The Severe Spotlight: Hyder Amil

MMA is a moments game, it’s a “what have you done for me lately” game. Regardless of divisional position, championship potential, or status of name, MMA fans are above all else, looking to be entertained. This is the nature of the beast. It is well documented that fighters like Georges Saint-Pierre, Johnny Hendricks, John Fitch, and in more recent years names like Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Belal Muhammad have been slandered due to prioritizing winning over performing. Whereas names like Andre Fialho, Drew Dober, Dan Hooker and Terrence McKinney have prioritised performing over winning. There seems to be a cross-section to be found, which can illicit super stardom mixed with a professional record that allows you to move rapidly toward titles, but at the base of it, fans wish to be entertained, whether we agree with that or not.

In the 65 seconds that Hyder Amil and Jeong Yeong Lee shared the slightly moist canvas, entertainment was bountiful.

Amil opens with a swift switch kick to the body and from there the madness ensues. Lee’s cadence is active and penetrative to the range of Amil, who counters well with kicks to the outside of the legs. A clinch is initiated after a stiff right hook catches Lee as he entered the pocket. Smartly lee drives Amil to the cage wall, who himself reacts well; mixing head elevation via a chin lift with a collar tie drag as he exits to the left-hand side and resets.

The kicks and flying and the pocket exchanges are vicious, both men landing hammer hooks.

Amil is looking to set all of his movements and combinations up with the outside thigh kick on his right leg, he uses that to rotate his core very cleanly through to his hooks. Lee on the other hand is rooting his feet, waiting for the Amil enslaught and readying monster hooks of his own to meet him.

46 seconds into the bout and Amil switches his stance on a footwork reset, feints the jab, steps through with his right leg and lands to the thigh, immediately following it up with a barrage of hooks. The fighters are forehead to forehead, lead knee to lead knee for a four-punch exchange, both men landing.

Amil makes an excellent read from the two previous pocket exchanges – Lee isn’t going anywhere, he is going to root his feet and bang out in the pocket until Amil backs up. Amil uses this reaction against his man, stepping out of the pocket for a second, and then switch hitting back into the pocket, this time beginning with a right jab to the body and following it up with a left hook from hell.

After 15, the count of hooks was lost in an visceral implosion of lactic acid build up in the Arms of Amil, coinciding with a cranial shutdown of Lee. Mark Smith in the perfect position screams at Lee to defend himself and to improve his position, but Amil does not let him off the hook. He begins to mix the placement of the shots to the body, to the sternum and back up to the head.

Graciously Smith places himself between Amil and Lee and calls a stop to the contest. A Tasmanian devil pace of a fight, and one that ultimately opens up the card in the UFC Apex in a way that the UFC matchmakers could only dream of.

At 34, Hyder Amil is making the most of his entrance into the UFC, two wins and two stoppages inside 2024, this one capped off by a Performance of the Night bonus. Do not be surprised if this is the MO of Amil, and see another performance of this nature again before 2024 is out.