Juan Diaz’s wild, spinning-elbow KO in the final episode of this year’s Dana White Contender Series was no strike of luck.
Turns out it was something that was years in the making, and was motivated to come out by some recent, similar viral KOs. Diaz, who earned a contract with the UFC by stopping former ONE Championship title contender Won II Kwon last Tuesday, had long been training spinning elbows. After seeing Lerone Murphy, Diego Lopes, Sergio Pettis, and Carlos Prates shock the world with highlight knockouts using the technique, he became motivated to land one of his own.
“It was a sign,” Diaz told Hablemos MMA in Spanish. “I actually told my coach Eric Del Fierro, I would send him the videos like, ‘Coach, there are a lot of spinning elbows happening. It’s a sign. It’s a sign. It’s going to happen. I need to find the moment.’ He said, ‘Oh, sh*t. It’s true. Go find the opening and go.'”
Although it seems spinning elbows are a thing of 2025, Diaz has long been training this technique since his early days in MMA. However, he had been unable to land the shot in his previous fights. After watching the recent spinning elbow KOs, Diaz was reassured that it was a viable technique he, too, could pull off.
“To be honest with you, it is something I practiced in the sparring and training at the UFC PI in Mexico, and even in the warm-up before fighting,” Diaz said. “If you look at the promo video for Dana White Contender Series, I finished warming up with that elbow. So yeah, it’s something that I’ve been doing for a while, but I just wasn’t able to pull it off in my previous fights, and this was the moment things opened up for me.”
Diaz is now one of several fighters who have scored big with the spinning elbow. However, not all are created equal. He revealed that his favorites out of the bunch so far are Lopes’ stoppage win over Jean Silva and Murphy’s finish of Aaron Pico.
“Honestly, the two that inspired me were Diego Lopes’ and Murphy’s,” Diaz said. “Those two I really liked. Obviously, Prates had a good one along with the other ones, but those two that I mentioned inspired me a lot.”