Shane Burgos Reflects On Bizarre KO Loss To Edson Barboza: It All Slowly Shut Off

Involved in arguably the Fight of the Year so far at UFC 262 in Houston, Texas earlier this month — Shane Burgos has reflected on his truly bizarre loss to featherweight striker, Edson Barboza — where he suffered a really peculiar third round knockout defeat. 

Opening the main card for UFC 262 at the Toyota Centre, Burgos who was sitting at #9 in the official featherweight pile, drew veteran Muay Thai ace, Barboza, and alongside the Brazilian, turned in a Fight of the Night performance over the course of three rounds, prior to his early final frame knockout defeat.

Trading leather and a vast number of leg kicks with the Nova Firburgo native over the course of the fight, Burgos was clipped with a massive, whipping overhand right from Barboza within the opening minute of the third round, which resulted in a dip at most. Burgos began plodding forward with his hands up, however, he began to slump into his stance and then took numerous stumbling steps back toward the Octagon fence, before falling to the canvas, unconscious. 

Reflecting on the stunning knockout defeat, Burgos featured on What The Heck with MMA Fighting reporter, Mike Heck — where he broke down the defeat to Barboza, and described what it felt like to be one the receiving end of a stoppage like that.

“The weirdest part is I remember everything which is something everyone is surprised about,” Burgos said. “I don’t have any loss of memory when it comes to that. So we’re fighting, I threw the jab, I bring it back to my head and he (Edson Barboza) threw a f*cking fast overhand right, and I didn’t even see it. It was like, boom, hit me and I was like (still moving around) but I thought, this is weird. It felt like my vision was slowly coming to a tunnel vision, my legs were getting slowly turned off. It was like somebody turning the volume down on the power button on my legs. I was bouncing and dipping down, and when I was dipping down I was trying to come back up fully, and I was slowly getting lower. I’m like, I can’t stand the f*ck up, what the f*ck is going on?“

“So my mind was all there, my body just wasn’t,” Burgos continued. “My legs just completely… it was slowly and then (snap) just off and I fell back into the cage. That was it. When he threw the punch, it was just so fast and I thought he just hit me with something and I was like, all right. Then it slowly just all shut off. It was weird. I saw some doctor did a review — I didn’t watch it — but I heard they were attributing it to my conditioning and to my cardio, and I guess that’s a compliment. But it sucks.“

Burgos recounts waking up to the referee standing over him and how he was in disbelief in regards to the stoppage.

“Literally, as soon as the fight ended, as soon as the referee stopped the fight (my legs started coming back) — and I definitely was out (unconscious) for a second, I remember waking up being like, ‘what the f*ck’ — I looked up at the ref and was like, you’ve got to be f*cking kidding me,” Burgos said. “I knew the fight was over and that he caught me with something. I remember laughing in the moment because I was in complete disbelief where I really felt like it was going my way. Like, are you kidding me? It was just a weird feeling, it really was.” (H/T MMA Fighting)