a wife he has been with since he was a teenager, Kamaka is finally finding the success he has worked for for a long time.
“Those things drive me to work even harder,” Kamaka said.
After fighting once in a year, Kamaka scored a unanimous decision over Bubba Jenkins in his first fight in the PFL tournament in April.
Kamaka is currently fifth in the 10-man featherweight tournament, but based on the matchups, locks in a spot in the playoffs with a stoppage win. A decision victory would mean he would have to sweat out the rest of the results.
Kamaka is following in the footsteps of his cousin, Ray Cooper III, who won the PFL welterweight tournament in 2019 and 2021.
The playoffs would begin on Aug. 23 in Washington, D.C., where Kamaka would be two wins away from a win and the $1 million check for first place.
