#0: Heath Herring vs. Yoshihiro Nakao @ K-1 Premium 2005 Dynamite!! (12/31/05), 0 seconds

Who the hell knows what Yoshihiro Nakao was thinking when he planted a surprise smooch on Heath Herring before their fight at K-1’s 2005 New Year’s Eve show. (Maybe that the Texas Crazy Horse would become blinded by lust, leaving him unable to intelligently defend himself?) Unfortunately, not only is Herring “not gay,” but he resents the implication, and responds by punching Nakao right across his sweet, pillowy lips. Even if the match was ruled a no-contest, it’s still a KO at the 0:00 mark of round 1, earning it an honorary spot on our list of Fast & Furious knockouts. Not since the epic Gracie vs. Howard battle at UFC 3 had there been such a dramatic finish to a fight before it had even technically started. And the nickname “Kiss” still haunts Nakao to this day…

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#1: Chris Clements vs. Lautaro Tucas @ TKO 25 (5/5/06), 3 seconds

Just two days after Norifumi Yamamoto thrilled a Tokyo crowd with his four-second flying-knee KO against Kazuyuki Miyata, an eerily similar knockout took place in Montreal. Except this time, it was the dude sprinting across the ring who got himself KTFO — and in only three seconds, making this the fastest MMA knockout ever. We can only assume that Lautaro Tucas watched the Yamamoto/Miyata fight and thought, “Hey, I bet I could do that too.” But Chris Clements saw it coming, and stepped in with a sledgehammer right hook just as Tucas was leaving the ground. Tucas’s lifeless body flopped into the ropes, upon which Clements slugged him in the head three times. Awesome. Fun fact: Tucas never fought again after that night. We’re not sure if that’s because he switched to a less painful profession, or because he committed seppuku to make up for the shame he caused his family, but either way, it had to be done.

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#2: Norifumi Yamamoto vs. Kazuyuki Miyata @ K-1 Hero’s 5 (5/3/06), 4 seconds

Though the official time of the stoppage was 0:04 into round 1, that seems more like a generous estimate than an exact measurement. Kid Yamamoto takes a Rickey Henderson-style leadoff before the fight even starts, and dives knee-first into the hapless Kazuyuki Miyata’s face. Miyata clearly hadn’t trained for this scenario, but as he’d find out, ducking into the blow is not the most effective defense. The stunning flying-knee KO was Yamamoto’s 11th-straight win, his ninth-straight win by stoppage, and the fastest knockout in MMA history to that point. Unfortunately, his record wouldn’t last long…

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#3: Joey Villasenor vs. Hank Weiss @ King of the Cage: New Mexico (8/28/04), 5 seconds

We don’t know if Joey Villasenor had been studying tape on Hank Weiss, but Good Lord did Smokin’ Joe have his number. As soon as Weiss makes the grave mistake of dropping his hands while setting up his first attack, Villasenor is right there with the left hook (perfectly directed at Weiss’s knockout button) and the follow-up right straight (which missed, likely saving his life). And just like that, another beautiful one-punch KO was bestowed on the world. Weiss has lost 10 of his last 12 fights, but only one of those losses has been by knockout, so maybe he’s learned his lesson about keeping the mitts up and the chin down.

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#4: Takanori Gomi vs. Ralph Gracie @ PRIDE Bushido 3 (5/23/04), 6 seconds

Known for his very un-Gracie-like hard-charging style, Ralph Gracie racked up five-straight first-round stoppages in vale tudo matches during the ‘90s before re-entering competition in 2003 to test himself against modern mixed martial artists. But his PRIDE debut against Dokonjonosuke Mishima at Bushido 1 didn’t go so well — he only won by decision — and he returned to the ring seven months later ready to murder somebody. And that babyfaced little Japanese dude in the red corner, who Ralph’s student BJ Penn had choked out the year before? Yeah, he’d do. But Gracie was a little too anxious to get out there and kick ass (as evidenced by his refusal to touch gloves), and when he shot in right after the bell, his jaw ricocheted off Gomi’s knee; the Fireball Kid took over from there. This was the fight that officially put Gomi on the map — and served as the final six seconds in Ralph Gracie’s MMA career.

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#5: Jonathan Goulet vs Joey Brown @ TKO 17 (9/25/04), 7 seconds
He calls himself the Road Warrior, but Jonathan Goulet may as well be nicknamed “The Flash.” Twenty-five of the UFC/TKO veteran’s 32 pro fights have ended in the first round, and six have ended within the first 30 seconds. (Luckily, he’s won most of them.) Goulet’s all-time fastest victory was this seven-second KO against Joey “Knockdown” Brown. All it took was a head kick, a quick Thai clinch, and a knee fired right up the middle, and Brown was in dreamland. The win was Goulet’s fifth in what became a ten-fight win streak, which culminated in him scoring a contract with the UFC, shooting down Jay Hieron in his notoriously bloody Octagon debut, and choking out Shonie Carter back in Canada. As for Brown, he still seemed to be dizzy from Goulet’s knee during his next four fights, losing all of them.

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#6: James Irvin vs. Houston Alexander @ UFC Fight Night 14 (4/2/08), 8 seconds

If you compiled James Irvin’s best and worst moments, you’d probably have the craziest MMA highlight reel ever. After all, this is the guy who took out Terry Martin via flying-knee, fell through the cage against Bobby Southworth, was whipping Thiago Silva’s ass until his knee exploded, and became Anderson Silva’s first light-heavyweight victim. And even with all those wild finishes, the Sandman may be remembered best for the out-of-nowhere knockout victory he scored over poor Houston Alexander at UFC Fight Night 13 last April. Honestly, who leads off a fight with a Superman punch? As crazy as it sounds, that was Irvin’s game-plan from the beginning. It’s hard to predict what he would have done next if Alexander survived that punch. A spinning-backfist, perhaps? A sudden and unexplained case of total paralysis, maybe? You just never know with this guy.

Honorable mentions: Don Frye vs. Thomas Ramirez @ UFC 8 (2/16/96), and Jonathan Goulet vs. Travis Axworthy @ TKO 29 (6/1/07) — which also lasted 8 seconds

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#7: Chris Willems vs. Akoni Nakila @ Rumble on the Rock Beatdown 4 (7/14/07), 9 seconds

What you’re about to witness is the MMA equivalent of a walk-off home run. Chris “Red Bull” Willems gets a leg-kick checked at the start of this fight, but then reloads and goes upstairs — hard. The sound of foot impacting with face can be heard all the way in the cheap seats, and Akoni Nakila is comatose before he even hits the canvas. We’ve seen some gnarly head-kick KOs in our time, but this one is a freakin’ masterpiece; Cro Cop himself couldn’t have painted it better.

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#9: Aleksander Emelianenko vs. James Thompson @ PRIDE 28 (10/31/04), 11 seconds

Beginning with one of the greatest face-offs in MMA history — which pitted Thompson’s theatrical fury against Aleks’s nose-picking stoicism — it was clear that this fight was going to provide an entertaining clash of styles. Thompson’s ridiculous “gong-and-dash” routine actually succeeds in catching Emelianenko off-guard, but as soon as the Grim Reaper springs back to his feet, reality sets in. Thompson proceeds to eat punch after punch until his legs give out, thus proving a very important lesson: It doesn’t matter how big you are, or how angry you look — real power comes from having tons of Russian prison tattoos.

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