Put it near the top of the list. Andre Fili's head kick on Kai Kamaka III at UFC Vegas 122 was clean and brutal, thrown with real intent, and the people calling it a knockout of the year contender are right to, at least as the voting looks on a fresh October morning with the year not yet finished.
Start with what made it good, because the kick itself is only the last frame. Fili spent the first round jabbing and switching stances constantly, never letting Kamaka plant his feet or read a rhythm. That's the unglamorous part everyone forgets by the time the GIF hits their timeline. He got right back to it early in the second round, landing a left hook that stunned Kamaka, resetting, and pouring a two-punch combination into a head kick that landed flush at 0:22. Kamaka froze on contact and dropped backward, out before he hit the floor. The UFC handed Fili a Performance of the Night bonus for it, and that was the easiest $100,000 the matchmakers signed off on all night.
Now the part the internet has latched onto. Fili sprinted in to follow Kamaka down, looked a half-step from a flying finish, and pulled his right hand back when it was obvious the man was already gone. Cub Swanson called it classy. Terrance McKinney called it good restraint. It's a decent gesture and worth a nod.
It's also being oversold. Pulling a punch off an unconscious opponent is what the job asks of everybody, and most fighters manage it without a round of applause. Praising Fili for not committing an ugly foul turns the bar into a trophy. The restraint is nice, but it's not why this knockout is going to get talked about into December. That's going to be the kick, the setup, and the fact that a 36-year-old who'd lost two straight walked in and produced what might be the finest finish of his 13-year UFC career.
It was Fili's first finish since December 2023, and it snapped a two-fight skid at the exact moment veterans his age usually start getting quietly phased out of the room. He told Michael Bisping afterward that it came together once he settled in and found his flow, a modest way of describing a sequence that ended a man's night in a heartbeat. Kamaka, for his part, has now been knocked out in back-to-back fights, and there's nothing to spin there.
Brendan Allen's fifth-round submission of Christian Leroy Duncan was the official headliner, but nobody's going to remember it from this card. Fili's kick is the signature moment, and it earned that billing honestly.
Keep the restraint as a footnote and give the credit to the right thing. The best head kick of 2026 so far belongs to a fighter the sport had started to write off.
