Dos Santos vs. Hunt: Cigano Flashes Versatility in Knockout Win

Junior dos Santos dominated challenger Mark Hunt at UFC 160, winning with a late, third-round knockout and making a persuasive case for another championship opportunity.

Despite his opponent's prodigious size, dos Santos made the "Super Samoan" look like a rag doll at times. He got tagged with one or two good shots but delivered a great deal more than that and did so much more frequently.

He ended the fight with a huge spinning kick—this is a heavyweight bout, mind you—that knocked Hunt unconscious on his feet before he hit the canvas. The ref had seen enough at that point and called it a day.

Dos Santos revealed himself, once again, to be a complete fighter during the win. Here are three crucial characteristics that he revealed in his game.

Resilience

It's been awhile since dos Santos has had to prove his resilience because, well, it's been awhile since he lost his previous fight. 

Now 16-2 in his MMA career, this was "Cigano's" first bounce-back bout since 2008, when he followed a submission loss to Joaquim Ferreira with a match against his namesake, Geronimo dos Santos. That fight ended in a TKO, but as it took place almost five years ago, dos Santos had to prove his fortitude all over again.

He did so in a very big way.

Dos Santos showed no ill effects from his beatdown against Velasquez—which, given the rest of Saturday's events, looks a little less bad—and handled Hunt from start to finish. He's now 2-0 coming off a loss with two TKOs.

That's darn impressive.

Power

Okay, so this one was never in question. Even after an ugly loss to Velasquez, nobody doubted dos Santos' power.

But that didn't make it any less impressive—especially given the myriad ways that he displayed it. He threw powerful jabs, hooks, hammers and one very powerful kick to end the bout.

JDS is a rare breed as a boxer, perhaps the best in his division, and he displayed his punching power all evening. That he was able to end the bout with the power of his feet—well, that's just scary for everyone else in the division.

Evasiveness

Velasquez made Cigano look out of shape and slow. We know now, as we suspected then, that isn't quite the case. Velasquez is in another league regarding conditioning and quickness. But we still wanted to see how JDS moved against a high-volume puncher like Hunt.

The returns were impressive. Hunt landed a couple of big punches on JDS' jaw, but with the amount of punches he throws, that's almost impossible to avoid. But the punches that Hunt didn't land might have defined this fight, and Cigano's evasiveness is a large reason why they missed.

One instance in the first round stuck out on Saturday. Hunt threw two huge punches that dos Santos avoided with aplomb. He looked like Floyd Mayweather effortlessly sliding away from attempts from Robert Guerrero. 

That wasn't in the scouting report, but come JDS' next big bout, it probably should be.