Andreas Hale, ESPNDec 13, 2024, 07:49 AM ET
By the time 2024 comes to a close, there will have been 716 events in the 31 years that the Ultimate Fighting Championship has existed. But only one fight card -- unless UFC Fight Night in Tampa, Florida, this Saturday pulls off a miracle -- will have the distinction of being "perfect."
On Nov. 8, 2014, Luke Rockhold slammed a left-footed kick into the side of Michael Bisping's head, chased "The Ultimate Fighter" Season 3 winner to the canvas and forced him to tap out with a mounted guillotine choke in front of 9,904 fans at the Allphones Arena in Sydney, Australia. It completed a flawless day of fights, the only time in UFC history that the judges could have called in for work. Eleven fights, 11 finishes.
The notion of perfection here is subjective, yet fans tend to bemoan a fight heading to a judges' scorecard. A fight ending via decision could mean that it's inconclusive who actually won. Or, more importantly, there wasn't enough action packed into a 15- or 25-minute fighting affair.
A fight ending in a submission or knockout? Action-packed clarity for all parties involved.
There were four submissions and seven knockouts during this Fight Night card 10 years ago. Five fights ended in the first round, five were finished in the second and only one fight came anywhere close to going the distance, ending 18 seconds into the third round. With a total fight time of 1 hour, 1 minute and 1 second -- with an average fight length of 5:48 -- it remains the shortest UFC card with a minimum of 11 fights.
The fight card, which kicked off at 11 a.m. local time, was headlined by a vitriolic first meeting between Rockhold and Bisping and also featured a future 185-pound champion in Robert Whittaker, who is the only fighter from that card still on the UFC roster, making his middleweight debut against Clint Hester.
Interestingly enough, the commentary team of John Gooden and Dan Hardy never mentioned the finishing rate during the broadcast. Perhaps neither wanted to jinx it. If the MMA gods wanted to deliver a perfect night, they wouldn't need to be urged on by a play-by-play commentator in his first year with the UFC and a former title challenger who had just transitioned to a color commentator gig after a rare heart condition put his fighting career in jeopardy.
"That event in Sydney was as rare as hen's teeth," Gooden said. "No one wants to put it out to the universe that we could get a night full of finishes and be 'that guy' that cursed it."
"It was just one of those days where you ride the energy," Hardy, now a Bellator commentator and PFL Europe's head of fighter operations, said. "And then, when you get to the end of it, you look back and go, 'Man, we got a 100 percent finish rate.' That was crazy, and we were very, very fortunate to be on the call that day."
One person who took notice of the finishing rate early on was "Smilin" Sam Alvey, who scored a first-round knockout over Dylan Andrews in the fifth fight of the day. Alvey had fallen short in his UFC debut less than two months prior, with a decision loss to Tom Watson, and wanted to prove to the promotion that it didn't make a mistake signing him. With every fight before his ending inside the distance, Alvey wanted to make a statement when it was his turn to compete.
"I got so pumped watching people I know or just met backstage," Alvey told ESPN. "I was glued to the screen while warming up."
Seeing the high finish rate in real time also incentivized Alvey to pursue a finish of his own. Not just for his ego, but for his pockets.
"You know there are four $50,000 Performance of the Night bonuses on the line and you just saw four fights before you end with a beautiful TKO or submission," said Alvey. "It really jazzes you up that mine has to do better."
While Alvey didn't get a Performance of the Night bonus (Rockhold, Whittaker, Hester and Louis Smolka would take those home), the Team Quest fighter remembers it being one of the more unique knockouts of his 15-year MMA career.
"I knocked him out with my ass," Alvey recalls.
During an Andrews takedown attempt, Alvey fell on top of his opponent's head. The rest was elementary. "As soon as we hit the ground, I knew he was out. I felt him release his grip and I gave him ground and pound as fast as I could until the referee noticed he was out."
Hardy remembers the preliminary card concluding with Jake Matthews' second-round submission of Vagner Rocha and the production truck reminding him and Gooden that every fight to that point had not gone to the distance. That's when the reality set in that it was possible to see each fight on the entire card end in a knockout or a submission. Still, even with two heavyweights kicking off the main card with their combined 28 MMA wins all coming by knockout or submission, Hardy was careful not to mention that the card had been perfect up to that point.
"One thing I've learned from doing commentary is if there's a heavyweight fight on the card and you expect a knockout, you never mentioned it," Hardy said. "I've done it before, jinxed it before and they go the distance."
Fortunately, after a slow first round raised concerns, Soa Palelei would finish Walt Harris in the second round and keep the perfect night intact. Whittaker followed by blasting Hester with a knee to secure a second-round stoppage, and Al Iaquinta clobbered Ross Pearson with a right hand to finish the co-main event.
All that was left was Rockhold and Bisping to cement perfection.
Heading into the fight, Rockhold promised to finish Bisping in a single round. Rockhold, known as a prolific finisher, was a huge betting favorite heading into the fight. Still, there were concerns that things wouldn't play out as expected.
"There was a lot of excitement for what the main event was going to bring," said Hardy. "But we tempered our expectations because Rockhold kept promising a first-round finish and Bisping was known to be durable. But he got the job done."
Rockhold wouldn't be able to keep his promise of a first-round finish, but he was able to submit Bisping with a guillotine in Round 2 to secure the win.
"It's in the past," Rockhold said, when asked about the pre-fight banter. "I have a lot of respect for Michael, he's a warrior and he gave it everything he's got."
It's been a decade since the historic event, and the feat has yet to be replicated. UFC 224 in 2018 saw 11 of the 13 fights end by knockout or submission, and UFC 281 in 2022 had 11 finishes in 14 fights. But both had the excitement of a perfect night spoiled early with decisions on the early prelims.
So, why hasn't a perfect night happened again?
"The talent certainly is increasing across the board in mixed martial arts and there are a lot more competitive fights," said Hardy. "I think that we are now seeing less cards where you feel like you can predict the winners of the fights."
But as we enter 2025, might we see another perfect card?
"With the well-considered matchmaking and with so much on the line for each athlete," Gooden said, "we simply don't see events at the highest level turn a 100% finish rate."
UFC events now have more fights, with an average card having 12 to 14, which lowers the possibility of having all finishes. However, with the promotion continuing to add more fighters with evolving skill sets, Hardy believes another perfect night is inevitable.
"I think we'll have another card or two in the next 10 years that will have a 100 percent finish rate," Hardy said. "I'm basing that purely on the level of amateurs and early prospects that are coming through. The level of skill, speed and athleticism that we're going to see in the next 10 years of the sport is going to be beyond anything that we're seeing right now.
"With mixed martial arts, there are so many ways to lose, and I think there are going to be a lot more fighters with finishing capability in the next 10 years, as opposed to the ones we've got now."
