Holy smokes those stadium lights are bright.

Crack!

Can't see these punches coming.

Such were Ryan Leef's thoughts as opponent Cory Gower sat atop the Whitehorse native.

Man those lights are bright, Leef thought.

And as soon as that the fight was over.

Armageddon Fighting Championship (AFC) 4: Revelation, held in Victoria, B.C., on Saturday marked the 36-year-old's second time entering the cage.

He dropped his first fight with Diego Wilson (5-0 at the time) in AFC 2 last March just two minutes in.

Last weekend, Gower KO'd Leef with mounted shots 1:50 into the second round.

Fight night featured eleven bouts: four unanimous decisions, three knockouts, three submissions and one technical knockout.

Leef's game plan heading into the fight was simple: be patient, counteract, rely on conditioning in the late rounds.

The first round opened with Leef sticking to his game plan.

Gower shot in early but slipped up when Leef got him in a guillotine choke, but failed to make it stick.

Leef got caught in a rear choke with 30 seconds left in the opening round.

"Thirty seconds! Thirty seconds!” Leef's corner cried.

He was able to pull Gower's hand down and tuck his chin in to avoid the submission.

"It's 10 seconds! It's 10! Hang on!”

Leef hung on to push the fight into the second round, which he chose to treat the same as the first round: be calm, play it smart, counterpunch.

The judges scored the opening round 10-9 for Gower.

But the match shifted just over a minute into the second.

Gower kicked Leef's shin, injuring his foot (in all likelihood breaking it, Leef said later).

"His foot's hurt! His foot's hurt!” came from Leef's corner.

Then Gower moved in to do a double-leg takedown, which Leef defended.

And when the two got to their feet, Leef launched in throwing strikes to hammer

Gower up against the cage.

Crack!

An inside left, stunning Leef.

"That was the beginning of the end for me,” he said.

On his back, Leef focused on defence, knowing he had to pull Gower in by the neck.

But the fight was called.

"He got one punch through and he did a good job of sitting up high, and when he sat up high I was reaching up to get him and I couldn't reach him,” Leef said.

"We had some great exchanges all through round one where he was striking and then I was coming right back at him with some solid combinations, kicks and strikes. Basically, I was trying to bide my time, not run into any trouble at all.”

He felt he stuck to his game plan in the first round and was calm heading into the second.

"And then if an opportunity opened up, just capitalize on it,” Leef said. "One little thing can change the absolute tide of a fight. We went from being relatively even to it being lopsided in his favour in a real hurry,” he laughed.

Gower's experience as a competent kickboxer showed.

"He stunned me pretty good, and then followed up with some really nice, crisp combinations, and then I ended up on my back, and he was able to take a full mount there and throw some straight blows at me and then the ref stopped it,” Leef said.

"You're always disappointed to lose, because I didn't go there to lose, obviously. I don't think there's a whole lot more I could have done. Hindsight's 20/20. If I wanted to play that over, knowing what was going to happen, I would have stuffed that take down and then stood up and not attacked him and just waited. But that comes with experience, and unfortunately your best experiences usually come from defeat.”

That defeat included a black eye and four stitches along his eyebrow.

The cries coming from Leef's corner were from his striking coach Charles Eshleman and judoka John Hawthorne, who both work with Leef in Whitehorse.

The two trainers were able to join Leef in Victoria after Mic Mac Toyota, Better Bodies Crosstraining Centre and Low Life Films sponsored the local fighter.

"It was critical to have them down there because they were able to start working on the game plan when they knew what Cory's record was like,” Leef said.

And Cory's record was something of a mystery until two hours before the fight.

Combining amateur and pro bouts, Gower was 14-0: 10-0 in kickboxing, 3-0 in pankration and 1-0 in mixed-martial arts.

That called for quick adjustments that Leef credits for getting him through the first round.

"Because I think if I'd just gone in with the assumption that he was a 1-0 fighter, and maybe had a handful of kickboxing,

I might not have given him the respect he deserved, and I might have gotten myself caught badly in that first round,” Leef said.

"We knew when we saw his record that he wasn't going to be a guy I was going to stand and start exchanging kicking combinations with because he's got a lot of experience in that, so we were hoping there would be an opportunity where he'd slip up and make a mistake.”

Leef said Gower was calm, patient and technical and never made those mistakes.

"With their experience in the corner, they were shouting steady at me and I was hearing them, and from training with me they really understood how I was going to respond,” he said.

"If you got people who just don't know your fighting style, they're apt to shout out advice based on what they would do, not based on what they think you should do.”

Instead, Leef had the benefit of trusting his coaches completely.

"There was no second guessing for me, what their suggestions were, I just went with it. I think, had I been there alone, and I saw that, I would probably have been scrambling in my own head about the best choices to make and I would have been second guessing my own decisions,” Leef said.

He will rest over the next week to recover from Saturday, and then jump back into training for the next AFC, in March.

He said he'll start off training by going back to the basics and eventually work his way into building specific skills.

"I'm definitely going again, much to my mother's horror, I'm sure,” Leef laughed.

Does she watch your fights?

"She doesn't watch, no. She cheers me on but she doesn't watch.”

He also enjoys the support he receives from his fellow Yukoners, he added.

"I've always loved being an athlete in the Yukon because everybody here gets behind you 100 per cent, and that makes the journey a lot easier, makes the preparation easier, it makes coming home win or lose easier as well.”