Conor McGregor ends fastest title fight in UFC with KO of Jose Aldo

Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor will finally do battle on Saturday night in Las Vegas. Follow all the action with this live blog.

By Eye on Sports staff

Dec 12, 2015 at 9:15 pm ET • 3 min read

It’s official. Mike Tyson’s got nothing on Conor McGregor.

Not only did the Irishman top “Iron Mike” in terms of pre-fight trash talk, but he delivered even quicker once hostilities began on Saturday night, erasing Jose Aldo in just 13 seconds to win the UFC’s featherweight championship atop a long-awaited pay-per-view show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

“Nobody can take that left-hand shot,” a jubilant new champion said, after dropping the Brazilian with a perfectly timed shot, which he quickly followed with two hammer fists that ended matters.

“(Aldo’s) powerful and he’s fast, but precision beats power and timing beats speed,” McGregor said. “He was a phenomenal champion, and he deserved to go a little bit longer, but it would have happened sooner or later.”

* Tough-talking Luke Rockhold became the new middleweight champion with a surprising fourth-round stoppage of incumbent Chris Weidman, getting the win at 3:12.

“This is indescribable,” said Rockhold, who’d claimed before the fight that Weidman had built his reputation fighting “old, flat-footed Brazilians.”

“I can even believe this is real. I got the belt. I got the W.”

The two men exchanged bursts of control in the first two rounds before a defining moment in the third, when Weidman missed a wheel kick and was quickly taken down by the challenger. Rockhold established full mount soon after and bludgeoned Weidman for the last half of the round, leaving his face a bloodied mess as he stumbled back to his corner.

He never fully recovered into the fourth and was quickly thrown to the ground like a ragdoll before another onslaught of punches and elbows forced referee Herb Dean to pull the plug.

“It was Luke’s night,” said Weidman, who lost for the first time after 13 straight wins. “He caught me (after the wheel kick) and broke me down with it. It probably wasn’t the smartest move.”

Rockhold is now 15-2.

* Cuban-born Yoel Romero scored a crashing knockdown with a spinning right-handed fist early, the survived a late charge from Jacare Souza and escaped with a split decision in their three-rounder.

Romero, who entered as the No. 3 contender at middleweight, earned nods of 29-27 and 29-28 on two scorecards, while his Brazilian foe, ranked second, got a 29-28 win on the other. Souza was wobbly heading back to his corner after the first, but recovered well and had Romero on his back for much of the final five minutes.

* Brazilian jiu-jitsu master Demian Maia put Gunnar Nelson through a three-round sausage grinder on the way to a brutal unanimous decision at welterweight, getting scores of 30-26, 30-25 and 30-25.

Maia switched from riding Nelson’s back to a full frontal mount across 15 minutes, but never stopped the barrage of fists and elbows while beating his foe’s face to a bloody pulp. The most one-sided stat line of the night included a preposterous striking edge of 218-6.

* One of McGregor’s former foes, Max Holloway, earned a seventh straight win with a unanimous decision over featherweight Jeremy Stephens – earning two scorecard nods of 30-27 and one of 29-28.

The younger, lankier man stayed away from Stephens, 29, and avoided the burlier man’s takedown attempts through the first two rounds, then scored one of his own in the third and controlled action on the mat for two minutes. Upon rising, he eluded harm in the final 60 seconds to seal the victory.

* The pre-PPV preliminary card included Leonardo Santos’ first-round lightweight stoppage of Kevin Lee, Warlley Alves submitting Colby Covington in the first round at middleweight, Tecia Torres beating Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger via three-round decision in a women’s strawweight bout and Urijah Faber winning a three-round decision over Frankie Saenz at bantamweight.

* Winners on the early preliminary portion were Court McGee with a three-round welterweight decision over Marcio Alexandre, Yancy Medeiros with a three-round lightweight decision over John Makdessi and Magomed Mustafaev with a first-round lightweight TKO over Joe Proctor.