The headlines of the day usually force MMA media to emphasize the bad actors of the sport.
So what a breath of fresh air it is, then, when coverage can turn to MMA’s good guys. These humble, respectful, charitable men and women don’t get nearly the attention for being good that the bad apples get for being bad. As a result, some people forget that the positive people roundly outnumber the negative.
In some small way, this slideshow will attempt to identify and acknowledge the real good guys of MMA (“guys” in this case being used in a gender-neutral context). These are the 10 genuine good guys, listed in no particular order. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick to active UFC fighters only.
And lest you think that good guys can’t finish first in a fight, note the records contained herein. Some of the best fighters in the world today are good guys.
So what makes a fighter particularly “good”? Admittedly, a large part of it is based on public comments and persona, which skews it toward the more famous end of the spectrum and perhaps provides an incomplete sample size. But that’s OK in my book. If you’re only a good person behind closed doors and not in public, then how good, really, are you? Not to mention that until we all know every fighter personally, it’s pretty much going to have to be this way.
The flip side to that coin is for those who “say all the right things” but don’t exactly reek of authenticity. Smiling for the cameras is all well and good, but if there’s the sense you only mean it when the cameras are rolling, well, that’s not going to get it done. We did our best to disqualify those types from this list.