[NEF PRESS RELEASE]
Portland, Maine (July 1, 2022)
Nine years, two sons and a full-time job as a patrol officer in the village of New Castle, New Hampshire later, Cody Lightfoot never fully got the lifelong passion for combat sports out of his system.
A veteran of 11 professional fights as a mixed martial artist, Lightfoot quietly resolved to himself and a few close confidants that he would make that lonely walk from the dressing room one more time, and only once.
Time admittedly was a-wasting when he had a chance meeting with one of those friends and training partners – Devin Powell, UFC, Bellator and New England Fights veteran and proprietor of Nostos MMA – in the parking lot at their local Walmart.
“This was probably two or three months ago. He’d just got out of knee surgery. I had no idea. He was in the passenger seat of the car, and he had his knee up,” Lightfoot recalled. “He calls me over and says, ‘You need to fight Ras Hylton, NEF,’ and it was originally supposed to be for the May card. I was like, ‘Aw, I dunno man, that’s way too soon. You gotta give me like six months.’ He said, ‘Listen, man, you didn’t go out the way you wanted to go. You need to mess him up and walk off like a G in the sunset.’”
The rest is soon to be history. An original gangster of the northeast prize cage, Lightfoot (6-5) will take on “The Jamaican Shamrock” Hylton(6-6) in a featured heavyweight bout at NEF 48: “Heatwave,” to be held Saturday, July 30 at a picturesque outdoor venue, Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine.
So why now, and why choose the skyscraping, heavy-hitting Bellator veteran known as Rasquatch without a tune-up? Hylton made waves nationally for his unanimous decision victory over Rudy Schaffroth (6-2) at Bellator 242 in July 2020.
