Daniel Cormier got Jon Jones rematch when he slammed Alexander Gustafsson face-first 45 seconds into fight of the year

On October 3, 2015, Daniel Cormier went all-out with Alexander Gustafsson in a five-round brawl.

The bout was so action-packed from start to finish that many UFC fans claimed it was the fight of 2015.

Many people expected the light-heavyweight champ to power straight through Sweden’s Gustafsson, but the latter had other ideas.

Going into the fight, ‘The Mauler’ was eight years the junior to Cormier and had a six inch height advantage over the future UFC Hall of Famer.

That is probably why, 45 seconds into the fight, ‘DC’ picked Gustafsson off the ground, flipped him over and slammed him straight into the canvas.

Luckily for the Swede, it was his lower back that took most of the impact, having almost gone a full 180 degrees by the time he hit the deck. 

But Gustafsson did well to get right back into the fight, landing leg kicks and nearly turning the champion’s lights out with a devastating uppercut heading into round two.

The challenger started to find his rhythm as the fight went on, using his six-and-a-half inch reach advantage to connect multiple jabs, which cut ‘DC’ open.

Gustafsson even landed an unexpected takedown at one point and threw numerous dangerous knees, which Cormier capitalised on by transitioning into the clinch.

Both men continued to break each other down, but with less than one minute to go, you wondered how ‘DC’ survived a devastating knee to the head that sent him crashing to the floor.

Gustafsson went for the finish but was unsuccessful, much to the Texas crowd’s amusement.

Both men looked out on their feet as the fight came to a conclusion, and they continued to throw all sorts of combinations to try and finish one another.