"I thaw the fear in his eyes and I knew it'd be a first round knockout."
Thus is how one of the all-time great beatdowns in sports history was succinctly summarized by the man who administered it. Mike Tyson's 91-second demolition of Michael Spinks pretty much established a new gold standard for the boxing beatdown, a fight so one-sided it became the defining moment -- for better and for worse -- of both men's careers.
In honor of the Best Damn Sports Show Period's Top 50 Beatdowns, which airs Friday night at 10:30, I've compiled my own Top 10. While Best Damn is focusing exclusively on the sports where beatdowns are inevitable -- boxing, Ultimate Fighting, Pride Fighting, -- I've thrown in some of my personal favorites, those delightfully unexpected beatdowns, the ones where one second you're watching a baseball game and the next a guy is being helped off the field with a bloody face. You know, the ones where everyone pretends to be horrified but insists on watching the video 100 times.