This past November the UFC celebrated the 24th anniversary of UFC 1: The Beginning, a modest competition that entertained 7,800 fans in a since destroyed Denver arena with a capacity far larger than that. The event, which was broadcast on pay-per-view (duh) and later shipped in a now obsolete technology called "home video," had but two freaking rules for participants to abide by: 1.) No biting and 2.) No eye gouging.
Everything else was fair game, and the eight-person tourney was eventually won by Royce Gracie after he applied a rear naked chokehold to Gerard Gordeau in a final that took less than two minutes to wrap up.
Since then the sport has blown up, and though it's long since been legitimized as something much more technical and skill-oriented than pure brute thuggery (which is why it's legit, and not a burned out novelty) that is still very much a guilty pleasure of watching MMA fights. Today we celebrate that brutality (because why not?) by providing rankings to you that could potentially age as poorly as cheering on helmet-to-helmet hits (also because why not?) This rundown of painful submissions, TKOs and busted eye sockets undoubtedly helped the UFC establish the massive global audience it's attained in an extremely abbreviated amount of time (seriously, it's not like 1993 is the damn Stone Age or something).
Now I, personally, would not worry too much about the exact order of the rankings. Instead it should simply be taken as an honor to have made the list at all. So whether you were the winner/loser, the puncher/punchee, or the kicker/kick face-ee, your blood, sweat, torn ACLs, broken bones and fingers that now bend the wrong way were not in vain. I repeat not in vain. Here are The 50 Most Brutal MMA Knockouts Ever.