On Wednesday night, the World MMA Awards took place, which look to honor the best in MMA from the past year.
Fighter of the year, of course, is one of the biggest honors of the night. The five nominees were Dominick Cruz, Nick Diaz, Dan Henderson, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones.
The awards are from September 2010 to September 2011, otherwise Donald Cerrone would likely have been a nominee as well.
Dominick Cruz became the UFC bantamweight champion at WEC 53 when he defeated Scott Jorgensen by unanimous decision. He then defended his title in a fight of the year nominee at UFC 132 against Urijah Faber.
Nick Diaz had three fights, beating KJ Noons and avenging an earlier career loss, submitting Evangelista Santos and defeating Paul Daley via TKO in one of the most entertaining rounds of the year.
Dan Henderson had four fights and went 3-1 with three (T)KO finishes. First, he knocked out Babalu Sobral in brutal fashion. He then won the Strikeforce light heavyweight title by knocking out Rafael Cavalcante, before venturing up to heavyweight and knocking out Fedor Emelianenko.
Anderson Silva had two fights, and two knockouts, both of which were very impressive. First, he knocked out Vitor Belfort with a front kick at UFC 126, and then he knocked out Yushin Okami at UFC 134 after twice dropping him with a jap.
However, far and away, Jon Jones had the best year of any of them.
Jones first submitted Ryan Bader at UFC 126, and it was right then and there that he was told he would fight Shogun Rua for the light heavyweight title in a mere six weeks.
He then TKO’d Shogun in the third round to win the title and become the youngest champion in UFC history.
He followed that up with a fourth-round submission over Rampage Jackson to became the first person to finish Rampage inside the Octagon.
Jones will look to finish out the calendar year strongly when he fights Lyoto Machida at UFC 140.
Tim McTiernan is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. For the latest news on everything MMA, follow me on twitter @tmt2393.
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