Watch our pick for top-5 knockouts in UFC history

We’ve seen some great knockouts in the UFC’s 21 year history but here are the five we thought reigned above all.

Anderson Silva, or as you may know him as the spider, has been a knockout artist for his whole career. Steve Marcus/Getty Images/AFP

FIGHTING is in the human DNA was UFC President Dana White’s explanation to why his promotion had become the world’s biggest mixed martial arts organisation over the past decade.

Above all on a fight fan’s wish list is to see a clean knockout where one fighter inflicts a blow which disarms their opponent’s physical weapons (and consciousness). The recipe for a classic brain rattler is always technique, but a solid backstory makes it that extra bit sweeter.

Here is our list our top-5 knockouts.

No. 5

You could hear a pin drop immediately before Lyoto Machida delivered a karate kid style kick to Randy Couture’s chin at UFC 129 in 2010. A record UFC crowd of 55,000 fans at Toronto’s Rogers Centre witnessed Machida’s one foot crane kick which sent the now movie star, Couture, to the canvas and into fighting retirement.

No.4

No rivalry was stronger, or filled with more hate, than Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Wanderlei Silva. Having beaten Jackson in two previous fights under the Pride promotion in Japan, Silva came into their 2008 match looking to make it a hatrick. It was the American Jackson who ended the final slugfest with a stiff left hook and as you will see — two more for good measure.

No.3

To say Dan Henderson took Michael Bisping’s consciousness away in their 2009 clash is an understatement. Opposing coaches on the Ultimate Fighter’s ninth season, the two threw onscreen insults months before they fought at UFC 100. On the night Bisping was caught off guard by a Henderson right hook — and the rest is history, with a capital H-bomb.

No.2

Ask an MMA fan from way back who their most feared fighter of the early 2000s was and they would most likely say Mirko Cro Cop. Honed from his kickboxing background, the Croatian’s left kick could probably cut down a gum tree and several opponents felt that wrath. Enter Brazilian Gabriel Gonzaga. Their 2007 fight was fairly slow until Gonzaga dosed out his own facial medicine by unleashing a savage right kick which turned the lights out in Zagreb.

No.1

Prior to his recent bust for steroids, Anderson “The Spider” Silva was widely known as the greatest MMA fighter of all time. His left front kick knockout win over Vitor Belfort in 2011 was so good; it was plastered as the background for many an MMA news website. The slow motion replay showing Silva’s strike is vicious and gets our top spot for best KO in UFC history