Mixed martial arts is an infamously difficult sport to predict due to the huge number of variables at play in a fight. This unpredictable element means that spectacular upsets can and do occur more often in MMA than in just about any other sport.
In this video we see the top ten most stunning underdog wins in UFC history.
Topping off the list is Holly Holm’s recent head kick knock out of Ronda Rousey. Rousey was though to be virtually unbeatable coming into the bout as evidenced by the 12 to 1 odds in her favour, but the Jackson-Winkeljohn trained Holm destroyed that aura of invincibility with brutal left high kick in the second round.
Fightland’s excellent writer and analyst Jack Slack had this to say about Holm’s shocking win:
“The bull and the matador. It is the metaphor of choice for writer after hackey writer. Yet it is one which you can slap on a write-up of Holm versus Rousey and it will seem completely apt. A bullfight, as Hemingway put it, is not a contest but a tragedy. The odds are stacked against the bull and the more aggressively he fights, the more he will exhaust himself. But once he slows, he’s dead. Not many predicted that Ronda Rousey would suffer the same fate.
The ‘fight’ was a beautiful execution. Rousey was never in the game as Holm danced around her, angled off from her clumsy charges, and skewered her with left straights. The end came just a minute into the second round as Holm connected with her left high kick and sent Rousey to the canvas, unconscious.
The storm of uneducated opinion in the wake of the fight has been deafening and everyone wants to pretend that they always knew how to beat Rousey, they just didn’t know if Holm was the ‘level of athlete’ to pull it off. When someone starts talking about ‘A-level athletes’ and ranking fighters by ‘athleticism’, you should immediately disregard their opinion on anything related to fighting. Yes, Holm is a big woman for her weightclass, and holds terrific endurance, but it was her discipline, her form, and her patience which won her this fight. Her choices and composition and not her ‘athleticism’.”
source: fightland.vice.com
