Cantwell avenges WEC loss

In their first meeting in the cage, Steve Cantwell was overwhelmed by an onslaught of punches from Brian Stann.

On March 24, 2007, Cantwell suffered the only loss of his career when he was knocked out by Stann in 41 seconds.

On Sunday night, Cantwell beat Stann and won the World Extreme Cagefighting light heavyweight championship at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Stann had won all six of his professional fights by first-round knockout, but Cantwell dominated the standup exchanges in the rematch.

"No disrespect, but he does need to mix it up more," Cantwell said. "He did exactly what I thought he was going to do."

Still, it wasn't easy. Stann took a great deal of punishment before finally dropping face-first on the mat after several hard punches late in the second round.

"I was surprised at how much punishment he took," Cantwell said. "The guy can take an ass-whooping, that's for sure."

Cantwell grew up in Pahrump. "I had people coming from everywhere," he said. "I love the fans."

The two other champions on the card retained their titles, though Carlos Condit faced a stiff challenge.

Condit, the welterweight champion, dropped Hiromitsu Miura with a right knee to the head in the closing seconds of the fourth round in a bout in which both fighters, at times, were close to finishing off their opponent and were clearly exhausted at the end.

Condit pounced on Miura and landed several punches until the fight was stopped.

"Right at the end, when I hit him with that knee, I knew he was hurt," Condit said. "Most of the time, when he would go down, he would kind of turtle up and then explode out of it. But that time, he didn't really move."

Condit acknowledged the difficulty he had, but said he was never really close to relinquishing his belt.

"It ranks up there with the toughest fights I've had. I was tired. I didn't really have a lot left. It was all heart," he said. "He definitely had me in danger, but he never had me hurt. He was landing shots, but he never really buzzed me or rang my bell."

In the lightweight title fight, Jamie Varner knocked out Marcus Hicks in the first round to retain the belt.

Hicks was able to score two takedowns early in the fight and had a guillotine choke, but Varner fought through it and dominated the action in the standup.

"I wasn't worried about (the guillotine) during the fight, but I was worried about the position during training. We put a lot of work into defending the guillotine," Varner said. "(During a fight), I just react and let my training take over."

Also, Brian Bowles scored a first-round submission over Damacio Page and Blas Avena, a Hard Rock security guard, knocked out fellow Las Vegan Dave Terrel in the first round.

Josh Grispi and Brock Larson added first-round knockouts, while Shane Roller and Mike Budnik earned submission victories.

Scott Jorgensen defeated Kenji Osawa in the only fight of the night to go to a decision.