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Make your pick for the 2019’s best fighter in Bloody Elbow’s Year-End Awards.
It’s back!
Over the next few days, Bloody Elbow is going to ask for your opinion on some of the best things that have happened in the MMA world over the course of 2019. There will be a total of eight different categories you’ll be asked to vote on. For the sake of simplicity we’re going to stick with high-level and relevant MMA stuff in these posts. While I’m sure there was a ludicrous knockout in an unscheduled MMA event at The Lumberyard strip club in Des Moines, or an insane pancreas lock submission on an obscure ZST! card in Japan, let’s just stick to stuff a lot of us have seen, okay? (If that spiel looked familiar, it’s because I’ve used the same one for nine years in a row. Originality? What originality? Also, is ZST! even a thing any more?)
It’s pretty simple. I’ll post 5-10 options in a category, you vote for what you think was the best. If you think I left something really important off my list, post it in the comments and we can add it to the poll if it’s deemed worthy. I can almost guarantee you won’t like all my suggestions, but narrowing down these lists is tough.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get onto the fifth poll – the best fighter of 2019. Many combatants had the best years of their career in 2019, and a select few won titles as well. This is always a tough category to narrow down nominees from, but here’s what I came up with.
Before that though, if you haven’t yet, go back and vote on the first four categories – Best Submission, Biggest Upset, Newcomer of the Year, and Event of the Year.
Patricio Freire – He won the Bellator featherweight title back by stopping Michael Chandler earlier in the year, then defended it by beating Juan Archuleta.
Jorge Masvidal – He started the year by knocking out Darren Till. Then the epic five-second flying knee KO of Ben Askren. He capped it off by beating Nate Diaz to claim the BMF belt.
Kayla Harrison – 4 wins, no losses, and a million dollars in her pocket. Not a bad year.
Henry Cejudo – He started with a 32-second KO of T.J. Dillashaw. He followed it up by becoming a champ champ with a win over Marlon Moraes. And came up with some silly nicknames for himself.
Ali Isayev – The heavyweight prospect went 5-0 in 2019, including two wins in one night. He won the PFL heavyweight tournament by stopping former UFC fighter Jared Rosholt.
Israel Adesanya – A win over legend Anderson Silva kicked off his 2019, then he went to war in one of the fights of the year with Kelvin Gastelum. That earned him an interim middleweight title, and a TKO win over Robert Whittaker made him the undisputed 185-pound kingpin.
Amanda Nunes – Two fights, two wins over Holly Holm and Raquel Pennington. Still the champ champ.
Kamaru Usman – He completely shut down longtime champ Tyron Woodley and took his title. Then he broke Colby Covington’s jaw and defended said belt.
Douglas Lima – Everyone remembers his KO of the year candidate when he melted Michael Page. He topped that by dominating Rory MacDonald to win the Bellator welterweight grand prix, and the title.
Jairzinho Rozenstruik – Four UFC wins on the year, including a super late stoppage of Alistair Overeem.