Underrated is a slippery, and surprisingly charged, term in MMA.
If a fighter is deemed to be underrated, does that mean we are discussing those whose careers are better than their records indicate? Or does it apply to a great fighter who is relatively unheralded? If it’s the latter, who is doing the heralding: hardcore MMA fans, casual MMA fans or the general public?
This is the Gordian knot one must unravel before ranking the most underrated mixed martial artists in the history of recorded time.
Never being much of knot untier, I ultimately took the easy way out and tried to blend all of the above criteria. Fighters who were, and are, better in real life than they might appear on paper or in the media, fighters who sometimes get overlooked during barstool arguments among serious fans, and fighters who are not known at all by the public—but should be.