Greatest kick thrown & landed in combat competition?

[Morning Star]

Barbosa no question

 

[Iroh]

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

A damn fine counter-argument.

In the debate of 'Greatest Kicks In MMA' people usually post kicks that KO the opponent and win the fight.

With Pettis's Ninja Kick I've promoted the argument that it is the greatest kick ever.
Although it didn't KO Henderson it did win him the fight and the championship.

And by the way, my OP was mostly to get the ball rolling with the discussion and everyone to watch that IG clip because it still really is shocking how great of a kick it was. As one IG comment said 'That was the most anime thing I've seen in real life.'

To me it definitely belongs in the argument, but I think you'd have to partially argue it was the greatest kick ever on the basis of the level of competition/the stakes, which seems counter to your position about the greatest football catch.

It's just so subjective to rate these things that they all belong more in "tiers" then just saying one is objectively better than another. If we broke them down into sub-categories some people might say:

Creativity = Buckley vs. Kasanganay
Difficulty = Pettis vs. Henderson
Fluidity = Barboza vs. Etim
Level of Competition = Silva vs. Belfort
Situation/Stakes = Leon vs. Usman 2

To be fair Pettis vs. Henderson could be first in all those categories depending on how you feel about things, so maybe it is the greatest kick of all-time! I think if it had given us a clean KO instead of a knockdown that didn't even lead to a finish it would without a doubt be considered the best one ever.

It's just kind of tough to give it that reward out-right without the finish coming from the kick (it just being a "round winning" kick that produced a knockdown) - it sadly loses some of the luster of it's memorability to say "the greatest kick of all-time" didn't KO someone and didn't even lead to a KO of someone. Again, all subjective opinion anyways.

Thanks for starting the thread, always fun to revisit some of the most epic moments of violence we've witnessed in decades prior and discus what made them special.

 

[GearSolidMetal]

To me it definitely belongs in the argument, but I think you'd have to partially argue it was the greatest kick ever on the basis of the level of competition/the stakes, which seems counter to your position about the greatest football catch.

It's just so subjective to rate these things that they all belong more in "tiers" then just saying one is objectively better than another. If we broke them down into sub-categories some people might say:

Creativity = Buckley vs. Kasanganay
Difficulty = Pettis vs. Henderson
Fluidity = Barboza vs. Etim
Level of Competition = Silva vs. Belfort
Situation/Stakes = Leon vs. Usman 2

To be fair Pettis vs. Henderson could be first in all those categories depending on how you feel about things, so maybe it is the greatest kick of all-time! I think if it had given us a clean KO instead of a knockdown that didn't even lead to a finish it would without a doubt be considered the best one ever.

It's just kind of tough to give it that reward out-right without the finish coming from the kick (it just being a "round winning" kick that produced a knockdown) - it sadly loses some of the luster of it's memorability to say "the greatest kick of all-time" didn't KO someone and didn't even lead to a KO of someone. Again, all subjective opinion anyways.

Thanks for starting the thread, always fun to revisit some of the most epic moments of violence we've witnessed in decades prior and discus what made them special.

Username checks out.

 

[Bend NvR Break]

Machida karate kid crane kicking Randy in the face

 

[RichardHarrow]

Never been a fan of that diva CroCop so was elated when this happened.

 

[Kinniku]

In kickboxing: Bonjasky vs White

In MMA: Yvel vs Goodridge

 

[Prologue]

Dude got KO'ed with the punch, and the kick sent him to Ken Shamrock's Living Death.