When it happened, you could almost tell. Thwack. A left hook dug hard into the right side of Daniel Cormier’s body. Then, a lightbulb buzzing furiously over Stipe Miocic’s head.
Until the 17th minute of UFC 241’s main event, it was Cormier who’d been leading the dance. He was the busier boxer, the more sure-handed striker. He was the one beating Miocic to the punch, the one force-feeding a Gilroy buffet down the Clevelander’s throat in their pay-per-view heavyweight title fight. It was a nightmare scenario for Miocic, the UFC’s erstwhile champion who had sidelined himself for more than a year in hopes of getting just a chance to prove his UFC 226 knockout loss to Cormier was a fluke. All that time, all that talk, and yet here he was, watching history repeat itself right before his eyes.
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But then it happened. The in-fight adjustment that forever changed a legacy.
Over the final two minutes of UFC 241’s main event, Miocic lugged 17 shots into Cormier’s body. Seventeen hammering left hooks that crunched into Cormier’s right side, at least 11 of which landed flush. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The most important crossroads of his professional life, and the new heavyweight king became the friend who trolls the hell out of you in Mortal Kombat, gleefully button-mashing a move you don’t understand how to block.
In the end, Miocic’s fourth-round brilliance totaled as the second-largest statistical comeback in UFC championship history, ranking only behind Anderson Silva’s fabled heroics over Chael Sonnen at UFC 117. And it meant so much. A between-rounds lightbulb moment that shot straight into the MMA pantheon. A script-flipping that hurtled two hall of fame legacies into two wildly different directions. All because Miocic took a rolling pin to Cormier’s poor midsection.
But what was “DC” actually experiencing in those final few moments?
What does it actually mean to eat 17 thudding meat hooks to the gut?
Well, The Athletic asked around, and when it comes to MMA’s most overlooked striking art, the answer often isn’t pretty.
THE ART AND THE HORROR
Trevor Wittman (MMA coach): So, body shots are actually my favorite shot. And the reason why? Because I can not take a body shot. I hate it to the body. That’s what made me a good body puncher, because it takes your heart. It takes your soul. It’s that left hook to the body — that’s actually what ended my career as an amateur boxer. I ended up having a pneumothorax, which a slight tear in a lung, and I actually had a lung expand on me. And they couldn’t really understand what was going on. I had a shot of adrenaline put in me, but I didn’t know for two days.
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I just thought I was ill. I thought I was just coming down with something.
Cat Zingano (UFC veteran): The hardest I’ve ever been hit in the body, I took a Thai fight in Thailand a few years ago, maybe 2010 or 2011. I went to Thailand and trained at a Thai camp and asked to take a Thai fight, and they let me. This girl, she was like 35-0, she was really, really good. I had never had a Thai — just strictly Thai — fight before. And during that fight, she kneed me in the body harder than I’ve ever felt. Ever. Like, I was making noises out of my mouth that were completely involuntary from the pain. And the coolest part about it was, it showed me this expectation I could have of myself if I, like, kneed someone.
Like, I want to be why someone is in as much pain as I’m in right now. I wanted to be why somebody else felt that, because that fucking sucks.
Rashad Evans (UFC Hall of Famer): You can feel, like, almost their soul just kinda cave in a little bit, you know? And they just instantly get weak. All the muscle tension that they normally hold throughout their body, it just goes. They’ll go completely limp.
And even if you don’t drop right away, you most likely feel like you want to shit your pants.
Kamaru Usman (UFC welterweight champion): Oh yeah. (Someone) gets you with one of those good punches, you feel like you need to take a shit right away. Legit.
Evans: And that’s the most pain. Because when you get hit with a nice body shot, it feels honestly like someone has stuck something inside of you. It feels like someone stabbed you. It’s just different. It’s a weird pain that you’re not used to feeling, and when you feel it, it feels like something went terribly wrong inside your body. And it just makes you stop. It’s like one of those things, like, you get hit in the eye and your vision looks funny, and then all of a sudden you forget about fighting because you just want to be able to see again. It’s something like that.
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Israel Adesanya (UFC interim middleweight champion): So when you hit the body, there are many ways (to do it), but most people go this way: digging from left to right. But what you really want to do, go from here (below the ribs) to the shoulder, diagonal, up. You know why? If you miss the liver, you’re going to catch the floating rib — and that’s the smallest rib, so you can crack that as well. So when you hit the body shot, you lean into it, you can go (horizontally), but also you want to go that way (diagonally upward). There was a moment in my kickboxing career, I was just sinking it. It was like one of my favorite techniques. I was sinking it like every other fight, and I dropped a lot of people with it, so I might bring it back, man. It’s been a while.
Tony Ferguson (UFC lightweight): With the body shot, I was taught to hit with pounds per square inch — crushing power, kind of like dim mak. So instead of hitting the bag and making it sway, you’re hitting the bag and making it fold. So it’s kind of like that one-inch punch, where you’re right here — the “Kill Bill” one-inch punch — but you’re acquiring (energy) and you’re really, really putting everything together. Like, even with a baseball swing move, it’s a lot.
I like to think that, when I hit, there’s an epicenter, where what I’m going to do is I’m going to try to shock the whole rest of the body. So instead of hitting like this, and then driving through, I’m going to hit and I’m going to, like — pop! Like, ricochet off (your body) as much as I can, to try to create such a ripple in your body that that ripple comes from my body and then it just absorbs into your shit, and it shuts down whatever that hits. So if I hit, like, right here in the middle, then that shock sends something to your liver. That’s automatic, like a two-piece right there.
Adesanya: It’s something — it’s like an involuntary response. Your body just goes, “Nah, we’re taking a break.” Time out. Sit down and that’s it.
And the (good) ones make your breathing just so abstract, it’s just that (choking sound). It sounds like a bad porn.
Henry Cejudo (UFC flyweight and bantamweight champion): Yeah, dude — it paralyzes you.
And what I can tell you from experience is, being kneed by Demetrious Johnson was terrible, dude. The first time he defeated me, like, it had nothing to do with psychologically. Like, it was pure body, man. Just body work and it folds you, man. Terrible.
Demetrious Johnson unloads one of many body shots during his first meeting with Henry Cejudo in 2016. (Josh Hedges / Zuffa)Usman: There’s definitely lingering effects too. You get hit in the right spot, you can crack a rib. You can do a lot of damage. But, you know, sometimes you don’t feel it right away. It’s not like — boom, dropped. It’s boom, I’m good, I’m good, — no, no, I’m not good. And you crumble. So things like that, you don’t know the different internal stuff that’s happening, because some guys have been beat up to the body, and they piss blood for a while.
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Adesanya: I peed blood after my last fight, actually, yeah.
I just went to the bathroom, peeing, and I’m like, why’s it brown? And I’m actually like, oh, that’s blood. So, yeah, that’s blood. OK, cool. That’s nice.
Evans: The hardest I’ve been hit to the body was in sparring. I was sparring Tyrone Spong, and Tyrone Spong got a little excited because I caught him with a combination. And of course, me being a little braggadocious, I was talking some shit on top of it. So then he threw a punch — pop! — and broke my ribs. And it was right before my fight with Phil Davis. Three broken ribs.
Ferguson: I’ve been teeped pretty hard — that was probably my worst one. Made me say “Ooooooooooooo, oooooooooooooo!” for about 30 seconds. I didn’t expect it.
Zingano: It definitely can mess with your endurance and your head, especially, because that’s some pain.
And if there’s something structural there that actually gets maybe bent or takes a little bit of trauma to it, that feeling will (stay with you). Organs, I don’t feel like I’m bothered by for, like, days after. But, I mean, if you catch me in the rib or the back or the boob or something, oh yeah, I’ll notice it. The boob, you feel it for days if you get hit just right.
THE GLEEFUL OTHER SIDE
Michael Bisping (UFC Hall of Famer): When you land it, it’s amazing.
It’s a different reaction than hitting them in the face. You see it in their eyes, because they kind of fold. And it’s (you pointing), ‘Ahhh, you felt that!’ Even if it doesn’t put them down, you know — if you just follow that up a couple more times, they’re going to be on their knees.
Calvin Kattar (UFC featherweight): Oh, it’s the best, man. There’s nothing like a good body shot. You just see a guy react differently, but it’s funny because, cognitively, he’s there. He just, his body can’t react the way it’s supposed to, so it’s kind of strange. In a knockout, you just get knocked out and you wake up. But when you get hit with a good shot to the body, you’re processing everything correctly in your brain — like, “This hurts so bad!” — and there’s nothing you can do about it, but you’re thinking about it the whole time. You’re, like, battling with yourself, but you’re still with it. Forget it, man. A body shot will put you down more than a head shot.
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Cejudo: It’s like a knife when you do things correctly. And man, it’s even more about precision with them. If you hit that right spot, that kidney, dude, I don’t care how big and scary you are. You can be Francis Ngannou — you’re going down.
Francis Ngannou (UFC heavyweight): The hardest I ever hit somebody in the body, I think it was in training. I kind of, like, broke some — a few ribs. (Laughs). Because it was before I started to measure my power, I kind of hit my sparring partners a lot. Like, most of time, they’d get, like, a broken rib, and then some (would say) like, “OK, you have to slow that down,” you know?
(It happened) a lot. Like, four — four different people, yeah.
Johnny Walker (UFC light heavyweight): My last spar with my brother, I broke two (of his) ribs. He went like one-and-a-half months without training. Just a punch. Just one hit, no more bitch.
Usman: There are some guys at practice that are just tougher than tough. Not just in practice, even in fights. When you catch them, but they give you that straight-up poker face, so it’s like, “Goddamn, did I really do some damage with that?” You don’t know. But then when I start watching fights back, I’m like, oooooh, his hand dropped; I know I hurt him. And there have been a couple guys (like that). Sergio Moraes, I fought and I threw a combination while he was backing up, and I thew a body shot, and I didn’t realize it in the fight because he had a good poker face.
But then I watched the fight back and his arm dropped — like, protect that body. So I’m like, “Oooh, OK. I need to do more of that!”
Cejudo: Oh, you see it. Their demeanor, their face shows it all. I’ve been in this game for a while, man. You can see in someone, and you can feel it.
Usman: Absolutely, because when you’re in a fight, you’re playing off the opponent. At that point, it becomes more mental than it is physical. Both of you guys are conditioned to be the best, so it’s being able to impose your will and see if your will is doing it, making it. It’s basically, you guys start out with this video game life. You’re chipping away — boop, boop, boop, boop, boop — and at first you don’t see the fatigue. You don’t see it. But then, once it gets down to the bottom, you start to see it go. It’s just trusting yourself and being able to read your opponent, to know that what you’re doing is actually making an impact.
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Cejudo: Think about the fight with Marlon (Moraes), dude. I knew those knees (were working). I knew those knees were what weakened him, like, what took the power away from him.
Zingano: There’s a noise to it too, when you land it, like, right on the button — and there’s kind of a connection that goes from your body to their body, like kinetically. So you know it. And it almost seems like it takes less effort to do it extremely properly. Like, the more work you have to put into it, the more slug you put into it, sometimes can take a toll on your endurance — especially if it didn’t land the way that you wanted it to, or if they were flexed. Because there’s a timing to it, where you have to catch people breathing out, or just right on the right spot where it’s just perfect.
Wittman: Oh yeah. When you hit someone to the body and they’re hard, meaning like they’re flexed, you can tell when their core is locked. But when you hit someone and they’re in between breaths, and it feels soft — even on a finely tuned athletic machine — you hit them and they’re soft, that’s the sweet spot. It’s soft, like hitting pillows. You’ll never hurt your hand on it.
Usman: That’s why I actually like hitting the body a lot more: You feel nothing. It’s soft. That’s what I like. I like the soft. Because the body’s softer than the head. I’ve hit a few guys in the head and hurt my hands, and it’s like, “Well, shoot, I’m not hitting their head anymore.” But when you hit that perfect body shot, it’s soft. It’s like a cushion, you just hit the pillow — boof! So it’s kinda one of those things that, delivering the perfect punch, you don’t feel that. It’s just — crack! — right there.
Evans: The hardest I’ve ever hit somebody in the body, man, would be Tito Ortiz, when I fought him in Philly. I dropped that knee on him — and I just kind of felt, like, my knee go to his spine.
Tito Ortiz was on the receiving end of Rashad Evans’ best-ever body shot, according to the 2019 UFC Hall of Famer. (Al Bello / Zuffa)Kattar: One thing I did notice, this past Thanksgiving, I was giving everybody body shots — I was putting everybody down, man. I made that a note to myself: Thanksgiving week, body shots only. I’m fucking tearing everybody up. They all eat too much.
Wittman: So I actually have a super funny story. So Verno Phillips, a former boxer I used to train, four-time world champion, was sparring Duane Ludwig, OK? Duane Ludwig had boxing shoes on with his Thai shorts and it was just classic. Like, he had some Thai shorts on in sparring with a world champion boxer, but he’s going. And Duane, when he boxed, he had this crazy pace. Verno was like, “Bro, I’ve got to do something to him, because he’s throwing all this heat out, he’s throwing so many combinations.” So Verno hits him to the body and drops him.
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Later on that afternoon — I’ve never seen it happen twice in one day — Nate Marquardt is sparring with Duane again. Duane came back in later in the afternoon and they’re doing MMA sparring, and Duane knees Nate Marquardt to the body — and he made the craziest noise. It was like this squeal, and it wouldn’t stop. Just like, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiii!” I actually thought he was, like, really injured. Like, we all jumped in there. But two times in the (same day) in the same part of the ring. And when I got up there, I was like, “You OK, brother?”
And he goes: “T,” — this is the thing — “I just realized that was me making that noise!” He’s like, “What’s that noise?! Oh, it was me.” So it made him squeal.
Adesanya: The hardest I’ve ever hit someone (in the body) was years ago, when I was younger, when I’d just started fighting. I was at a party. And you know when you’re at a party — fighters know, people want to kind of, like — “Oh, you’re a fighter?” — test you. And this guy did the whole night. “Hit me in the (body)! Come on, hit me!” And the whole night I was just like, “Nah, leave me alone.” And his girlfriend, same thing, just, “Don’t. Honey, stop.” And he wouldn’t for, like, about two hours. Kept on, like, “Arrrgghh, hit me!” And eventually I was like, all right, let’s go.
BOOM!
I hit him right there in the sternum — and he, urggg. And he fell down. And he passed out. He passed out, and I remember like, yelling, freaking out. Because I was about, maybe, 18 or 19? This is when I just started, 2008, and I was freaking out, like, “What the fuck?! Oh my God!” And the girls started freaking out, and you know his girlfriend — “Aaaaaaiiiieeeee!” — just adding fuel to the fire. It was getting crazy, and I’m panicking like, “Oh shit, is he hurt? Call the police, call 911, whatever!”
And, yeah — eventually he woke up after about two minutes, and then he chilled. But for me, it was traumatic. I was doing the, “I can’t, I can’t go to jail! I need to be able to travel! I need to!” I was already thinking I need to do these things, these things I’m doing now. But that’s probably the best body shot I’ve ever landed, right in the sternum. (Collapsed) and then passed out.
He was all right, I’m sure. He’s alive somewhere.
All quotes edited for clarity and concision.
(Top photo of Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier: Josh Hedges / Zuffa)
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