MMA: Arthur Guseinov and 10 Million-Dollar Spinning Back Fist Finishes

In the MMA world circa 2011, the overhand right and the hook stand as the top two pound-for-pound favorite punches of fans of the sport just because many of the sport's most immortal memories can be attributed to them.

Often, this causes the flashy and creatively-powerful strikes from the Muay Thai and Kickboxing disciplines—namely the superman punch, the flying knee, the spinning elbow, the superman elbow, the roundhouse kick, and of course, the spinning back fist.

Those who witnessed M-1 Challenge 26 this past Friday witnessed another form of proof that the spinning back fist is one of the most devastating strikes in MMA, but only a handful of fighters have had the same success with the spinning back fist as Arthur Guseinov did on Friday.

After much thought and a lot of boiling down, ten have made the cut, so for your viewing pleasure, here now are ten of the sickest spinning back fists in combat sports—MMA and beyond.

How sick are these 10?

Take a look as how these finishes are, and you tell me that you've seen better.

This Is How They Do It in "Big Kids' Muay Thai", Kids

Muay Thai, by my own admission and honesty, is quite honestly my favorite style of stand-up fighting.

It's just unbelievable how these guys pull off the stuff they pull off, and what's great is that they don't just leave it at the standard boxing schtick.

It's "The Art of Eight Limbs"—Muay Thai fighters bring it with the knees, the elbows, and the kicks in ways some wouldn't dare to imagine.

I've shown you guys the spinning back elbow courtesy of the Muay Thai Monarch of The Spinning Back Elbow, Farnam Mirzai.

Now, I'd like to introduce you to Alan Aitchison, the man who lands our next backfist beauty.

Don't blink, because the video only lasts 11 seconds, and the guy Alan lands this on gets knocked out cold.

Eben Kaneshiroand the Perfect Counter-Kill-Strike

Eben Kaneshiro is not a name that many fans know unless they follow the careers of Evan Dunham, Rani Yahya, or Urijah Faber passionately—mostly because he's lost against all three of those men, and he's been up and down in wins his whole career.

To his credit, though, he did land one mean back fist at a Kauai Cage Fights event.

The video is a fan upload, and unfortunately, there is no available insight as to who ate the back fist, but it does land hard and Kaneshiro does manage to score the victory after the back fist and a few punches.

Fun fact: the guy Kaneshiro finishes with the back fist—he tries for a very awkward leg kick before he gets dropped.

Not bad for a guy who's lost to Urijah Faber once before.

Abe Peterman Throws His Foe Off, Then Shuts Him Down

"Abe Peterman" is the name given by the guy who uploaded this fight, but if you look up the name on Sherdog, the guy has no wins or losses and is named "James Abe Peterman".

Regardless, he's responsible for our next backfist KO, although we don't really know who the opponent is or what skills he brought with him on this night.

All we know is that this guy gets thrown off balance and winds up winging the backfist, but he does land it.

Try not to blink, because the man lands it, but he is off camera for a bit and  it's originally tough to tell if he got all of it.

Of course, if he didn't, it wouldn't be on this list, now would it?

Alan Rivera and His Four Ounces of Pimp Hand

Straight out of the 4 oz. Fight Club in Houston, Alan Rivera makes the cut for two reasons:

The first reason is that he and his four ounce gloves were getting the better of the stand up against this poor soul you'll see here.

The second reason?

Rivera tags this young man a few times, and the backfist—as has been the case with just about everyone's backfist so far—leaves this young man out and out cold.

Chopping Down A....Smaller Tree?

Don't ask me about the height differentiation here in this Muay Thai/Kickboxing affair—if I had to guess, this was likely at an open-weight fight, or maybe it was at a certain weight and yet one guy happened to be noticeably taller than his opponent.

Whatever the case, the taller guy made better work of his opponent than did his opponent, but the shorter man did a slightly better job of getting inside on his taller foe than David Haye did two weeks ago against Wladimir Klitschko.

Then again, I don't believe it's really difficult to top such a one-sided boxing affair that was billed as "the most important Heavyweight Title bout in eight years" with a knockout, especially with this type of knockout.

As the bout goes on, the taller man here starts to dominate a little bit more, leaving his shorter foe with no answers.

After keeping him at bay, the taller of the two fighters sets up his kill-shot, and after that, it's BOOM! goes the dynamite.

Darrell Montague's Mongoose Strike. Enough Said.

Darrell Montague has an odd nickname, being called "The Mongoose" for most of his career, but he's made a good career for himself—a career that led him to the Tachi Palace Fights Flyweight Championship.

He's been well known as a fighter who is often quick to the draw on the feet and competent enough to do damage at a serious level if the fight goes to the ground.

The damage he is capable of on the feet was never any more obvious than on June 20th, 2008 when he fought Gladiator Challenge 79: Genuine Beatdown—in his pro MMA debut against Dillon Croushon.

The bout ended at 3:40 of round two, the recorded time of the knockout, which comes by way of what you're about to see.

It didn't take long for Croushon and Montague to check each other's leg kicks, but ultimately that would be the last move Croushon would make, as he was flatlined by a whirlybird to his mug.

Have yourself a glimpse and don't be afraid to quote Michael Schiavello after the back fist shuts Croushon down..

Andy Hug Sends Miyamoto Masaaki to Sleep

The late great Andy "Tetsujin" Hug will go down as not only one of the most exciting kickboxers ever in the combat sports world but he will also go down on this list as one of the ten men responsible for a sick spinning back fist KO finish that will live on in combat sports for generations.

After a loss to the great Ernesto Hoost, Hug racked four wins up before facing Miyamoto Masaaki at K-1's Japan '98 Kamikaze.

The fight only lasted two minutes, and Hug made it count with a left spinning back fist to Masaaki,

The punch scored him a knockdown, but it was one step closer to the KO win that he would post on the Japanese star—his third to last win before facing one Peter Aerts.

The Toronto Bull-Run...(By the Way, How's Your Face, Kyle Watson?)

You had to know about John Makdessi BEFORE it was announced that he was getting Kyle Wason in order to say he had a chance against Watson at UFC 129.

Of course, if you saw the event, you don't need a recap of how Watson got dropped and scored what was to be the KO of The Night before a certain kick happened.

If you didn't see UFC 129 (which you should've, even if St-Pierre-Shields did suck), then watch the video to see how Makdessi all of a sudden became a name for us all to now pay some attention to.

You can't always judge a fight before it happens, right?

The Knockout of 2009 for Bellator Fighting Championships

I have yet to recall one Bellator Fighting Championships bout that sucked, apart from the atrocity that was the Marcos Galvao-Joe Warren decision.

At least Patricio Freire's bout with Warren was close.

Anyway, this list could not exist without Yahir Reyes and his ultra-wicked knockout of Estevan Payan—the Knockout that defined the first season of Bellator Fighting Championships.

Reyes hasn't has a recorded pro fight since he lost to Joe Soto in the finals of Bellator's first Featherweight tournament, but if there aren't any plans for him to return tot he cage at all, then he left on a way better note than what people might think.

Sure, his last fight was Soto, but people are going to remember him for the KO of 2009 in Bellator Fighting Championships against Payan, in which he rallied back from a tough first round to land what might be the sickest spinning back fist in MMA's recent historical archives.

Had UFC 98's Light Heavyweight title headliner with Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans been a snoozer that most fans would have liked to forget ever happened, this fight could have been the KO of 2009.

Oh well. At least we know of one fight in 2009 that ended on the sickening consumption of a whirlybird sandwich.

The Knockout of 2011?

One "MAMMA MIA!" later,  people were already quick to question if this knockout was enough to outdo some of the already unbelievable knockouts of 2011.

Tyson Jeffries didn't even make a mistake or throw anything questionable at Arthur Guseinov—as Pat Miletich said, Jeffries did was he was supposed to.

It was just one of those instances in MMA where someone was quicker to the draw and it resulted in what was a beautiful knockout.

An MMA fan had to be hardcore enough of a fan to care much about M-1 Global, because before this fight, few fans knew of M-1 Global as anything besides "that company Fedor has".

After this knockout, however, fans hopefully have taken notice of M-1 Global as an MMA promotion whose fighters can pull off some very sick finishes.

Was this one sicker than both Makdessi's knockout of Watson and Reyes' knockout of Payan, or were either of the two sicker in your opinion?

You be the judge, MMA World.

Spinning Backfist Hall of Fame: "Mr. International" Shonie Carter

Of course, you can't talk about the spinning backfist in MMA without talking about the fight that Matt Serra almost won by unanimous decision against Shonie Carter.

One of the best comebacks in MMA history and one of the best examples of a good comeback from the early UFC, Carter was on his way to a unanimous decision loss against "The Terror" when Shonie Carter landed arguably the most legendary spinning backfist in MMA history with about nine seconds to go in the third round.

Everyone knows the story about how Serra dominated the fight before that KO, and plenty of people forget that Carter was capable of such a thing simply because Carter has been quiet as of late.

Now, the video of the actual knockout has yet to make its way to Youtube (for reasons which I cannot fathom right now), so instead, I present to you a video highlight package of Carter, which includes footage of the backfist.

A flashy maneuver perfected by one of the flashiest and most underappreciated Welterweight in the sport--nothing could be more appropriate.

Spinning Back Fist Hall of Fame: Genki Sudo

One of the most creative and dangerous fighters to have graced the MMA world, Genki Sudo might be one of the most underrated fighters to have fought at 155-pounds-and-below.

If you watch his fights, he only had one KO win in MMA, as opposed to his twelve submission wins, and he only lost four times, but if you look at his record, his most significant loss to date was his loss to Norifumi Yamamoto, who was seen as one of the two best fighters in the world in his division at the time.

Let the record show that at no time in MMA was there ever any shame in getting finished by "The Son of God"--after all, few  can do it up in the heat of a fight like Yamamoto to begin with.

Anyway, Sudo showed beautiful grappling in his MMA run, and his only flashes of being "subpar" were in his K-1 run, where he ended his run at 2-4.

Luckily for him, it's one of the two wins of his six-fight K-1 kickboxing career that people associate with Sudo instead of the fact that he lost six fights while fighting in K-1.

It didn't take Jin-Woo Kim long for Sudo to find himself on the business end of one of Sudo's victory winning finishes, and by popular demand, you're about to see why.

If your anatomical structure is incapable of withstanding the sheer magnitude and the aura of this backfist's awesomeness...then you shouldn't have stuck to combat sports to begin with.

If you're not prepared to see the Zangief-like power that Sudo puts behind his backfist to flatline Kim, now would be a good time to start looking up Poker...or Surfing.