Sherdog.com’s 2015 Knockout of the Year

4. Hisaki Kato vs. Joe Schilling
Bellator 139
Friday, June 26
Kansas Star Arena | Mulvane, Kansas
A year ago in this same space, I wrote about Joe Schilling’s magnificent merking of Melvin Manoef at Bellator 131. Clocking in at No. 2 on the 2014 “Knockout of the Year” list, Schilling’s handiwork would have taken “Knockout of the Year” honors from this website and likely many others if not for Dong Hyun Kim’s spinning back elbow on John Hathaway. Schilling, an accomplished kickboxer and muay Thai fighter, was 1-3 in MMA competition heading into his bout with Manhoef, a shopworn and largely one-dimensional-if-dangerous fighter, and he had not fought MMA in six years. It was the kind of fight that makes you wonder, “Why is this happening in the second biggest MMA promotion in the world?” Never mind the strange tension in nearly handing out hardware the magnitude of “Knockout of the Year” to a no-stakes kickboxing match inside a cage.

Love him or hate him, this is what Bellator MMA President Scott Coker does as a promoter, and like it or not, the former Strikeforce boss has a knack for successfully pairing like-minded strikers against one another; and so, for the second straight year, one of Coker’s firework-producing promotional devices scores a spot on this list. Unfortunately for Schilling, he was the nail and not the hammer in 2015.

Kato, a Japanese karateka born and raised in France, was chosen as Schilling’s opponent because of his background as an internationally acclaimed representative of Daidojuku kudo, a hybridized martial art resembling a mix between full-contact karate and judo in which competitors wear gis, gloves and helmets with face shields like hockey players or riot police. Schilling was rebounding from a split decision loss in April against eventual Bellator middleweight champion Rafael Carvalho, a fight in which Carvalho -- a striker by trade who took the Bellator title from Brandon Halsey with a beautiful liver kick -- wanted no part of Schilling’s striking and took him down repeatedly. Years of punching grown men in the face through a sheet of hard plastic seemed to make Kato an ideal candidate to actually stand in front of “Stitch ’Em Up” instead of trying to stick him to the canvas.

When the first round started in Mulvane, Kansas, Kato seemed like a shrinking violet in that particular capacity, running Schilling into the clinch, taking him down and pounding away on top. In fairness, Kato’s postured ground-and-pound in round one was clean and potent, but it was far from the toe-to-toe engagement for which many had hoped. Just 34 seconds into the second round, that ground-and-pound would not even matter.

Both men felt out each other to start the second period, with Schilling trying to counter Kato’s rushes and “The Japanese Musketeer” trying to cleverly get inside the Californian’s personal bubble. There would be no great, multi-faceted setup to the knockout, no poetry in motion as Kato flowed into a beautiful stoppage. Kato struck like a nuclear bomb, with a force so sudden and catastrophic that Schilling and the MMA world’s collective bottom jaws simply disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Kato ripped off a switch-step Superman punch so quickly that he must have been moving in the bullet time of “The Matrix.” No offense to arguably the greatest fighter ever in Georges St. Pierre, master of the switch-step Superman punch for MMA purposes, but this was beyond “Rush’s” most excellent execution.

Schilling is a striking expert, such that when Kato pulled the stance switch -- which appears to happen literally three times as fast as most MMA fighters doing so -- he was getting ready to unload a ferocious left-hand counter, anticipating Kato would throw a high kick. It did not matter: Kato’s right cross came so fast out of mid-air that it removed Schilling from his senses before he made contact. Schilling clattered to the canvas like a two-by-four, his head slamming so viciously off the mat that his entire body bounced a full foot closer toward the fence. While wholly unnecessary and perhaps fuelled by Schilling calling him a “pussy” immediately prior to the punch, Kato ran over his opponent’s corpse and dropped a brutal coffin nail into his face for good measure before referee Rob Hinds could rescue him.

It does not seem like big potatoes for a random Japanese karateka to punch out a now 2-5 MMA fighter; when we talk about all-time great MMA knockouts, we talk about the UFC, Pride Fighting Championships, World Extreme Cagefighting, Strikeforce, Bellator and so on, not Gladiator Challenge’s exploits at Colusa Casino 15 years ago. However, as I am fond of saying ad nauseum on radio, sometimes it is not how good the pitch is but how sweet the swing is.

To see Kato floating, cocked in perfect punching position, about to piston a right cross through Schilling’s chin while levitating two inches off of the mat, is sublime. It is a bizarre form of MMA greatness, but year in and year out, that is the Coker brand.

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