Randy Couture vs. Lyoto Machida
Randy Couture fended off retirement until he was 47-years-old when a brutal knockout loss to Lyoto Machida at UFC 129 left him in no doubt that it was time to hang up his gloves for good.
It wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill KO either, with Machida perfectly timing a Karate Kid style Crane Kick early in the second round that sent his foot crashing into Couture’s face to render him unconscious.
The full extent of the damage didn’t become clear until Dana White came into the Octagon after the fight was over to check and see if ‘The Natural’ was ok.
Couture was just in the middle of telling White that he’d been hit in the tooth when it suddenly fell out of his mouth.
“I said ‘That’s all right, we’ll get a new one, a better one than that when we get back to Vegas,” White recalled telling Couture at the time.
Couture would spend five-and-a-half hours in the dentist chair having the damage temporarily fixed before getting a bridge put in a week later.
