Quick Finish: 15 Under 60-Second Fights

Amanda Nunes called for Ronda Rousey immediately after getting the title and showed the world that she was to be respected in the bantamweight division. She let the fists fly and rarely missed in her first title defense.

After storming through the bantamweight division, Nunes decided to ask for a fight with the most fear woman in MMA, Cris Cyborg, for the women’s featherweight title. What took place was quite possibly the greatest sub-minute brawl in women’s MMA history and proved Nunes to be the most dangerous woman in the company.

Melvin Guillard was riding a five-fight win streak with three of those five ending in first round finishes. At UFC 136, he found himself on the wrong end of the quick finish after looking to a flashy flying knee followed by showmanship and a perfectly placed Lauzon strike.

It took only Gabriel Benitez only 39 seconds to squeeze in a knockdown, near armbar finish, slam and eventual knockout at UFC Santiago.

It’s almost hard to imagine multiple exchanges, a knockout and a come-from-behind victory in under 30 seconds but Volkan Oezdemir and Misha Cirkunov brought just that as the co-main of UFC Stockholm.

With all the flair of Marc Diakeise’s striking, in both the hands and the feet, in such a short amount of time this was definitely a fight we wished we had gotten to see more of.

Abdul Razak Alhassan and Charlie Ward set the bar almost insurmountably high for UFC Belfast when they opened the card with a fight worthy of a Performance of the Night bonus in only 53 seconds.

Robert Whittaker was seemingly out for a highlight reel finish in his co-main event bid against Brad Tavares in his home country of Australia and he got it. That was all there was time for as he controlled the fight for the handful of seconds it took.

With his name to prove in his second fight in the Octagon, Stipe Miocic made his presence brief in his clash with fellow heavyweight Phil DeFries.

What better way to honor the recent retiree than to dig up his UFC debut where he needed only 41 seconds to make a name for himself with a KO over Jared Hamman. You don’t get three title shots without a name and he began making his with a bang.

Just a shade before Joe Lauzon was a contestant on season 5 of TUF, he was making his UFC debut against the man who would eventually coach against his team. Jens Pulver. Lauzon’s work was so quick that he didn’t even give himself the chance to show off the Jiu-Jitsu he’s known for today.

Why not make it another UFC debut? After a Michael Jackson walkout, reverse elbow and 17 wins, how many other ways could Anderson Silva impress for his UFC debut? How about a 49 second knockout?

Call it a “blast from the past” because it happened in 1998, call it a “blast from the past” because it was paying homage to his debut three years prior, or just call it a blast because Tank Abbott left little time for discussion in his 43 second TKO of Hugo Duarte at UFC 17.

Howard only had one win in his MMA career, but he made it count as one of our favorite sub-60 second finishes in his win over Roland Payne in the first round of UFC 3.

Going back slightly before the Zuffa era we meet the man with more finishes under 60 seconds than Amanda Nunes. Of the five, it was his use of elbows to take out Scott Morris in the second round of UFC 2 that was most impossible to forget.