3. Rashad Evans vs. Sean Salmon – Ultimate Fight Night 8
Before Evans knocked out Chuck Liddell or became light heavyweight champion, he was a promising prospect coming off of The Ultimate Fighter. Having won Season 2 of the Spike TV reality show, Evans had some momentum behind him. For his fifth fight in the UFC, Evans would headline an event for the first time.
The heavyweight winner from TUF 2 would face Sean Salmon in the main event of Ultimate Fight Night 8. Salmon, 9-1 at the time and making his UFC debut, was a fellow wrestler with solid submission skills, and expected to be a test for the unbeaten Evans.
Salmon did in fact win the opening round, scoring with a pair of takedowns, but 66 seconds into the second round, the fight ended in spectacular fashion. Evans, stalking Salmon with an outstretched and pawing left hand, uncoiled a perfect headkick. As Joe Rogan asked on the broadcast, “Who saw that coming?”
No one, especially not Salmon, who ate the full force of the blow and crashed to the mat with a thud. His lay motionless for a minute or two, the lights in the Salmon house still turned off.
As for Evans, this was the finish that started to push him towards the spotlight, and eventually the light heavyweight title.
2. Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Mirko Cro Cop – UFC 70
The Evans headkick on Salmon was awesome and unexpected, but this one tops it based on the irony.
Here you had Gonzaga, a solid, but unspectacular heavyweight riding a three fight winning streak and little fanfare into a meeting with one of the most popular fighters and feared strikers in the sport. Fresh off winning the 2006 Pride Open Weight Grand Prix and debuting in the UFC with a first round finish over Eddie Sanchez, Cro Cop was supposed to beat Gonzaga and earn a shot at Randy Couture and the UFC heavyweight title.
Of course, that never happened. What did transpire was both epic and ironic, the perfect combination for the second best knockout in UFC history.
Gonzaga, a Brazilian jiu jitsu stylist, finished Cro Cop with his own move, landing a right head kick that folded the Croatian into an unconscious heap. It won Knockout of the Year for 2007 in numerous publications and across a number of websites for good reason, and remains the signature moment of Gonzaga’s otherwise uneventful career.
1. Anderson Silva vs. Vitor Belfort – UFC 126
There are times when I think Anderson Silva is messing with all of us. This was one of them.
In the build-up to this fight, a lot of people thought Belfort was going to be the stiffest challenge Silva had faced in years; a guy with fast hands and knockout power who wouldn’t be overwhelmed by his opponent’s aura and standing atop the pound-for-pound rankings.
Belfort didn’t charge across the cage and bring the fight to the middleweight champion. Instead, they felt each other out, neither man doing much of anything early in the opening round. Then it happened.
Silva planted a front kick right in Belfort’s face, effectively ending the fight with one strike. He’d follow the former champion to the mat and finish the fight there, but “The Footercut” as Heavy MMA editor-in-chief Matt Brown has dubbed it was the story.
To the best of my knowledge, we’d never seen anyone knocked out by a front kick in the UFC, and not only was it spectacular and unexpected, it came from the best fighter in the world in one of the biggest fights of the year. Just when a lot of people were questioning whether Silva was still the man, he proved that he was with the most impressive knockout in UFC history.
Honorable Mentions:
Pedro Rizzo vs. Josh Barnett (UFC 30), Yves Edwards vs. Josh Thomson (UFC 49), Scott Smith vs. Pete Sell (TUF 4 Finale), Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin (UFC 101), Rich Franklin vs. Chuck Liddell (UFC 115)