Happy Halloween! A revisit of MMA’s scariest knockout | Edson Barboza vs. Shane Burgos
With it being Halloween night, I thought it might be a good time for ghost stories. With our audience caring about the sport of mixed martial arts, I thought why not tie that in somehow. Today, I want to talk about the scariest knockout I’ve ever seen: Edson Barboza’s third round knockout of Shane Burgos.
https://youtu.be/PtWAOuHCDy4?si=pqhPi9bnlN_7DUra&t=750
Edson Barboza finishes Shane Burgos in the scariest way
In May of 2021, Edson Barboza and Shane Burgos faced off at the start of the main card of UFC 262. Charles Oliveira and Michael Chandler were to face off for the newly vacant title from Khabib Nurmagomedov.
The fight was a back and forth affair with Barboza pouring on the low kicks, cutting open the shin of Burgos. Barboza managed to land 33 of 40 low kicks, severely limiting the motion of Shane Burgos.
Near the one minute mark of round three, Edson Barboza comes over the top with a right hook and Burgos seemingly eats it. Then he falls back, stumbles, and goes out cold without any other shot eaten from Barboza. It was a full four seconds of Burgos showing no signs before he began to go out.
In an interview with Mike Heck of MMA Fighting, Burgos said the following about the knockout:
The weirdest part is I remember everything which is something everyone is surprised about,” Burgos explained. “I don’t have any loss of memory when it comes to that. So we’re fighting, I threw the jab, I bring it back to my head and he threw a f*ckin fast overhand right, and I didn’t even see it. It was like, boom, hit me and I was like [still moving around] but I thought, this is weird. It felt like my vision was slowly coming to a tunnel vision, my legs were getting slowly turned off. It was like somebody turning the volume down on the power button on my legs. I was bouncing and dipping down, and when I was dipping down I was trying to come back up fully, and I was slowly getting lower. I’m like, I can’t stand the f*ck up, what the f*ck is going on?
My legs just completely… it was slowly and then [snap] just off and I fell back into the cage. That was it. When he threw the punch, it was just so fast and I thought he just hit me with something and I was like, all right. Then it slowly all shut off. It was weird. I saw some doctor did a review—I didn’t watch it—but I heard they were attributing it to my conditioning and to my cardio, and I guess that’s a compliment. But it sucks.
While Burgos seemingly took some damage, he insisted he was fine and mentally good. The fight was fantastic before the finish and earned Burgos a $75,000 Fight of the Night bonus.
Where did he go from there?
Shane Burgos would go on to fight again. After losing to Barboza, he won two straight against Billy Quarantillo and Charles Jourdain. He then decided to leave the UFC on his on decision.
There, he joined the PFL and dropped his debut to Olivier Aubin-Mercier. He returned in June of 2023 to the win column against Yamato Nishikawa and dropped his last bout to Clay Collard last August in PFL’s lightweight semis.
In the video above, Dr. Abbasi, a ringside physician, chimed in over the issue at the time. He said it’s not possible to know exactly what happened was that Burgos was near concussed and his back and forth movement caused the brain motion to complete the concussion.
Regardless, Shane Burgos was healthy after the fight and has fought again and looked good doing it.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
