It’d be an understatement to say things went well this past weekend for Makwan Amirkhani.
A charismatic but largely unknown former Mr. Finland contestant, Amirkhani rocketed his name into the public consciousness with a head-turning performance at UFC on FOX 14, scoring the fastest debut in UFC featherweight history when he knocked out Andy Ogle with a furious eight-second assault.
The stunning finish tied Don Frye and James Irvin for the fifth-fastest overall knockout in UFC history, but after watching the video (and all its accompanying memes) nearly a “million times” over the weekend, Amirkhani has reached a conclusion.
“Actually, you guys need to look at that fight again. It’s not eight seconds, it’s six,” he said behind a sly smile on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour.
Six seconds is a notable number in this instance, as it’s the exact time of Duane Ludwig’s 2006 smashing of Jonathan Goulet. That finish was initially clocked at 11 seconds, but was ultimately shortened after review by UFC President Dana White and now stands as the fastest knockout in company history.
Amirkhani may have a point, too.
As the video above shows, the 26-year-old stormed out and staggered Ogle with an opening flying knee, then dropped Ogle with a crushing right uppercut around the three- or four-second mark. Referee Kevin Sataki immediately closed on the action, then lunged in yelling ‘Stop! Stop!’ to end the contest around the six-second mark after Amirkhani landed several follow-up punches.
At the very least, Amirkhani may have a definitive case for his knockout being clocked at seven seconds, which would propel him into a four-way tie with Chan Sung Jung, Ryan Jimmo, and Todd Duffee for the second-fastest finish in UFC history — not a bad résumé padder for a national pageant runner-up who entered the weekend without a single knockout stoppage to his credit.
Of course, the most vocal dissenter of Amirkhani’s performance on Saturday night turned out to be Joe Rogan, the UFC’s ringside commentator who vigorously protested the eight-second stoppage as too early both during the broadcast and during Amirkhani’s post-fight interview.
Amirkhani brushed off Rogan’s criticism with another sly smile at UFC on FOX 14’s post-fight press conference, saying that he thought Rogan was “drunk” because Ogle clearly continued to wrestle the referee for several seconds after Sataki’s stoppage. Not surprisingly, after watching the tape, Amirkhani stands by those words.
“Of course it was the wrong call, what Joe Rogan said,” he said. “If the referee wouldn’t have come between us, I would’ve done very bad damage to Andy Ogle. So it just a good thing for Andy that he came between us.
“There was this funny thing somebody [wrote] on the internet,” Amirkhani added with a laugh. “That I’m 100-percent sure that when the drug tests come on, Makwam will [test] positive for ecstasy. I was so happy (after the fight), [Rogan] didn’t bother me. In a different way, it was a good thing because people started to talk about it even more. I got more attention. So, thank you, Joe Rogan!”