On This Day — November 10: Rodríguez Stuns Jung With a Last-Second Elbow at UFC Fight Night 139
A fight is 25 minutes long, and almost nobody uses the last second. On November 10, 2018, in the city where the UFC was born, Yair Rodríguez used it to score the most improbable knockout in the sport's history — one second before losing a decision. Six years earlier on the same date, in Macau, a 40-year-old Cung Le had produced the year's best knockout with a single punch he cheerfully admitted was luck.
A fight is 25 minutes long, and almost nobody uses the last second. On November 10, 2018, in the city where the UFC was born, Yair Rodríguez used it to score the most improbable knockout in the sport's history — one second before losing a decision. Six years earlier on the same date, in Macau, a 40-year-old Cung Le had produced the year's best knockout with a single punch he cheerfully admitted was luck.
2018 — The last second in Denver
The UFC staged its 25th anniversary show at the Pepsi Center in Denver, where the whole enterprise had started in 1993, and the main event of UFC Fight Night 139 understood the assignment. Yair Rodríguez, who had taken the fight on short notice, and Chan Sung Jung — the Korean Zombie — spent five rounds trading the kind of strikes that get fights remembered: spinning kicks, elbows, combinations thrown with genuine spite and received with genuine indifference. It was Fight of the Night before the championship rounds began.
But it was Jung's fight to lose. Heading into the fifth, two judges had him ahead and the third had it even; Rodríguez, his face cut and his nose damaged, needed something total. He nearly ran out of clock finding it. In the final seconds both men swung at once; Jung ducked in behind his combination, and Rodríguez — bending low, looking away — threw an upward elbow over his own shoulder into the exact space Jung's head arrived in. Jung fell face-first. The official time: 4:59 of the fifth round, the latest a finish has ever come in the UFC, tied in the record book and unmatched for drama. Rodríguez earned $100,000 in bonuses — Fight of the Night, plus Performance of the Night for the elbow alone — and the knockout has lived in every highlight package the sport has cut since, because it cannot be improved upon: a man losing a fight, inventing a strike with one second left.
2018 — Cowboy takes the record
The co-main event gave the anniversary card its other piece of history. Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone, fighting in his native Colorado after a bitter split from his longtime gym, let Mike Perry take him down and then went belly-down on an armbar that Perry reported had broken his arm, forcing the tap at 4:46 of the first round. It was Cerrone's 21st UFC victory — the outright record for wins inside the Octagon at the time — and it earned him a Performance of the Night bonus of his own. Two fights, two records of a kind: the night's closer owns the latest finish ever, and its co-headliner owned the most wins ever. Denver was spoiled.
2012 — Cung Le's money punch in Macau
The UFC's first event on Chinese soil, UFC on Fuel TV 6 at the Cotai Arena in Macau, was headlined by two veterans: former champion Rich Franklin and the 40-year-old sanshou master Cung Le, in Le's first UFC main event. Franklin spent the opening minutes timing Le's low kicks, looking for the pattern. He found one — a beat too late to use it.
"I feel like I'm in a dream right now," Le said after. "That was a money punch. I just saw him timing my kicks, so I waited for him to punch, and I threw that overhand right. I got lucky and caught him." At 2:17 of the first round, Franklin stepped in to punch and Le's counter overhand right arrived first, switching him off face-first onto the canvas. One punch, Knockout of the Night, and widely named the knockout of the year for 2012. Le celebrated with a backflip. Franklin, a former champion and one of the sport's gentlemen, never won another fight; the image of him face-down in Macau is the closing frame of his career, and it is dated November 10.
Also on this day
- 2018, Denver: Maycee Barber won her UFC debut, stopping Hannah Cifers by TKO in the second round.
- 2018, Denver: Devonte Smith knocked out Julian Erosa in 46 seconds in his own UFC debut.
- 2018, Denver: Germaine de Randamie outpointed Raquel Pennington 30–27 on all three cards at a catchweight.
A last-second elbow, a wins record, and one perfect counter in Macau: November 10 is the date that teaches fighters the fight is never over — and never safe — until the horn.
