Sherdog’s 2022 Knockout of the Year

It was marked by the abrupt finality of its violence, like most other knockouts of its ilk. When Michael Chandler detonated a front kick underneath Tony Ferguson’s chin in the second round of their UFC 274 lightweight showcase on May 7, time seemed to stand still for all involved. It carried the underpinnings of an IED attack, minus the shrapnel. No one knows the reality of the situation any better than Ferguson, who woke up to a flashlight in his face and a horde of medical officials surrounding him. He was on the wrong side of Sherdog’s 2022 “Knockout of the Year,” which brought the crowd at the Footprint Center in Phoenix to an audible boil.

Joe Rogan, longtime color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said what everyone else was thinking: “That was the best front kick to the face of all-time.”

More than 17,000 fans in attendance expected to get their money’s worth from two of the sport’s true modern-day gladiators, and they were not disappointed. Ferguson put three-inch height and five-inch reach advantages to use in an eventful first round. There, he stunned Chandler with a right hook, then dropped him with a follow-up jab. Sensing the proverbial blood in the water, Ferguson unleashed elbows, knees, kicks and punches in a bid to dial up the right combination to put away the former Bellator MMA champion. Chandler answered with a double-leg takedown, and while he absorbed some superficial damage—“El Cucuy” opened a cut with one of his sharp elbows from the bottom—and found himself in an almost constant struggle for survival inside his counterpart’s venomous guard, the well-conceived maneuver shifted the direction of the bout and proved to be more than worth the trouble.

The sadistic Ferguson retreated to his corner after the bell, blood streaming from one of his own wounds, and pushed away an attentive cutman in a show of defiance. Meanwhile, the crowd rose to its feet anticipating more give and take in the middle stanza, unaware of what was lurking around the bend. Chandler circled to his right at the start of the round, stepped into a front kick from his right leg and sent it slicing through a defensive gap, the ball of his foot slamming into the underside of the Californian’s exposed chin. An out-cold Ferguson nosedived into the canvas a mere 17 seconds into Round 2, coming to rest on a prone position. The sheer suddenness of it all had a car-crash quality to it and caught even the most seasoned observers off-guard, former two-division UFC titleholder and part-time analyst Daniel Cormier among them.

“I looked at you,” he said to Rogan, the man seated directly to his left at the broadcast table. “I look back, and he’s on the ground.”

Ferguson lay motionless, a man stuck between dimensions, for several tense moments. Chandler, meanwhile, released his leftover tension with a series of trademark backflips, those in attendance urging him on. It remains the only clean knockout loss on the 33-fight Ferguson resume.

“I don’t even know if I saw it in the moment,” Chandler said at the post-fight press conference. “I think my body just moved and foot [landed] to face and a couple back flips… Sometimes, I think the fights materialize exactly how you want them to. Sometimes, you stay within your normal box of what you always use and it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t work. And sometimes, you throw something that you never ever thought you would ever land, let alone knock someone out with.”

Ferguson eventually returned to his feet and headed backstage. It was the latest chapter in a late-career tailspin for “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 13 winner, who closed out 2022 on a five-fight losing streak. Even so, he impressed UFC President Dana White with his performance against Chandler.

“He’s still one of the Top 10 guys in the world, and he looked damn good in that first round, but that was a vicious knockout,” White said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, Tony got dominated and looks like he doesn’t even belong here.’ Tony looked damn good right up until he got caught, and you know in this game anybody can get caught with anything.”