There are plenty of MMA hotbeds around the world. Eastern Europe is not one of them. And that’s just strange.
The region has plenty of boxing and kickboxing pedigree, but a lack of grappling tradition appears to slow them down when it comes to cagefighting.
It’s confounding, especially when the talent that does emerge tends to perform pretty well on MMA’s bigger stages (see a one Mr. Cro Cop, for example). Making the region that much more tantalizing is the unbridled domination experienced by Eastern Europe’s sambo-practicing neighbor to the East, a one Mother Russia.
In any event, here are the 10 best Eastern-European pro fighters working today, in the UFC and anywhere else.
Definitions vary on what countries, exactly, comprise Eastern Europe. For our definition today, we’ll include Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.
Though Russia is included in many definitions, we won’t include it here, mainly because it is very much its own entity from an MMA perspective and could easily comprise its own list.
The list also doesn’t include fighters who are of Eastern-European descent, but were born and/or grew up somewhere else.
But the main point, again, is that Russian fighters are not included. Russian fighters are not included here. Got it? We good? You sure? Great. So sit back, relax and get your consonants ready.