An American fighter just destroyed his UFC opponent with elbow strikes so brutal you'll recoil in horror watching them at home

• Calvin Kattar used his elbow tip in brutal fashion to end his featherweight fight with Jeremy Stephens.
• Kattar and Stephens were competing at the behind-closed-doors UFC 249 event in Florida on Saturday.
• After his second-round knockout win, Kattar said he hopes to climb into the top five of the UFC's featherweight rankings.
• Watch the savage knockout below.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

An American fighter destroyed his UFC opponent with elbow strikes so brutal you'll recoil in horror watching them at home.

The Massachusetts featherweight Calvin Kattar, 32, rebounded from his decision loss to Zabit Magomedsharipov in November, 2019, with a walloping TKO win at UFC 249 in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday.

The fight, at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, was behind-closed-doors because of the coronavirus pandemic, but unfazed by the vacuum of noise, Kattar finished Jeremy Stephens with a highlight-reel step-in elbow before fight-ending ground-and-pound.

With blood on his fingertips, Kattar celebrated in front of a camera lens while Stephens appeared dazed and defeated on the canvas.

On Stephens, the UFC commentator Joe Rogan could be heard saying, "he's struggling to even get it together" as he bled all over himself.

Watch the stoppage right here:

Or here if you're in a different region:

Ranked the ninth-best featherweight in the UFC ahead of Saturday's show, Kattar hoped the victory would propel him further up the world rankings.

"Hopefully, I climb up to that top five … I'd like a shot at an Ultimate Fighter or someone big," Kattar said after the fight.

"I feel like I let one go with Zabit in Russia, I just feel like I ran out of time and I wasn't going to let that happen here.

"My coach told me to let it go and I felt like did that tonight," he said. "It was adding up out there, it takes me a couple of hits to get going out there, I wish that wasn't the case, but it is. Once I started finding my range, I capitalized on a big shot.

"I looked down, he was facing up, and I finished the job."

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