Watch: UFC Fight Ends With Brutal Kidney Punch You Can Actually Hear
Sometimes a punch in a boxing or MMA fight lands with such brutal force that it sounds less like a real punch and more like a Hollywood sound effect.
Like, for example, this innard-squishing body shot that Jose Aldo Jr. put on Jeremy Stephens in their fight at UFC on Fox 30 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
WHAT. A. BODY SHOT. @josealdojunior gets the TKO win over Jeremy Stephens. pic.twitter.com/Gcg4H7fUJn
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) July 29, 2018
Stephens had a visceral reaction in the most literal sense of the term when Aldo landed that shot.
His actual viscera, in searing pain, forced him off of his feet and onto his knees.
Aldo, who had briefly stopped after landing the first punch, unsure of what to do about the reaction of his opponent, pounced in and made with the ground-and-pound game.
He landed several punches before Stephens began to recover slightly, trying to climb off the ground and out from under his opponent.
Aldo switched to some wrestling moves in order to regain a dominant position over his opponent.
He then swung in with six more unanswered blows to the head, looking up at the referee all the while as if to say, “You want to stop this now or should I punch this defenseless man in the head a few more times and see if I can crack his skull open?”
The referee didn’t bite, so Stephens, still stuck on the ground, got to eat some more fists.
Aldo switched tack, moving from punches with his left to hammer fists with his right, landing another half dozen or so unanswered shots; if you’re scoring at home, Stephens has at this point been punched something like 20 times without reply.
Stephens again tried to wriggle out of his predicament, but again Aldo wouldn’t let him up.
Stephens then found himself on his stomach, and as the commentators later pointed out, you can’t hold that position while getting punched by the guy on top of you without the referee protecting you from yourself. In that position, it becomes much easier for wild, flailing strikes to become rabbit punches, and you can kill a man that way if you’re either not trying to kill the guy but not being careful or, more ominously, actually trying to kill the guy.
Stephens contested the stoppage, insisting that he could have escaped or survived the last half minute or so of the round. But getting your innards mashed like a sack of potatoes followed by being punched into oblivion tends to force the referee’s hand.
Aldo had lost two straight fights before Saturday night’s event, and it was his first knockout win in the octagon since 2013.
Stephens was hoping to leverage his way into a title shot with a big showpiece win over a faded fighter, but instead, he became a living sound effect they could put into the next UFC video game.
The moral of the story is never underestimate the power of the body punch in combat sports.
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