UFC 241 aftermath: Stipe Miocic's best 5 UFC knockouts

#1 vs. Daniel Cormier – UFC 241

Miocic's win over Daniel Cormier was the most impressive of his career

Recency bias may well be kicking in here but I think last night’s knockout of Daniel Cormier stands head and shoulders above anything else on Miocic’s already substantial ledger – even moreso than the vicious knockout of Werdum that won him the UFC Heavyweight title in the first place.

So what makes his knockout of Cormier so brilliant? Well, for starters there’s the fact that it was the first time in a long time that he was coming in as a genuine underdog; he’d avenged his loss to Dos Santos previously, but then JDS hadn’t knocked him out viciously in their first meeting like Cormier had. And Cormier appeared to be on the top of his game coming in, while Miocic hadn’t fought since suffering that knockout at the hands of ‘DC’ over a year prior.

Then there was the fact that Miocic had clearly lost the first three rounds; sure, he’d hung in there and hadn’t looked stunned, but Cormier had slammed him to the ground in the first to show his wrestling dominance, and he’d also landed the far better strikes, using his superior speed to catch Stipe over and over.

None of that mattered come the fourth round, though. Cormier suddenly looked like the more tired of the two while Miocic – although he was battered and bruised – seemed relatively fresh in comparison. He began landing his left hand to the body of Cormier over and over, and ‘DC’ soon begun to slow down. Finally a vicious body shot had Cormier hurt, and Miocic followed by landing a massive combination that knocked him down – and out – to reclaim his title.

The win not only made Miocic just the second man to stop Cormier, but it also gave him his fifth win in a UFC Heavyweight title fight – putting him just one behind the legendary Randy Couture. And while it was his 9th knockout in UFC action – in 13 victories, an impressive statistic – it was clearly his best, too.