We’re just one day out from watching knockout artist Jordan Mein take on the resurgent Matt Brown in a bout that appears to have an end of the night bonus all but locked up. Even though Mein is stepping in to fight on short notice, his impressive knockout over Dan Miller during his UFC debut last month has helped make him a 3-1 favorite to win. While we personally think that Brown has a better shot at winning than the oddsmakers are giving him, we wouldn’t be surprised if Mein picked up his eighteenth first round stoppage tomorrow night, either.

What would surprise us is if “The Immortal” got starched as quickly as Hollis Huggins did when he fought Jordan Mein back in 2008. At the time, Huggins was a former minor league football running back who transitioned from being one of the more competent semi-pro footballers to being a horrifically incompetent semi-pro fighter. Huggins spent the first fifteen or so seconds leading with his head while holding his hands around his nipples in a manner that suggested he didn’t realize that Mein was allowed to throw the head kick that should have ended the fight. It took a few completely unnecessary follow-up punches for the referee to finally waive off the action just twenty seconds into the first round.

Video is after the jump

(Props: OOFights.com)

Whew, does anyone else need a break from all this Nick Diaz/GSP/UFC 158 hype for a moment? I mean, I could listen to those two hurl insults at each other in broken English all day, but every now and again, I just want to see someone get knocked the fudge out, you know?

Thankfully, a video has recently been released of the battle between 3-0 KO artist Scott Noble and the debuting Francis Grant, which went down on December 1st of last year at OO Fights XXII in Virginia. And when I say “battle,” I mean a lone flying head kick that had Grant singing the Sleepsong just five seconds into the fight.

Look at it this way, Francis; your professional debut could have gone worse, I guess. You could have died.

-J. Jones

Major props to our buddies over at MiddleEasy for passing along today’s entry in the Uriah Hall “Did He Died?” Head Kick Hall of Fame, which comes courtesy of last Friday’s STFC: Bad Blood event. In a lightweight contest pitting Vaughn Govia (dubbed Vaughn Goby in the above video) against Miguel “Mikey” Saenz, Govia decides after a few seconds of fight time that a switch from traditional to southpaw stance is in order. Saenz takes note of this and likewise decides that the best way to counter the switch is with a lazy jab. He is mistaken.

Govia responds by firing off a head kick that sends Saenz crashing to the canvas in what we shall now refer to as King slow-Mo, and just like that, another fantastic knockout in what has been a year already chock-full of them is born. Now someone go find a spatula to peel Saenz off the canvas.

-J. Jones

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.

-J. Jones

(Seen here: The one strike that didn’t land.) 

While we were all busy watching Eddie Alvarez head 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. 

(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. 

(From the guys who brought you Shockfights, Wheelchair MMA, and Ultimate Ball, comes the latest fighting craze to hit the UK: Narcoleptic Kickboxing.)  

Q: How do you know it’s a slow news day in the MMA world?

A: When CagePotato covers Jon Fitch interviewzzzz.

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 Manswers on 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.

You tell us which is more entertaining.

Video after the jump.

(Props to MiddleEasy for the find.) 

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:

-J. Jones

(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.

(Props to CP reader Jason Jenkins for delivering both the video and the knockout-to-end -all-CP-reader-knockouts.) 

We’ve only said this once in the history of CagePotato, but thank God for Facebook. If not for this social networking device, we would have never come across CP reader Jason Jenkins’ incredible knockout that occurred over the weekend at Ultimate Impact K1 in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The video, which Jenkins passed along to us just a couple of hours ago, features the “Grasshopper” going full on Edson Barboza on his opponent, Phill Savage, delivering an incredible spinning wheel kick KO less than a minute into their fight. The fact that he throws an extra spin into his kick for good measure makes the knockout all the more impressive. Seriously, it is probably the coolest finish we’ve seen since Cairo Rocha’s Capoeira style destruction of Francisco Neves back in December of 2011.

The brutiful KO awaits you after the jump. 

(Skip to the 2:20 mark if you want to watch your dad get his ass kicked.)

Good afternoon, Potato Nation. How’s your Monday going? Well, it’s about to get even worse, because everyone’s favorite kilt-wearing former UFC welterweight, Marcus Davis, nearly met his maker this past weekend, and since we had to sit through it, so shall you. After opting out of his Zuffa contract the hard way at UFC 125, “The Irish Hand Grenade” would go 3-1 in various promotions before facing off against Mark Casserly in a kickboxing match.

Now, Davis has suffered some of the most brutal knockouts in the history of the sport (*cough* Ben Saunders *cough*), but this may be the cherry on the blood flavored ice cream sundae. We can’t remember the last time that a kick turned its recipient into a human rocking chair, but we’ll remember this KO for years to come, that’s for sure. Seriously, it’s like that scene in Bad Santa when the midget from Me, Myself, and Irene gets punched in the nuts and falls head over heels, except not nearly as hilarious.

We’re not doctors, but we think this might be the fight that prompts Davis to call it a career. As you can see, it took him more than a few minutes before he was able to regain his composure, and sometimes that is all it takes for a fighter to reconsider his line of work, especially at Davis’ age. Regardless of the decision he may or not make within the next couple weeks, we’d like to take a moment here at CP to thank Davis for his contributions to the sport…

…Alrighty then, now join us after the jump to watch another ferocious head-kick KO from this past weekend, courtesy of our friends over at MiddleEasy. Don’t blink, because it happens just over five seconds into the fight.

You read that correctly. Russia…has water parks. Not only do they get to have Sambo, awesome sweaters, and The Dude’s favorite beverage, but now they have waterparks as well. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE LAND OF SNOW AND SORROW GOD DAMN IT.

We have no clue where this video came from, or what the true purpose of it is, but we’d be lying if we said that Piterland doesn’t look like the bees knees, and apparently former PRIDE Heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and his daughter Masha agree. We are still waiting to hear who “The Last Emperor’s” next opponent will be, but rumors have ranged everywhere from Bobby Lashley in a MMA match to Brock Lesnar in a pro wrestling bout, so who the hell knows? What we do know is that the next man to fight Fedor might want to reconsider if he values his health whatsoever. Poor Ishii.

What’s that you say? You want to see a MMA fighter humiliate and dance around his opponent ala Silva/Leites/Maia/anyone before brutally kicking them in the face? Well we’ve got just the video awaiting your viewership after the jump.

Here at CP, we have covered damn near every type of knockout that has occurred in the MMA world, and in fact, we pride ourselves on our devotion to the topic. And although we’ve seen both the double KO and the even more rare no contest due to both fighters falling out of the cage, little did we know that over the weekend, these two would meet at a shady hotel, do the nasty, forget to wear protection, and give birth to the above knockout.

The event was Hardrock MMA 43, which went down on Saturday night. The place was Sheperdsville, Kentucky. In the co-main event of the evening, lightweight fighters Brandon Bishop and Braedon Ward squared off in what started as a relatively even match that saw both men struggle for superior position in the clinch. After Ward managed to toss Bishop to the mat but was unable to complete the takedown, he bull rushed ahead with a double leg, eventually slamming into to cage door, which burst open and sent both fighters crashing to the ground.

As team members rushed to their aid, it quickly became apparent that both parties had been knocked unconscious in the fall, and the bout was subsequently ruled a no contest. Fortunately, both men were able to walk away on their own power after a few minutes. According to Gary Thomas of ProMMAnow.com, who was in attendance for the entire event, a hinge in the cage had been damaged in an earlier fight, but was believed to have been fixed. However, when both fighters hit the door, the pin was knocked loose, causing one of the more bizarre fight endings we have seen in quite some time.

And as it turns out, this was not the only bit of controversy that went down at Hardrock MMA 43. Join us after the jump for an illegal KO from the same event that is as brutal as it is hilarious.

As with the double KO and the “lawn chair” KO, we were the first to discover the “falling tree” KO before it began to spread across the MMA blogosphere faster than the Motaba virus. Today’s case study comes to us from the Mohawk Valley Community College Gym in Utica, NY of all places, at an event dubbed “CNY Battle Ground 5.” According to the ticket purchasing site, the event saw “MMA fighters from around the state square off in the cage,” because as we all know, MMA is kinda sorta legal in New York.

Although the heavy gloves, head gear, and shin pads lead us to believe this was some sort of kickboxing exhibition, the extra gear does make the eight second knockout seem all the more impressive. The man behind the vicious, Cro Copian head kick is Bob Reese, otherwise known the baddest man to ever walk out to a Rihanna song. Come on Bob, throw on some Chris Brown if you want to do some REAL damage.

-J. Jones

(Video: YouTube/Trailerstraduzidos)

It may not have been one of the weekend’s fastest knockouts, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the fanciest. Cairo Rocha took on Fracisco Neves Friday night on the Brazilian Fighting Championship’s “Desafio dos Imortais” card. We don’t know what transpired in the two minutes, twenty five seconds leading up to this strike, but if it’s anything like that kick we’d like to see it.

Capoeira, it’s the new missionary.

Previously: Must-See: Insane Capoeira Knockout

(I dare you to mock this picture.) 

It’s hard to define someone like Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, a man who is perhaps the most multi-faceted, not to mention intriguing figure in MMA. Aside from his incredible list of credentials including time in both the Croatian elite Special Forces Unit and Parliament, the man has amassed a mixed martial arts and kickboxing resume that reads like a Hall of Fame list in either sport.

But come Saturday night at UFC 137, Cro Cop will simply be fighting for the right to continue his career, or maybe just to end it on his own terms. In a way, Filipovic is kind of like the Metallica of the heavyweights, with his 2006 Pride Grand Prix win being his Master of Puppets. And, like Metallica, everything since then has been well…just kind of downhill. The devastating loss to Gabriel Gonzaga was his ReLoad, the bittersweet win over Pat Barry his Death Magnetic, and the back-to-back knockout losses to Frank Mir and Brendan Schuab his Lulu. Except, unlike Lulu, those losses only felt like an hour and a half of pure shit.

But as fans of the sport, we are pulling for Cro Cop to put on a hell of a performance on October 29th. Even at the cost of our parlays, it would be awesome to see some flashes of the old “Cro Cop” in what could be the last fight of his incredible career, which Old Dad has already promised us Mirko will do.

Look at me, blabbering on like some school girl. Let’s take a look and listen at Cro Cop’s greatest hits, “California Dreamin‘” aside.

Fresh off his angelic Burger King commercial, UFC Middleweight Champ Anderson Silva recently appeared on Brazilian talk show Agora e’ Tarde to sing a duet with comedian and the show’s co-host Danilo Gentili. Apparently after dominating every possible contender in the middleweight division, “The Spider” must have his eyes set on the Grammy’s. Though the performance was less than stellar, the good news is that Anderson can still consult long time hero Steven Seagal for advice in this department as well.

Join us after the jump for a study in Jon Jones’ superhuman abilities and the most unexpected knockout that you may ever see.

Before he fought Tito Ortiz to a draw at UFC 73, Rashad “Sugar” Evans scored his tenth consecutive win by way of a nasty high kick against Sean Salmon. As Joe Rogan so eloquently puts it, “WOOOOOOOOOOW!”

Note to Michael Bisping: Your strategy against Evans at UFC 78 should closely reflect this classic Wu-Tang jam.