Bellator’s A.J. McKee Shares Story Behind 8-Second KO Loss As An Amateur

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A.J. McKee’s professional mixed martial arts record is a pristine 16-0. His amateur ledger is similarly impressive — with one glaring exception.

According to Sherdog.com records, the Bellator MMA featherweight star owns a 7-1 amateur mark, and that one blemish is especially noteworthy because it came not via controversial split-decision, but by eight-second knockout at the hands of an unheralded fighter named Christian Espinosa.

It’s a setback McKee remembers well. The event took place on June 8, 2013 under the Knockout Promotions banner at the Petaluma Veterans Memorial Hall in Petaluma, California. “The Mercenary” was basically flying solo that day.

“My entire team was actually scheduled to roll up north and fight. All of my teammates pulled out,” said McKee, who was 18 years old at the time. “I signed that dotted line, I’m gonna show up and fight…I took the ACT and SAT test in the morning and then I went to the weigh-ins….I drove up there. I had some random guy warming me up who had never held mitts for a southpaw.”

Things only went downhill from there. Anyone in attendance that day who never saw McKee in action again might be hard-pressed to believe that he is currently one of the sport’s top young 145-pound talents. “The Mercenary” recalls explicitly ignoring the instructions of his father, 38-fight veteran Antonio McKee.

“One thing my dad told me was, ‘Don’t go out there and throw a lead-leg head kick.’ So of course the one thing A.J. sees is a lead leg head kick,” he recalled. “I go out there and I throw a switch kick and I spun around, and as I spun around, the right hand came over the top, hit me on the temple.

“Everything went black. I sat down, I got hit again. I could still hear everything going on. I just saw four legs in front of me and I’m like, ‘Grab the two in the middle.’ I had one of his legs, one of the ref’s and the ref was already stepping in. That was the fight.”

McKee did everything in his power to run it back with Espinosa, but it was to no avail.

“I tried to pay him as an amateur to fight me. I wanted that fight so bad,” McKee said. “Still to this day, if he were to take that fight…man. The chip on his shoulder like ‘Yo, I knocked out A.J. McKee.’ That’s more power to him. He’s gonna take that one and run with it for the rest of his life, for sure.”

That victory didn’t propel Espinosa to great things. The 29-year-old known as “The Silent Assassin” went on to a 3-4 professional stint that notably included two bouts in World Series of Fighting. He hasn’t fought since 2018.

McKee, who was supposed to face Darrion Caldwell in the semifinals of Bellator’s featherweight grand prix in June before the coronavirus pandemic hit, says it’s the only MMA bout he’s ever lost — and that includes undocumented fights.

“Even before amateur, we used to go to gyms and we’d do gym vs. gym. That’s literally the one fight I’ve lost in mixed martial arts my entire life,” McKee said. “I learned a lot from it. There’s a lot of things being 17, 18, just living wild, doing certain things. That’s just life. You’ve got to take the things you learn from the trials and tribulations and make sure you don’t fall victim to those same things. I took it, I lived it and I learned.”