Ismael Bonfim puts Terrance McKinney out cold with ridiculous flying knee KO

Ismael Bonfim scored what probably will be the 2023 MMA Knockout of the Year when he face planted Terrance McKinney on the early preliminary card of UFC 283 Saturday at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It also may rank as one of the best KOs in the history of the UFC. It’s not a bad night for a guy in his UFC debut.

Bonfim’s striking was at another level and he was hurting the highly regarded McKinney throughout the bout.

He cracked McKinney with a right hand, that sent McKinney’s mouthpiece flying. McKinney managed to stay on his feet, but he was clearly compromised and by the way that Bonfim was going, it was fairly obvious it wouldn’t last much longer.

Bonfim leapt into the air and looked as if he’d throw a right knee. But Bonfim switched to a left and the knee caught McKinney on the right side of his jaw and neck. McKinney went down face-first and the bout was immediately over at 2:17 of the second round.

McKinney has been impressive in the early stages of his UFC run, but he had his hands full with Bonfim from the start on Saturday.

“We knew his conditioning wasn’t going to be very good,” Bonfim said. “So we trained on top of that and I must have thrown 200 knees [at my coach]. We knew that was going to happen and I was going to take him out in the second or the third.”

McKinney was 3-1 entering the bout and had finished each of his wins. But he just was no match for Bonfim on this night, who put on a show in front of the home fans in the UFC’s first pay-per-view card of the year.