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When this fight happened, back in 2009, some may have expected a good scrap, but Jorge Santiago had been on a great run up to this point. In the couple of years leading up to this fight he had beaten Andrei Semenov, Jeremy Horn, Sean Salmon and Trevor Prangley (en route to a Strikeforce MWGP Championship), Siyar Bahadurzada, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Kazuo Misaki, and others, and had not lost in 3 years. Mamed Khalidov, on the other hand, had beaten Jason Guida on an EliteXC Challengers show, and PrideFC veteran Daniel Acacio, with a win over Igor Prokrajac back in 2006. He had not lost in 4 years, but the disparity in competition between the two was obvious, and Santiago was the reigning Sengoku MW Champion. This fight was a non title bout, and was certainly not expected (or meant) to end the way it did, and if we thought it would end so oddly we would he lying. People like to throw around the word "fluke" in reference to Mousasi's upkick KO of Jacare, but those people have not seen the ending of Khalidov/Santiago I.
They'd go on to rematch at the next Sengoku event, five months later, with Santiago taking a hard fought split decision win. Santiago would go on to have a rematch with Misaki that would go down as a classic fight, and then return to the UFC to no success (going 1-5 all-time in the UFC), and then quietly retiring in 2013. After Khalidov/Santiago II, Khalidov would go without a loss for 8 years, until March if this year, beating fighters like James Irvin, Maiquel Falcao, Matt Linland, and Melvin Manhoef.
The "killing blow" in this fight ranks up there with the "Hammerfist of Doom" in ridiculousness (I am aware that the HFOD was not an actual kill shot, still, an odd absurdity).
Enjoy.
They'd go on to rematch at the next Sengoku event, five months later, with Santiago taking a hard fought split decision win. Santiago would go on to have a rematch with Misaki that would go down as a classic fight, and then return to the UFC to no success (going 1-5 all-time in the UFC), and then quietly retiring in 2013. After Khalidov/Santiago II, Khalidov would go without a loss for 8 years, until March if this year, beating fighters like James Irvin, Maiquel Falcao, Matt Linland, and Melvin Manhoef.
The "killing blow" in this fight ranks up there with the "Hammerfist of Doom" in ridiculousness (I am aware that the HFOD was not an actual kill shot, still, an odd absurdity).
Enjoy.
