Five years ago this week, Conor McGregor made his long-awaited return to the octagon; and needed just 40 seconds to wrangle a ‘Cowboy’ in one of his career-best performances.
With the UFC out of town, Bloody Elbow is looking back through the archives to revisit some of the biggest and best fights that went down ‘This Week in MMA history’.
And today, we’ve got a ‘Notorious’ 40-second knockout in our crosshairs.
Conor McGregor took 40 seconds to KO UFC Hall of Famer in return fight
Heading into UFC 246, fans of Conor McGregor were concerned about how the Irishman would fair after over a year out of action and fighting at 170lbs against promotional veteran Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone.
It certainly didn’t take long for those concerns to floored, flattened, and kicked-to-the-curb; with McGregor wasting no time at all as he sprinted across the octagon to land a flying knee.
As the two UFC superstars quickly grabbed a hold of each other in the clinch, McGregor began throwing some incredibly powerful shoulder strikes; even going airborne to land one such blow.
The two separated, and Cerrone was already wearing the damage from those shoulder hits, with his nose bleeding and his eye swelling shut just 12 seconds into the very first round – although he later confessed that neither his nose nor orbital bone had been broken.
Cerrone and McGregor would separate, before throwing back-to-back head kicks… Cowboy’s was blocked by the high guard, but McGregor’s certainly wasn’t.
With the 33-fight veteran badly rocked for a second time, the former double champion would pile on the pressure, landing a total of 19 unanswered punches – many with his patented left hand – to earn his 19th career win by KO/TKO.
McGregor’s 40-second knockout not only earned him a Performance of the Night bonus but also saw him make history as the first-ever UFC fighter to land knockouts at featherweight, lightweight, and welterweight.
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Conor McGregor’s insane 40-second knockout left Dana White stunned
The T-Mobile Arena crowd went wild for McGregor’s 40-second knockout, with UFC CEO Dana White stating at a post-event media scrum that even with all his years of experience, he “did not see that [one] coming.
“I’ve been talking all week about the weight difference… Yeah, right out of the window with that – that was crazy… Conor looked damn good tonight.
“It had nothing to do with injuries or whatever, Conor went right after him; started hitting him with those shoulders to his face, probably broke his nose and then it was on… It was unbelievable.”
At the post-fight press conference, White continued to heap praise on the UFCs most lucrative superstar, sharing how he was “blown away” by how “unbelievable” his performance was.
“Conor McGregor came out, he looked fast, he hit hard, he had a gameplan, and he finished a real tough kid who came to win.”
“Conor McGregor looked ridiculous tonight. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody. And the way that he went in there, the way that he did it, he looked sharp, he looked fast, he looked strong.”
UFC 246 will undoubtedly go down as one of Conor McGregor’s best-ever performances in the octagon, although it’s also currently the last victory that ‘Notorious’ has registered in the UFC.
According to recent reports, Conor McGregor’s next fight will take place in November 2025.
That timeline would be in line with Dana White’s own assessment, stating on a recent episode of Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take that “Hopefully Conor McGregor returns in the Fall of this year.”
It’s been five years since that ‘Notorious’ night out in Las Vegas; fingers crossed that another half-a-decade doesn’t go by before we see his next one.