Sherdog’s Top 10: UFC Upsets

5. Gabriel Gonzaga def. Mirko Filipovic
UFC 70 “Nations Collide”
April 21, 2007 | Manchester, England
UFC fans didn’t know much about this “Cro Cop” guy, aside from all the Pride fans who forced his unbelievable striking ability down their throats. They weren’t wrong: Mirko Filipovic was a killing machine in Japan, a man with more highlights than Dominique Wilkins, and when he finally came stateside to the UFC, the atmosphere was thick with anticipation.

Mirko had an uneventful UFC debut a few months before when he stopped Eddie Sanchez, a fight that produced a knockout but was nothing like what fans had grown to expect from the Croatian. Enter Gabriel Gonzaga, a solid pro with grappling skills but nothing special. Cro Cop was poised to send him to the hospital with his right leg or the morgue with his left -- whichever landed would have worked.

Shockingly, the huge underdog from Brazil did his best Cro Cop impression by head-kicking Filipovic into dreamland with one of the most brutal knockouts the promotion had ever seen. Almost nobody gave Gonzaga a chance against the man who was considered the world’s second-best heavyweight, and nobody predicted that he would head-kick the head-kicker into oblivion.

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