If this photo posted to Sylvia’s Twitter just two days ago is to be believed, however, it would appear that Sylvia has already achieved and surpassed his *other* dream of consuming an entire Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant, brick, mortar and all. Or maybe morphing into a Kodiak grizzly bear. Either way, a congrats is in order to the man formerly known as “Fatty Boom-Boom” and soon to be known as the poster child for adult onset diabetes. But unless the UFC (or Bellator) plans on adding Akebonoweight to their ranks, we don’t see old Timmeh being invited back anytime soon. It’s a damn shame…
(“Hey man, I loved you in those Jackass movies. Now who is this Tim Sylvia guy you’ve got all these pictures of?”)
If this photo posted to Sylvia’s Twitter just two days ago is to be believed, however, it would appear that Sylvia has already achieved and surpassed his *other* dream of consuming an entire Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant, brick, mortar and all. Or maybe morphing into a Kodiak grizzly bear. Either way, a congrats is in order to the man formerly known as “Fatty Boom-Boom“ and soon to be known as the poster child for adult onset diabetes. But unless the UFC (or Bellator) plans on adding Akebonoweight to their ranks, we don’t see old Timmeh being invited back anytime soon. It’s a damn shame…
Two-time UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia has always had an unfair amount of hatred thrown his way.
He was the poster boy for the general crappiness of the UFC’s heavyweight division from 2002 through 2008. He was stripped of the UFC title in …
Two-time UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia has always had an unfair amount of hatred thrown his way.
He was the poster boy for the general crappiness of the UFC’s heavyweight division from 2002 through 2008. He was stripped of the UFC title in 2003 for taking steroids. He was generally less than exciting in his post-Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar fights, which are the ones most modern UFC fans are familiar with (Griffin-Bonnar set a new standard for the quality of UFC fights). He left the UFC to fight that FedorEmelianenko character.
To top everything off, he then lost an MMA bout to a boxer! A boxer! Somebody that competes in a dead sport!
Of course, each of those knocks on him are at least somewhat defensible.
It’s not his fault the heavyweight division sucked. Other fighters have been popped for steroids and had fans look the other way. He was a legitimate knockout artist for most of his UFC career.
FedorEmelianenko was actually pretty good at this MMA thing, and it’s not like being a perennial contender was a high-paying job at the time (at least not in comparison to the whopping $800,000 Affliction paid him to fight “The Last Emperor”). He didn’t choose to get beaten by Ray Mercer.
For some, watching him topple from the peak of MMA success and fall into the cavernous void that is the Midwestern MMA scene was delightful. His resiliently climbing back toward the top, however, made him a sympathetic character for some. Fans, after all, love a good comeback story.
For UFC President Dana White, though, doing anything other than fading into a cubicle after leaving the UFC only increases his anger.
For those that don’t remember the story, Showtime went behind Zuffa‘s back and signed Sylvia to face Daniel Cormier in Strikeforce. It was a fight that was compelling enough, and one that would have built up Cormier‘s resume moreso than pretty much any other potential opponent. White is nothing if not spiteful, though, so when he caught wind that a network he doesn’t like (note: video is NSFW) started striking deals with a fighter he doesn’t like?
White nixed the fight, and he eventually went on to match Cormier with a random light heavyweight from the European scene in a fight widely panned as a squash match. The lack of name value, coupled with the fact that Cormier didn’t effortlessly tear his opponent apart, made the fight a wash for their budding prospect at best.
Make no mistake—while Sylvia hit the rocks hard in 2008, he put together an impressive 7-1 run on the regional scene. He is a guy with the physical tools to succeed in what has traditionally been MMA’s shallowest division. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any other true heavyweights in America with that kind of streak outside major promotions, and there was no reason he shouldn’t have been fighting in Strikeforce.
That wacky tale concluded two years ago. In the 24 months since, we have seen Bellator grow from doing shows in high school gymnasiums for MTV2 to being something that vaguely resembles a rival to the UFC. We’ve also seen the World Series of Fighting come into existence and carve out a place in MMA.
Still, Sylvia finds himself toiling in obscurity. While he was wrongly denied the chance to join Strikeforce because of Zuffa boardroom foot-stomping, he has only himself to blame for not getting a slice of the action out there today.
After the debacle with Cormier, he went back to being a journeyman but without the enthusiasm he had before. In his three most recent bouts, he has gone 0-3. He weighed in well over 265 pounds for each of those fights.
Quite frankly, there isn’t a place for that kind of fighter in any major promotion. That doesn’t mean Sylvia shouldn’t get back on the proverbial horse.
Will he ever get back in the UFC at this point? Probably not.
But there is always room under MMA’s bigger spotlights for the focused, in-shape Tim Sylvia we saw in 2011. The Sylvia that was offered a shot at Daniel Cormier would be better than the vast majority of heavyweights in Bellator and would almost certainly be the top dog in the World Series of Fighting. The Sylvia of today, though, weighs over 300 pounds and loses to no-namers on One FC preliminary cards.
Luckily for Sylvia, Bellator and WSOF aren’t exactly exclusive when it comes to their heavyweight divisions. A few good wins in a row at 265 pounds (not 265 pounds-ish) and it would be tough to come up with a case against him fighting there.
The chance for a comeback is there with Sylvia. He just needs to get back in the gym, get in shape and get back to winning fights.
Instead of focusing so heavily on the sports, let’s actually focus on the entertainment that Tim Sylvia has provided us over the years. Personally, I was still in high school during the Tim Sylvia Era. A friend had exposed me to his collection of UFC events, and I immediately became hooked. I won’t claim that I was the biggest fan of the then-heavyweight champion — even with my limited knowledge of MMA, I realized Sylvia was an unrefined fighter — but there was something inspiring about watching him compete. “The Maine-iac” managed to achieve the highest honor in his sport, despite being the last person on the planet who most people would look at and think “professional athlete.” And of course, his rivalry with Andrei Arlovski helped make things interesting, even when his fights occasionally weren’t.
Instead of focusing so heavily on the sports, let’s actually focus on the entertainment that Tim Sylvia has provided us over the years. Personally, I was still in high school during the Tim Sylvia Era. A friend had exposed me to his collection of UFC events, and I immediately became hooked. I won’t claim that I was the biggest fan of the then-heavyweight champion — even with my limited knowledge of MMA, I realized Sylvia was an unrefined fighter — but there was something inspiring about watching him compete. “The Maine-iac” managed to achieve the highest honor in his sport, despite being the last person on the planet who most people would look at and think “professional athlete.” And of course, his rivalry with Andrei Arlovski helped make things interesting, even when his fights occasionally weren’t.
I’m willing to bet that most of our readers in their mid-to-late twenties have identical stories. And though the times have changed — I’d never believe you if you told me I’d one day be covering this crazy sport — and MMA has evolved considerably, there’s still a part of me that would totally mark out over the sight of Tim Sylvia inside the Octagon one last time. The fact that he’d be getting re-signed merely one week after his old nemesis Andrei Arlovski found his way back into the UFC would only make things better.
To those of you who are rolling your eyes at the suggestion of trotting out Tim Sylvia to feed our love of nostalgia, I have to question whether that’s any more offensive than what we’re currently being asked to pay for on Fight Pass. Is a preliminary scrap featuring a fighter you actually recognize — and probably still care about — any less legitimate than, say, a top-ten heavyweight squaring off against a doughy light-heavyweight known for his Homer Simpson-esque ability to take punches and not much else? If you answered yes, perhaps the nicest thing that can be written about you is that you’re very, very gullible.
Tim Sylvia was never the ideal heavyweight fighter, but then again, the UFC was never strictly about fighting. The UFC — for better and for worse — is about sports entertainment. And Tim Sylvia — for better and for worse — has always entertained us.
Not taking anything away from Assuerio, he’s a tough dude, obviously. I hit him a couple of times and couldn’t finish him. I was really sick for the fight. I got really sick Saturday and had problems holding my innards. When I was warming up, I had a few problems, and I actually had a few problems in the ring when I was fighting.
I don’t know what it was. It got really cold when we were outside working out and stuff, going back and forth from the room. I caught something, and I just couldn’t hold in my number twos… If you look at the fight you’ll see that when my shorts came down, you’ll see the wet mark in my underwear.
That’s former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, discussing the infamous night in which he shat himself during his main event bout with Assuerio Silva at Fight Night 3 on January 16, 2006 — eight years ago today. It was an incident that has become the subject of a joke or two over the years here at CagePotato, and one that has also become all the more relevant in light of last night’s Fight Night 35, wherein Yoel Romero allegedly suffered a similar intestinal malfunction during his fight with Derek Brunson (although Romero will tell you that the much-speculated stain on his shorts was the result of water and sweat). 30rockeyeroll.gif
Of course, Fatty Boom-Boom wasn’t the first fighter to suffer a case of the squirts (no, not that kind) in an MMA fight. Hell, he wasn’t even the first to admit to committing the act in the UFC. That honor goes to…
Not taking anything away from Assuerio, he’s a tough dude, obviously. I hit him a couple of times and couldn’t finish him. I was really sick for the fight. I got really sick Saturday and had problems holding my innards. When I was warming up, I had a few problems, and I actually had a few problems in the ring when I was fighting.
I don’t know what it was. It got really cold when we were outside working out and stuff, going back and forth from the room. I caught something, and I just couldn’t hold in my number twos… If you look at the fight you’ll see that when my shorts came down, you’ll see the wet mark in my underwear.
That’s former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, discussing the infamous night in which he shat himself during his main event bout with Assuerio Silva at Fight Night 3 on January 16, 2006 — eight years ago today. It was an incident that has become the subject of a joke or two over the years here at CagePotato, and one that has also become all the more relevant in light of last night’s Fight Night 35, wherein Yoel Romero allegedly suffered a similar intestinal malfunction during his fight with Derek Brunson (although Romero will tell you that the much-speculated stain on his shorts was the result of water and sweat). 30rockeyeroll.gif
Of course, Fatty Boom-Boom wasn’t the first fighter to suffer a case of the squirts (no, not that kind) in an MMA fight. Hell, he wasn’t even the first to admit to committing the act in the UFC. That honor goes to Kevin Randleman, who admitted to having violent bouts of diarrhea prior to his UFC 35 bout with Renato “Babalu” Sobral. In his first and only professional fight, Kyle Wethey was kneed so hard by opponent David Mitchell that he similarly lost control of his bowels, resulting in what I can only assume is the most hilarious and disgusting DQ loss of all time. Did I mention that Wethey hasn’t fought since? Because he hasn’t fought since.
But what set Sylvia’s poop apart from the rest of the poops committed in the octagon was one simple fact: Sylvia’s poop was caught on national television, making it the first (confirmed) cable TV poop in MMA history, as Fightlinker pointed out. This was the poop heard (seen) around the world, and was arguably the most memorable moment of Sylvia’s reign. His title defenses against Jeff Monson and Andrei Arlovski? Completely forgettable exercises in tedium. That time he shit himself in front of millions of people? LEGENDARY.
So it is to you, Timmeh, “The Manie-Iac,” Fatty Boom-Boom, Race Relations Consultant of caucasians worldwide, that we raise our glasses of prune juice to and give toast. For without your brave venture into the unknown, we would never have been given a glimpse into the dark, rancid underbelly of the sport. Hip hip, hooray!
(Gerard Gordeau delivers the first head-kick TKO in UFC history against Teila Tuli back at UFC 1, which took place exactly 20 years today on November 12th, 1993.)
There are literally thousands of ways a mixed martial arts match can end, but one of the most thrilling methods is the head kick knockout.
Over the course of two decades of fights in the UFC Octagon, there have been a number of memorable knockout blows delivered via head kick, and in honor of the UFC’s 20th anniversary, I’ve put together a list of what I believe are the top 20 head kick knockouts in UFC history.
I wanted to keep the list strictly to knockouts that happened during live UFC events, but I’m going to bend the rules a bit and kick off the list with one that happened on TUF.
Of course I’m talking about Uriah Hall’s spinning hook kick KO of Adam Cella, which took place earlier this year during TUF 17. It was a devastating knockout that made UFC president Dana White’s hyperbole raise to a whole new level as he declared Hall the nastiest fighter to ever step into the TUF house (the same house that produced Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin – you know, former UFC champs), and thus the UFC embarked on a social media campaign to play the clip non-stop on every medium in existence.
It was a brutal knockout, and I literally felt sick watching it. Even though Hall never lived up to the massive expectations that were placed on him, his most well-known career highlight deserves a place at #20.
19. Pat Miletich vs. Shonie Carter, UFC 32 (6/29/01)
(Gerard Gordeau delivers the first head-kick TKO in UFC history against Teila Tuli back at UFC 1, which took place exactly 20 years today on November 12th, 1993.)
There are literally thousands of ways a mixed martial arts match can end, but one of the most thrilling methods is the head kick knockout.
Over the course of two decades of fights in the UFC Octagon, there have been a number of memorable knockout blows delivered via head kick, and in honor of the UFC’s 20th anniversary, I’ve put together a list of what I believe are the top 20 head kick knockouts in UFC history.
I wanted to keep the list strictly to knockouts that happened during live UFC events, but I’m going to bend the rules a bit and kick off the list with one that happened on TUF.
Of course I’m talking about Uriah Hall’s spinning hook kick KO of Adam Cella, which took place earlier this year during TUF 17. It was a devastating knockout that made UFC president Dana White’s hyperbole raise to a whole new level as he declared Hall the nastiest fighter to ever step into the TUF house (the same house that produced Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin – you know, former UFC champs), and thus the UFC embarked on a social media campaign to play the clip non-stop on every medium in existence.
It was a brutal knockout, and I literally felt sick watching it. Even though Hall never lived up to the massive expectations that were placed on him, his most well-known career highlight deserves a place at #20.
19. Pat Miletich vs. Shonie Carter, UFC 32 (6/29/01)
I couldn’t do a best-of MMA list without sneaking Pat Miletich and Shonie Carter in it, and thankfully they were both involved in the same fight so I get to kill two birds with one stone here.
At UFC 32 in 2001, Miletich fought Carter in a matchup between two of my personal old-school fan favorites. Miletich was coming off a defeat to Carlos Newton where he lost the UFC welterweight championship, while Carter was coming off an amazing spinning backfist KO of Matt Serra, meaning this fight had serious title implications at the time.
But while many predicted a close matchup on paper, the outcome belonged to “The Croatian Sensation” as he hit “Mr. International” with a head kick so hard it knocked Carter out cold, one of the very rare head kick KOs that took place in the first decade of the Octagon’s existence.
I saw this one on a tape I borrowed from a friend a long time ago and I’ve always wanted to see it again but haven’t had the opportunity to. Fortunately I’ve found a GIF for all of us to enjoy, but if you can track down the entire fight I highly recommend it.
One of the most awesome head kick knockouts in UFC history took place at UFC 126, and no, I’m not talking about the one you’re already thinking of (that will come later). I’m actually talking about the head kick KO that Brit Paul Taylor delivered on Gabe Ruediger, one of the most underrated finishes in UFC history in my opinion and one that I don’t think enough people have seen.
On any other night, Taylor would have claimed a nice $50,000 bonus check for KOTN, but as we all know there was another very good head kick KO that same night. Still, we can give him some props for scoring a classic knockout in what turned out to be his final appearance in the Octagon; Taylor recently announced his retirement from the sport due to a variety of nagging injuries. At least we have this sweet finish to remember him by. (Watch the GIF here.)
Back in 2006, Georges St-Pierre was seen as the future of the UFC welterweight division and at UFC 65 he was able to get his revenge on Matt Hughes (who had earlier submitted St-Pierre with an armbar at UFC 50) when he kicked the Miletich Fighting Systems product in the head and then followed it up with a series of punches on the ground to capture the UFC welterweight title for the fist time in his career.
This head kick is the only part of the fight I really remembered, and I was going to place it higher on the list originally, but since St-Pierre needed the follow-up punches to finish off the job I decided to stick it at #17. Either way, a job well-done by St-Pierre in this fight, and arguably the best finish of his storied career to date. (Watch the GIF here.)
One of my favorite fights of all time took place at UFC FUEL TV 4, an unheralded middleweight bout between Andrew Craig and Rafael Natal. I was actually the reporter who first broke news of this fight back when I worked for theScore.com, and so it always holds a special place in my heart for that. But I’ve broken other fight announcements before, and rarely do the final products turn out to be as good as Craig vs. Natal ended up being.
In the fight, Natal was absolutely beating the crap out of Craig and looking like he was going to cruise to a stoppage win, but at the end of the second round, Craig – who was down big on points – threw a booming head kick out of desperation and caught Natal square on the chin, knocking him out cold.
An absolutely insane fight, and an even crazier knockout. Wow. (Watch the GIF here.)
15. Chuck Liddell vs. Renato “Babalu” Sobral, UFC 40 (11/22/02)
Back in his prime, Chuck Liddell was an absolute killer, and at UFC 40 he showed that he wasn’t just a power puncher as he head-kicked Renato “Babalu” Sobral into oblivion to earn a shot at the light heavyweight title.
Despite coming from a karate background, this remains one of only two head kick knockouts in Liddell’s storied MMA career (and his only one in the UFC), so let’s savor it since we’ll never get another one of these from “The Iceman” now that he’s happily retired. (Watch the GIF here.)
Mark Hunt is considered by many to have one of the best chins in the history of combat sports, but at UFC 160 Junior dos Santos showed that Hunt is a human being like the rest of us when Cigano spinning wheel kicked Hunt in the temple to knock him to the ground, and then followed it up with a massive punch to put “The Super Samoan” completely out cold.
It was a beautiful, dominant performance by Dos Santos up until the KO, and the finish was just a cherry on top. I still can’t believe that Hunt was finished in this fashion, but then again dos Santos is one of the most powerful punchers the Octagon has ever seen – and, one of the hardest kickers as well, clearly. (Watch the GIF here.)
13. Rory Markham vs. Brodie Farber, UFC Fight Night 14 (7/19/08)
Another knockout that doesn’t get as much love as it should was Rory Markham’s massive head kick KO of Brodie Farber at UFC Fight Night 14. Just watch the GIF and tell me how awesome this is.
It’s too bad that Markham has had so many issues out side of the cage, because when he was in the Octagon he was an absolute killer. But at least he was able to give us this beauty before he rode off into the sunset, and for that we have to give him props.
12. Tim Sylvia vs. Tra Telligman, UFC 54 (8/20/05)
I know Tim Sylvia gets a bad rap from fans these days, but don’t forget that he gave us one of the best head kick knockouts ever witnessed inside the Octagon.
It took place at UFC 54, when Sylvia took on Tracy “Tra” Telligman. Sylvia was coming off a loss to Andrei Arlovski at UFC 51 that cost him a chance to capture the UFC heavyweight title, but after taking Telligman’s head off, Sylvia gained the confidence to make a run up the ladder and eventually capture the belt.
Sylvia has had an underappreciated career and this finish of Telligman is my favorite moment from it. It’s also one of the very few knockouts in UFC history that’s occurred at the 4:59 mark of round one, making it extra special.
11. Alan Belcher vs. Jorge Santiago, UFC Fight Night 7 (12/13/06)
One of my favorite all-time knockouts of any kind took place at UFC Fight Night 7, when a young Alan Belcher took on Jorge Santiago and delivered one of the most damaging head kick finishes in the history of the sport.
I don’t think Santiago was ever the same after this KO, which is a shame because he is a skilled fighter — although he was never able to prove that in the Octagon. As for Belcher, he has had a solid career but there’s no doubt in my mind this is his ultimate career highlight, and it’s for good reason. (Watch the GIF here.)
Ready for the Top 10? Hit that “next page” link and read on…
Two-time UFC heavyweight champion 
