It’s a lot easier—for me, anyway—to follow team sports than it is to follow an individual sport like MMA. Even if you can’t name the backup right guard for, say, the New Orleans Saints, you can still root for them without much of a problem. The guys in gold are good, the other guys are bad, yay for Drew Brees and that’s that.
There’s more to being an MMA fan. It’s not as easy as picking one favorite and stopping. You can’t just click over to your favorite guy and then chillax, as that one favorite is probably only going to fight four times a year tops. Plus, the fight cards are selected for you; it’s not a full or near-full menu every time. And that’s to say nothing of weight classes or the guys who fight on free events versus the guys you have to pay to see. You get the idea.
So if you really want to know what’s going on in the world of MMA during any given event, you pretty much have to know who everyone is. That’s why I find that the average MMA fan is far more likely to know who the No. 10 featherweight contender is than the average football fan is to know who the starting receivers are on any roster outside their home team’s division. Not to say one is more knowledgeable than the other; I’m a member of both camps, after all. It’s just different.
That said, there are still some guys who fall through the cracks, even among devoted fans. Whether it’s because they’re in a smaller promotion, lack charisma or simply don’t get the high-profile fights they seem to deserve on paper, these are the 15 most overlooked fighters in the sport today.