We’ve paid tribute to first-punch knockouts before, but the first-kick knockout is a beast we see far less of in the MMA world, or any combat sport for that matter. Maybe it’s because many fighters don’t feel comfortable exposing themselves by attempting a fight-ending kick when they’ve yet to feel out their opponent, or perhaps it’s because many kicks used early in a fight are for just that: feeling your opponent out. In either case, the crazy bastard in the black trunks who shall remain nameless really couldn’t give two shits about your so-called “tactics” or fancy schmancy “strategery.” Thems things is best left for the book-reading doctor types with their scientist talk and their elevated pinkies and bubbly alcohol drinks, amiright Taters?
So skip ahead to the 1:30 mark to see this feller disregard all of his pappy’s teachings and open the fight with a head kick that scrambles his opponents brains up worse than a June bug in prairie dog hole.
Now start researching other instances of a first-kick knockout and relay them to us in the comments section so we can compile a proper tribute list. Because let’s face it, you guys know way more about this MMA stuff than we do anyway, and we’ll be at the firing range determining which one of your shirt ideas holds up best to our rigorous series of tests for the next few days anyway.
We’ve paid tribute to first-punch knockouts before, but the first-kick knockout is a beast we see far less of in the MMA world, or any combat sport for that matter. Maybe it’s because many fighters don’t feel comfortable exposing themselves by attempting a fight-ending kick when they’ve yet to feel out their opponent, or perhaps it’s because many kicks used early in a fight are for just that: feeling your opponent out. In either case, the crazy bastard in the black trunks who shall remain nameless really couldn’t give two shits about your so-called “tactics” or fancy schmancy “strategery.” Thems things is best left for the book-reading doctor types with their scientist talk and their elevated pinkies and bubbly alcohol drinks, amiright Taters?
So skip ahead to the 1:30 mark to see this feller disregard all of his pappy’s teachings and open the fight with a head kick that scrambles his opponents brains up worse than a June bug in prairie dog hole.
Now start researching other instances of a first-kick knockout and relay them to us in the comments section so we can compile a proper tribute list. Because let’s face it, you guys know way more about this MMA stuff than we do anyway, and we’ll be at the firing range determining which one of your shirt ideas holds up best to our rigorous series of tests for the next few days anyway.
While we were all busy watching Eddie Alvarezhead kick his way into the UFC at last weekend’s Bellator 76 event, it turns out that another just as devastating first round head kick knockout had taken place less than an hour beforehand, and in about 4 minutes less fight time. The matchup, which paired fellow featherweight prospects Mike Richman and Jeremy Spoon against one another, barely got under way before Big John had to step in and save Spoon’s ass from certain death. No, it was not because he suffered a gruesome in-ring injury, but rather because Richman decided to play Major Payne to Spoon’s Bam Bam Bigelow roughly twenty seconds into the fight.
Video after the jump. Catch it before it’s gone.
(Seen here: The one strike that didn’t land.)
While we were all busy watching Eddie Alvarezhead kick his way into the UFC at last weekend’s Bellator 76 event, it turns out that another just as devastating first round head kick knockout had taken place less than an hour beforehand, and in about 4 minutes less fight time. The matchup, which paired fellow featherweight prospects Mike Richman and Jeremy Spoon against one another, barely got under way before Big John had to step in and save Spoon’s ass from certain death. No, it was not because he suffered a gruesome in-ring injury, but rather because Richman decided to play Major Payne to Spoon’s Bam Bam Bigelow roughly twenty seconds into the fight.
Video after the jump. Catch it before it’s gone.
Unless you’re a big fan of fighter walkouts, skip to the 5:30 mark for the action. Then prepare for your sphincter to involuntarily contract as Richman stares a hole into your soul at the 6:08 mark. Seriously, that might be the creepiest/rapiest post fight celebration face this side of Gabriel Gonzaga that I’ve ever witnessed. Shang Tsung would approve.
With the victory, Richman earned himself a spot in Bellator’s featherweight semifinals against Shahbulat Shamhalaev, who defeated American Cody Bollinger by first round TKO just one fight earlier. The winner of the season will get an inevitable shot at champion Pat Curran, who is no stranger to the art of the head kick KO himself, if he is able to get past Patricio Freire whenever the hell those two are set to meet.
(This is normally where we would place a screencap of the fight. Unfortunately, the quality of SFL streams is so poor that the screencap looked more like a Jackson Pollock than it did anything else and no amount of enhancing could do it justice.)
As you may or may not know given the plethora of fight action that occurred this past weekend, Indian upstart promotion Super Fight League held their fourth event in Mumbai, India. Now, we have been predicting the collapse of SFL for some time now (turns out we just had the wrong promotion) and when it was reported that CEO Ken Pavia had resigned from the organization, it only fueled similar predictions around the MMA blogosphere. Throw in the fact that SFL couldn’t even reel in Bob Sapp for their fourth event — which was headlined by a 1-2 fighter taking on a 11-8 fighter — and you’ve pretty much got all the ammunition you need for an official deathwatch.
But despite all of the things going against them, SFL’s fourth event turned out to be a modest success, at least in terms of the fights themselves. With the exception of the opening fight between bantamweights Irfan Khan and Kaushik Sen (freaking little guys, amiright Michael?), every fight was finished within the distance and impressively so. But no one, I repeat, no one, could top the knockout turned in by Bhabajeet Chowdhury, which was easily one of the most fantastic finishes we have seen all year.
Video after the jump.
(This is normally where we would place a screencap of the fight. Unfortunately, the quality of SFL streams is so poor that the screencap looked more like a Jackson Pollock than it did anything else and no amount of enhancing could do it justice.)
As you may or may not know given the plethora of fight action that occurred this past weekend, Indian upstart promotion Super Fight League held their fourth event in Mumbai, India. Now, we have been predicting the collapse of SFL for some time now (turns out we just had the wrong promotion) and when it was reported that CEO Ken Pavia had resigned from the organization, it only fueled similar predictions around the MMA blogosphere. Throw in the fact that SFL couldn’t even reel in Bob Sapp for their fourth event — which was headlined by a 1-2 fighter taking on a 11-8 fighter — and you’ve pretty much got all the ammunition you need for an official deathwatch.
But despite all of the things going against them, SFL’s fourth event turned out to be a modest success, at least in terms of the fights themselves. With the exception of the opening fight between bantamweights Irfan Khan and Kaushik Sen (freaking little guys, amiright Michael?), every fight was finished within the distance and impressively so. But no one, I repeat, no one, could top the knockout turned in by Bhabajeet Chowdhury, which was easily one of the most fantastic finishes we have seen all year.
(Fight starts at the 6 minute mark.)
Making his professional debut (!!!), the man we shall officially refer to as “Chowder” from here on out put on an absolute clinic against his fellow debuting counterpart in Charanjit Singh, battering his opponent’s legs with heavy kicks throughout the first round. But it was not until halfway through the second (roughly 14:55 of the video) that Chowder decided to finish his hapless foe off with a brilliantly timed spinning back kick to the jaw that was, dare I say it, Siver-esque in its delivery. Singh does his impersonation of a falling Jujube tree and this one is all over. Speaking of all over, it’s safe to say that Singh’s MMA career might be headed that direction as well. He would be carried out on a stretcher, but according to reports suffered no serious injuries other than his heart, which was ripped from his chest in ritualistic fashion later that evening. Shame.
Don’t get us wrong, SFL is more than likely going to be SOL by the end of the fiscal year, but if they can deliver a few more exciting knockouts like this in the future, perhaps the history books will grant them more than a footnote when all is said and done.
Now that we’ve all had time to digest that bit of heartbreaking news, I’ll be bringing you the sweetest knockouts from around the globe for the rest of the day, whether they be of the MMA variety, the kickboxing variety, or of the “two fat dudes throwing down for the right to the last spoonful of gravy” variety. Today’s next knockout comes to us from Los Angeles’ Memorial Sports Arena, which recently played host to the K-1 Rising 2012 US Grand Prix qualifying tournament and featured everyone from Kit Cope to Seth Petruzelli in action. With names like that, K-1 should at least be able to secure a better time slot than Manswerson the Spike TV lineup, right?
Anyways, the “Superfight” phase of the night began with a match pitting Japan’s Shuichi Wentz against American Romie Adanza. While saying that the fight ended in eerily similar fashion to the Tater Williams/Bond Laupua slugfest we witnessed this morning would be blasphemy, both fights did end in less than a minute and with one of the participants putting “five of these across the sneeze” of the other. And in both cases, those five things were toes rather than fingers, so do what you want with that.
But the big difference here was that we were not treated to a hilarious, dubstep(?) soundtracked “Dangler Alert” once one of the fighters was knocked out. Instead, we got to sit back and watch Adanza topple over like a fallen oak and then convulse like a caveman who had just been freed from an iceberg.
Now that we’ve all had time to digest that bit of heartbreaking news, I’ll be bringing you the sweetest knockouts from around the globe for the rest of the day, whether they be of the MMA variety, the kickboxing variety, or of the “two fat dudes throwing down for the right to the last spoonful of gravy” variety. Today’s next knockout comes to us from Los Angeles’ Memorial Sports Arena, which recently played host to the K-1 Rising 2012 US Grand Prix qualifying tournament and featured everyone from Kit Cope to Seth Petruzelli in action. With names like that, K-1 should at least be able to secure a better time slot than Manswerson the Spike TV lineup, right?
Anyways, the “Superfight” phase of the night began with a match pitting Japan’s Shuichi Wentz against American Romie Adanza. While saying that the fight ended in eerily similar fashion to the Tater Williams/Bond Laupua slugfest we witnessed this morning would be blasphemy, both fights did end in less than a minute and with one of the participants putting “five of these across the sneeze” of the other. And in both cases, those five things were toes rather than fingers, so do what you want with that.
But the big difference here was that we were not treated to a hilarious, dubstep(?) soundtracked “Dangler Alert” once one of the fighters was knocked out. Instead, we got to sit back and watch Adanza topple over like a fallen oak and then convulse like a caveman who had just been freed from an iceberg.
Check the video out and just try to tell us that you found it more entertaining than the antics of the Tater. We dare you.
(The knockout comes at 5:30 and the disturbing replays come roughly a minute afterward.)
Good. Gravy.
We don’t mean to pull a Joe Rogan here, but we think this Houston Alexander Shuichi Wentz guy is for real.
Question: What’s more embarrassing than being knocked out cold in vicious fashion in front of hundreds of thousands of dozens of people? Answer: Getting dropped before the Europop anthem in the background can even drop the beat. Coming to us courtesy of the Russian Muay Thai championships, which went down on June 26th, this beauty of a knockout takes just six seconds to come to fruition in the form of a head kick. Sure, it’s not an Edson Barboza-esque spinning wheel kick, but throwing a well-timed head kick like that isn’t simple. Just ask this fellow Russian:
Question: What’s more embarrassing than being knocked out cold in vicious fashion in front of hundreds of thousands of dozens of people? Answer: Getting dropped before the Europop anthem in the background can even drop the beat. Coming to us courtesy of the Russian Muay Thai championships, which went down on June 26th, this beauty of a knockout takes just six seconds to come to fruition in the form of a head kick. Sure, it’s not an Edson Barboza-esque spinning wheel kick, but throwing a well-timed head kick like that isn’t simple. Just ask this fellow Russian:
(The fact that Aldama’s feet look something like this surely didn’t help matters.)
My God. As if it wasn’t crazy enough that CP reader Jason Jenkins was able to pull off that insane tilt-a-whirl KO just last week, now this shit happens. Matter of fact, while we’re naming knockouts after carnival rides, we’d like to be the first to officially dub this baby, which took place at Total Gym Peleas Amateur Chapo Challenger 1 in Mexico last weekend, “The Scrambler.” Not only because it certainly scrambled the brains of it’s recipient, Esteban Santillanez, for quite some time, but also because the kick looked like it was thrown by a man who forgot to buckle his safety harness on the aforementioned ride.
Christian Aldama is the man behind the incredible kick, which awaits you after the jump.
(The fact that Aldama’s feet look something like this surely didn’t help matters.)
My God. As if it wasn’t crazy enough that CP reader Jason Jenkins was able to pull off that insane tilt-a-whirl KO just last week, now this shit happens. Matter of fact, while we’re naming knockouts after carnival rides, we’d like to be the first to officially dub this baby, which took place at Total Gym Peleas Amateur Chapo Challenger 1 in Mexico last weekend, “The Scrambler.” Not only because it certainly scrambled the brains of it’s recipient, Esteban Santillanez, for quite some time, but also because the kick looked like it was thrown by a man who forgot to buckle his safety harness on the aforementioned ride.
Christian Aldama is the man behind the incredible kick, which awaits you after the jump.
