Despite shedding 20 pounds in 24 hours, Mark Hunt delivers massive KO
It's not all that surprising when a fight with fighters weighing a combined 524 pounds ends in a devastating one-punch knockout.
What is surprising, though, is that one of them was able to score a massive knockout after having a pretty incredible battle with the scale.
A UFC source who asked not to be identified told Yahoo Sports a day before the weigh-in at UFC Fight Night 52 at the Saitama Super Arena in Tokyo that Mark Hunt had to cut 19 pounds to make the heavyweight limit of 265. Hunt, who was 284 the day before the weigh in, worked the weight off and weighed 264 officially.
He then went out and performed like a star, catching Roy Nelson with a perfectly placed right uppercut that knocked "Big Country" cold. Nelson went down face first as referee Leon Roberts immediately stopped the fight while Hunt simply walked away.
Hunt denied at the post-fight news conference that he weighed 284 the day before the weigh-in, but Yahoo Sports spoke to multiple sources in the UFC both before and after the fight, all of whom confirmed that Hunt indeed was 20 pounds over.
Hunt didn't admit to having dropped that much at the post-fight news conference, but he did say he was struggling with his weight.
"Uh, no. I don’t know where they got those rumors from. I didn’t have to cut 19 pounds. I think I had to cut eight or nine."
Cutting large amounts of weight the week of a weigh-in is a common (albeit dangerous) occurrence in mixed martial arts, but it is unusual to see it in the UFC heavyweight division.
It was an astounding performance by Hunt given his weight loss and it capped a solid night of fights.
UFC president Dana White was typically excited by the Hunt-Nelson fight, but said he didn't know what would be next for Hunt.
"I need to talk to [matchmaker] Joe Silva and see what he thinks," White said of Hunt's next opponent. "They both really look good when they're fighting guys outside of the top 10. But those guys in the top 10 give them both a lot of trouble. Stipe [Miocic] is a great athlete and he gave Roy a lot of trouble with his movement. Look at what happened in the JDS [Junior dos Santos] fight with Hunt. Those guys are good, but they have had trouble with the top, top guys.
"But when you hit that hard, anything can happen. As Hunt showed, all it takes is one shot with guys that hit as hard as they do."
