Bloody Elbow GIFathon: There’s A First Time For Everything

I’ve borrowed Zombie Prophet for a few minutes to produce my own little collection of MMA GIFs. This edition features some of the best and most recognizable fighters in the world, but the twist is they’re all on the losing end.

One of the great things about MMA is that you almost certainly won’t go your entire career without a stoppage defeat. You can go your entire career in boxing unbeaten, or if you do lose you have the distinct honor of never being knocked out. Shane Mosley, Marvin Hagler, and Prince Naseem Hamed have all lost, but they’ve never been KOed or TKOed. In MMA, you can lose by KO or submission, but within those sets include subsets of ways to win by KO or submission. Even the greatest fighters of our time like Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, and Dan Henderson have been finished.

After the jump, you’ll get to see men known for their granite chins and fantastic submission abilities suffer their very first (and for many, only) stoppage losses. Those bouts include:

• Urijah Faber’s dramatic TKO loss to Tyson Griffin, which stands as one of his only two stoppage losses.
• Nate Diaz getting tapped out by Hermes Franca. It remains his only stoppage loss.
• Seemingly submission-proof Ben Henderson getting choked out.
• Before Jon Fitch was slept by Johny Hendricks, Wilson Gouveia gave him his very first KO.

Jon Fitch vs. Wilson Gouveia (2002)

Nate Diaz vs. Hermes Franca (2006)

Urijah Faber vs. Tyson Griffin (2005)

Jose Aldo vs. Luciano Azevado (2005)

Melvin Manhoef vs. Mark Hunt (2008)

Junior Dos Santos vs. Joaquim Ferreira (2007)

Ben Henderson vs. Rocky Johnson (2007)

Like I said, there’s a first time for everything, and most of these top notch fighters have made sure that so far there is no second time.

There will be a terrific part 2 to this later next week, and it includes Nick Diaz TKO loss to Jeremy Jackson and Jason Miller’s getting choked unconscious. But I’m looking for more suggestions of “first time stoppages”, so please leave those in the comments. For added degree of difficulty keep it along the lines of today’s theme of fighters difficult to finish and not Jonathan Goulet’s KO losses or Chael Sonnen.