Kenney healthy and primed to fight

Casey Kenney is ready.

Ready to get back to doing what he loves.

Ready to eliminate the bad taste from his last fight.

Ready to earn the victory he feels will be his ticket to the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Kenney, a 2009 Jay County High School graduate, will return to the cage tonight after almost a five-month layoff when he takes on Kendrick Latchman as part of Legacy Fighting Alliance 31 at Comerica Theatre in Phoenix.

“I’m just kind of getting back in the swing of things,” said Kenney, who spent the bulk of his time off recovering from an injury he initially sustained in late June.

Kenney was hurt prior to the first of his two fights as part of Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, a July 11 unanimous-decision victory over C.J. Hamilton, but had to go through with the fight. He said an MRI later was inconclusive, and when he got the chance for a second fight in the series he couldn’t pass it up.

That fight on Aug. 29 resulted in a controversial split-decision loss to Adam Antolin, and afterward another MRI showed a pair of tears to Kenney’s rotator cuff.

“I fought those last two fights with a pretty good injury,” said Kenney, who is 7-1-1 in his professional mixed martial arts career. “Really up until Dec. 1, I was still hurt.”

Since then, he’s gotten back into the swing of his typical training regimen in preparation for taking on Latchman at tonight’s LFA event.

The 24-year-old from Chicago is 7-3 and has rebounded for back-to-back wins after losing his two fights in 2016. His most recent victory came by unanimous decision over Tyler Shinn at LFA 27 in November.

After a good month-and-a-half of training, Kenney said he’s back in the kind of shape he’s used to heading into tonight’s bout.

“One thing that kind of lacked in my last two fights was my cardio a little bit,” he said. “That was because I couldn’t train the way I wanted to. … I just did what I could.

“Now I’m 100 percent, and getting tired in a fight is not something that I’m used to. I’m normally finishing the fight stronger than I’ve started.”

He expects that to be the case for tonight’s card that begins at 9 p.m. EST in Phoneix, with Kenney scheduled as the fourth fight. The event will be aired on AXS TV, and locally both The Greazy Pickle and Pit’s Cocktail Lounge plan on showing it.

Fights in 2017 brought up-and-down results for Kenney, who won the Tachi Palace Fights flyweight title in February, had a draw against Bruno Gustavo Aparecido da Silva at LFA 11 in May, won his first contender series fight in July and then suffered his first professional loss against Antolin. He hopes to impress not only his fans back home tonight, but also the man with the biggest influence in the sport.

“The UFC wants me. Dana White (president of UFC) told me himself he thought he won the fight (against Antolin),” Kenney said. “If the judges would have scored it right, I’d have my contract. But now I need to go get a win, go beat somebody up, and I think I’ll be right back in contention for getting that.”