5 UFC fighters who scored a highlight reel knockout but failed to follow it up
Whenever a fighter in the UFC scores a major highlight-reel knockout, it’s hard for the fans not to get hyped for their next fight. After all, there’s always the possibility they could do it again.
Unfortunately, not every UFC fighter who delivers a highlight-reel knockout can live up to those standards in their subsequent fights, with some of those finishes eventually feeling like flukes.
Sure, it’s never easy to deliver a great finish inside the octagon and it’s fair to say that all fighters would do so if they could, but some knockouts are simply impossible to follow up.
Here are five UFC fighters who scored a highlight reel knockout but failed to follow it up.
#5. Scott Smith – former UFC middleweight contender
When Scott Smith was signed by the UFC in early 2006, he brought with him the reputation as a serious knockout artist thanks to the three violent KO’s he’d unleashed to win the WEC light-heavyweight title.
However, ‘Hands of Steel’ lost his octagon debut to David Terrell, and when he failed to make an impact on the fourth season of The Ultimate Fighter, it looked like his career at the top was over.
All of that changed in the season finale. Smith went to war with his castmate Pete Sell, and in one of the wildest finishes in MMA history, he was able to stop ‘Drago’ with a crushing right hand despite being on the verge of being stopped after a nasty body shot.
Scott Smith vs. Pete Sell twitter.com/streetfitebnch…
The knockout instantly went viral, and suddenly, ‘Hands of Steel’ was a star of sorts. Unfortunately for him, his highlight reel finish was simply one that he could never quite recreate.
His next fight – against Patrick Cote – saw him attempt to play possum in order to draw Cote in at one stage, but the Canadian refused to take the bait and ended up winning a unanimous decision. Ed Herman, meanwhile, simply took Smith down, beat him up on the ground and choked him out.
That fight ended Smith’s octagon career, and while ‘Hands of Steel’ did experience a resurgence of sorts in Strikeforce, he never again produced a knockout quite like the one that put him on the map in the first place.