VIDEO: When Conor McGregor Knocked Out Mike Wood in 16 Seconds

It was long before the Conor McGregor of today. It was only his eighth professional fight and very few knew about him when he knocked Mike Wood out in 16 seconds in 2011.

It was, in fact, not the original fight.

McGregor was to fight against Greg Loughan in the Cage Contender VIII. But Loughan skipped the event due to an injury. This meant the organizers had to look for a new opponent for McGregor at very short notice.

Two days prior to the event, UFC approached Wood to replace Loughan in the fight. He agreed to face MacGregor for the fight.

“I took it on such short notice that I couldn’t really do any homework on him,” Wood recalled about the incident in a 2014 interview with SevereMMA.

“I had been told he was a good striker. Although I’m more of a grappler, I thought it would be a good chance for me to see if I could hang in on the feet with this guy. I really had no idea how talented Conor was.”

And once inside the cage, a few left hands from McGregor knocked Wood out in just 16 seconds. Wood joked that he could remember only 14 out of the 16 seconds in the match.

Conor McGregor knocking out Mike Wood

“I think I was backed up against the cage. After that and he was just teeing off on me with left hands. I tried to go for the takedown and he sprawled, he has an amazing sprawl. The last thing I remember was getting cracked with left hands again”, he said.

Wood later acknowledged McGregor as a ‘nice guy‘.

The world now knows Conor McGregor as a champion Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter. He has been in the field for 11 years now. He has won winning 21 out of 25 bouts so far, with 18 out of those wins coming off knockouts.