What’s in a nickname?
There are thousands of mixed martial artists competing today, and a large portion of them have earned a handle that fits their style, personality or sometimes even their resemblance to a movie character (e.g. Rich “Ace” Franklin).
Some nicknames are blatantly obvious. Take the Nogueira brothers, twins that fight in different weight classes: The heavyweight Antonio Rodrigo is commonly referred to as “Big Nog,” while light heavyweight Antonio Rogerio is “Lil Nog.”
Or how about former Croatian Police Officer Mirko Filipovic? It didn’t take much thought to come up with “Cro Cop.”
Other monikers may just fit the fighter. When lightweight Donald Cerrone enters a room wearing cowboy boots and his cowboy hat, would you call him anything but “Cowboy”?
Based on where he grew up and coupled with his laid back attitude and long hair, what else would you call “The California Kid” Urijah Faber?
Or take former Marine Brian Stann, is there a more fitting alias than “All American?”
Now, at the same time, there are plenty of just bizarre and bad nicknames. If you want to dive into that, check out “The King of Rock N Rumble” or “The Hillbilly Heartthrob.”
Let’s take a look at 10 fighters that have been given nicknames befitting of their action inside the cage.
Rob Tatum is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report MMA. You can also find Rob’s work at TheMMACorner.com. For anything related to MMA, you can follow Rob on Twitter @RobTatumMMA.