VANCOUVER — Sam (Hands of Stone) Stout earned his nickname by putting people to sleep with his fists.
In the Canadian’s first 16 fights as a pro, he won half of them by TKO or KO, many of the highlight-reel variety, while fighting primarily for the smaller Montreal-based TKO promotion.
So when the Muay Thai stud entered the UFC for the first time in 2006, and debuted with an epic split decision fight-of-the-year slugfest over Spencer Fisher, I’m sure he never thought he’d go five-plus years without registering a stoppage of any kind in the Octagon.
But that was the case. At least it was until Saturday night at UFC 131 in Vancouver, when Stout made short work of Yves Edwards with a stunning statement that easily earned him the $70,000 knockout of the night bonus and finally snapped his string of 10 straight UFC fights going the distance.
And even though five of those 10 were good enough to be deemed Fight of the Night, it was a big weight lifted off Stout’s shoulders to be celebrating a bonus of a different kind.
“I’ve been calling myself Hands of Stone and I haven’t knocked anyone out in the last five years, so I was starting to get a little worried about it,” Stout admitted. “So, yeah, it was definitely a big relief to get that knockout and it was a good feeling that I haven’t felt in a while and I think you can see from my celebration it got extended a little bit. I was jumping up and down and screaming for a while.
“It feels good to be knocking people out again and I hope to keep it going.”
And what a knockout it was. An overhand left hook that landed perfectly and Edwards was out cold. The boss was more than impressed.
“(It was) one of the best knockouts ever in UFC history,” president Dana White said following the post-fight press conference. “And definitely the most vicious.”
Stout said after the fight the plan he developed with his coach Shawn Tompkins worked to a tee.
“(Edwards) stood with his lead foot a little bit forward and kept his hands down and bounced it up and down, so we knew we were going to have to come up and over to find that chin,” Stout explained. “The proof’s in the pudding. Just watch the tape.”
Stout’s last professional knockout actually came in September 2007 with TKO Championship Fighting — after he had already joined the UFC but was permitted to fight in outside promotions. I was in attendance for that bout against local favourite Martin Grandmont at the Bell Centre in Montreal and the way I recall that fight, it was a carbon copy.
Well, almost. It was an overhand right that did in Grandmont in that lightweight title bout at TKO 30. In both cases the one connection sent his opponent plummeting and hitting the mat hard, yet in the Grandmont fight he couldn’t tell if he was out so he had to move in to finish him off.
But Grandmont was sent to la-la land by the one punch, just as Edwards was. And just like in that bout nearly four years ago it came at a point in the fight where Stout was not at all dominating. Grandmont was definitely getting the better of the striking over Stout. And make no mistake, in Saturday’s fight, Edwards was more than holding his own. In fact, the early statistics were in Edwards’ favour.
According to FightMetric, Edwards landed more strikes overall (23-13) and had a much better significant strike percentage (44 per cent vs. 24 per cent) and he also had a takedown.
But one punch changed everything. That’s what you get with Hands of Stone.
Or at least, what the UFC thought they were getting when they signed him. It was just a matter of time before he proved them right.
NOTES: As fantastic as Stout’s display of power in his punch was, just as impressive was his choice not to move in for an extra punch while Edwards lay on the ground and the ref had not yet come in to stop it. He easily could have, but he explained how that would have been utterly unnecessary.
“I saw him and he folded right up and went down and hit the back of his head pretty hard. I had my eyes right on his eyes and I saw them roll back so I wasn’t going to go in and do any more damage than was necessary. This is just a sport to me.”
That falls right in line with the anti-bullying initiative that he and Tompkins as well as Mark Hominick and Chris Horodecki have started.
“It’s something we feel really strongly about because I think there’s still a lot of bad stigma attached to the sport and to go out and show that we’re not a bunch of thugs or people who are abusive or malicious people,” Stout said. “It’s our responsibility as guys who are in the spotlight fighting to show that fighting is a sport to us and it’s not something that we do anywhere else other than inside that cage.”
— It should also be noted that Stout has never been knocked out himself. Nevermind just in the UFC, not ever. He could just as easily be called “Chin of Stone.”
