You can’t just line up every MMA fighter on the ocean boardwalk, let them hit the Punch-O-Meter a couple of times and then tabulate the results. Well, you could, but the scheduling would be a killer.
Absent that, ranking the sport’s hardest hitters will always be an inexact science. Luckily for all involved, then, that I’m not a scientist.
But in compiling this list of the 25 heaviest pairs of fists in the game, I didn’t just throw darts at a wiki page or make presumptions based on conventional wisdom, either. I’ve based this list on a fighter’s overall wins and percentage of wins by striking-related stoppage—KO, TKO, submission due to strikes or an injury stoppage related to strikes.
That’s more comprehensive than just KO and TKO. For convenience, I’ll collectively call these SRS.
Since this is a list of hardest hitters, punching power takes precedence. Additionally, fighters can receive extra credit for experience, number of true knockouts and quality of opposition. They can also lose points for lacking such.
Finally, there’s the undeniable human element. If a guy has the “wow” factor in his punches, that’s a plus in the equation.