UFC 160 Results: Junior Dos Santos Defeats Mark Hunt

Junior "Cigano" dos Santos wants the UFC heavyweight title back around his waist. The 28-year-old Brazilian took a huge step in the right direction on Saturday night at UFC 160 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Dos Santos knocked out Mark Hunt with a beautiful spinning kick in the third round that instantly sent the "Super Samoan" to the ground.

Even UFC octagon announcer Bruce Buffer was impressed by Dos Santos' impressive display of power:

The first round started out with both men respecting each other's power, but it didn't take long for each man to make his opponent feel his power. Dos Santos landed an overhand right that rocked Hunt, while Hunt reciprocated by cutting dos Santos.

The first half of the second round played out similarly, with Cigano landing some flush shots before taking down Hunt for the latter half of the round.

The third round would prove to be much more lopsided for dos Santos, as a winded Hunt consistently took damage. When dos Santos uncorked the spinning kick, it was all over.

The win improved dos Santos' record to 16-2 in his MMA career. Hunt's record falls to 9-8. That may seem like a rather unimpressive career tally, but the 39-year-old from New Zealand has lost to some of the best heavyweights in the world.

Hunt has won his share of bouts over esteemed fighters such as Cheick Kongo, Ben Rothwell, Stefan Struve, Mirko Filipović and Wanderlei Silva.

Unfortunately for Hunt, Saturday's defeat puts dos Santos amongst an even more impressive list of fighters who have bested Hunt.

The Super Samoan has lost to Alistair Overeem, Gegard Mousasi, Fedor Emelianenko, Josh Barnett and others.

After suffering just the second loss of his career and yielding the title to Cain Velasquez at UFC 155, dos Santos is set to take on the winner of UFC 160's co-main event. Velasquez and Antonio "Big Foot" Silva battle in the co-feature.

Velasquez and dos Santos may have turned the UFC heavyweight title chase into a two-man game. Velasquez had originally lost the title to dos Santos at UFC on Fox 1 in Nov. 2011. The win at UFC 155 was sweet revenge for the beast from Salinas, Calif.

If Velasquez takes out Silva on Saturday night, he and dos Santos will be on a collision course for a third fight. Velasquez should have an easy time with Silva considering he destroyed him a year ago in three minutes and 36 seconds.

While trilogies are usually a good thing for combat sports, the heavyweight division needs some new blood. If the third fight between Velasquez and dos Santos is made, Velasquez will have fought only two different opponents in his last five fights.

That is a bit excessive, even if we're talking about big-time fighters.

We'll see how this shakes out. At any rate, dos Santos has done his part to remain in the heavyweight title mix.

Follow me, because Royce Gracie started me on this MMA path, and now I'm out of control.