On This Day — November 9: Belfort Knocks Out Henderson in 77 Seconds
Some men are famous for being impossible to finish. On November 9, 2013, Vitor Belfort finished the most unfinishable of them all in 77 seconds. Six years later, on the same date in Moscow, the most gifted featherweight of his generation won a fight that turned out to be his last. November 9 is a date about endings that arrived ahead of schedule.
Some men are famous for being impossible to finish. On November 9, 2013, Vitor Belfort finished the most unfinishable of them all in 77 seconds. Six years later, on the same date in Moscow, the most gifted featherweight of his generation won a fight that turned out to be his last. November 9 is a date about endings that arrived ahead of schedule.
2013 — Belfort does to Henderson what no one had done
Dan Henderson's chin was a load-bearing structure of MMA history. In 40 professional fights — against Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva — nobody had ever stopped him with strikes. He had been submitted, outpointed, but the lights had never been put out. Then he flew to Goiânia to rematch Vitor Belfort at light heavyweight, closing UFC Fight Night 32 before 10,565 people at the Goiânia Arena.
Belfort needed one minute and seventeen seconds. A left uppercut put Henderson down; Belfort swarmed with punches as Henderson grabbed a leg and hauled himself upright — directly into a left head kick that folded him back down and ended it. For the first time in his career, Dan Henderson had been knocked out, and for the first time he had lost three in a row.
It was Belfort's third consecutive knockout bonus and, remarkably, his third straight knockout win by head kick — Michael Bisping in January, Luke Rockhold in May, Henderson in November, a calendar year of shinbones. The Goiânia card around him matched the mood: only two of eleven fights went to the judges, and seven of the nine finishes landed in the first round. But the night belongs to the 1:17 in the middle of it, when the sport's most reliable chin finally met the one weapon it could not survive.
2019 — Zabit's last stand in Moscow
The Moscow main event at UFC Fight Night 163, before a sold-out CSKA Arena of 11,305, was supposed to be a coronation procession. Zabit Magomedsharipov — 28, Dagestani, a whirling inventory of spinning kicks and trips — had won all five of his UFC fights and was being fitted for a title shot. Calvin Kattar, the Boston boxer, was the last exam, over three rounds.
For two rounds Zabit passed it beautifully, banking rounds with kicks from ranges Kattar couldn't solve. In the third the fight turned: Kattar poured forward, Zabit faded visibly, and the arena watched its man hold on rather than shine. The cards read 29–28 three times for Magomedsharipov — Fight of the Night — and afterwards he explained the fade: "I got a little tired in the third round because I had an infection when I was in Thailand. I had to take antibiotics. I think that influenced my performance." He asked for the winner of Holloway–Volkanovski and said he fully deserved the title fight. He never fought again. Health issues kept him out, and in 2022 he retired at 18–1, leaving November 9, 2019 as the final, slightly frayed entry in the strangest might-have-been career of the featherweight era.
Also on this day
- 2013, Goiânia: Jeremy Stephens knocked out Rony Jason with a head kick just 40 seconds into the first round — on almost any other card, the knockout of the night.
- 2019, Moscow: Alexander Volkov outpointed short-notice replacement Greg Hardy 30–27 on all three cards in the co-main event.
- 2019, Moscow: Magomed Ankalaev's front-kick knockout of Dalcha Lungiambula in the third round earned Performance of the Night; David Zawada's first-round submission of Abubakar Nurmagomedov earned the other.
- 2013, Goiânia: Rafael Cavalcante stopped Igor Pokrajac with strikes at 1:18 of the first round — one second slower than the main event.
A chin that could not be cracked, cracked in 77 seconds; a genius who never came back, winning ugly at home. November 9 keeps its endings early.
