Tag: Rankings/List

The 10 Best Entrance Songs in the UFC Right Now

Is there anything in MMA more important than the entrance song? I can’t think of anything.
Search your feelings. You know this to be true. We can talk all day about wrestling and striking and facial hair, but when it comes down to brass tacks, entrance…

Is there anything in MMA more important than the entrance song? I can’t think of anything.

Search your feelings. You know this to be true. We can talk all day about wrestling and striking and facial hair, but when it comes down to brass tacks, entrance songs are the true essence of this sport.

At the very least, everyone can agree that the entrance song’s role in warming up the crowd and providing some small window into an athlete’s personality can make it significant. Entrance songs function a little like day-before weigh-ins: If everything goes according to plan, the main purpose is really just to appetize the faithful for the entree to follow.

And who doesn’t love appetizers? No one. People make meals out of appetizers all the time. Who among us can say that appetizers are unimportant? You see how this all comes full circle? 

Come along with me now and let us make a meal out of appetizers. Let us rank the 10 best entrance songs in the UFC right now. For the song to be eligible, an active UFC fighter has to have used the song at least once. It doesn’t matter how accomplished said fighter is, but higher-profile fighters are obviously more likely to have well-known entrance songs people. Songs are ranked based on their meaning to the fighters, as well as, you know, how good the songs are. Originality is a big plus.

In other words, this ranking is entirely objective. Please take your complaints elsewhere.

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The Beaten Path: MMA’s Top 10 Rising Stars

Mixed martial arts is a sport in a constant state of turnover. Fighters rise from obscurity, reach their peak and then fall off precipitously.
It’s also a star-driven sport. No matter how invested fans might be in the UFC or Bellator brands, they reall…

Mixed martial arts is a sport in a constant state of turnover. Fighters rise from obscurity, reach their peak and then fall off precipitously.

It’s also a star-driven sport. No matter how invested fans might be in the UFC or Bellator brands, they really tune in to see fighters they know and care about. If 2015’s pay-per-view rebound for the UFC proved anything, it’s that: Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor sold to the public. Stardom is a real thing, and it matters.

As McGregor and Rousey rose to prominence, older stars have faded. Georges St-Pierre has retired, and Anderson Silva is long past his prime. 

A new generation of young and exciting fighters is on the way to the top, though. In this piece, we’ll take a look at the 10 most promising up-and-comers. The only criterion is that the fighter in question cannot have headlined a pay-per-view show.

Let’s dive in.

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Bleacher Report MMA Rankings for March 2016

Another month of MMA, another big shakeup in the Bleacher Report rankings.
The combat sports world stopped in its tracks for UFC 196 and rightly so. Newly minted champions Conor McGregor and Holly Holm both suffered tough losses to Nate Diaz and M…

Another month of MMA, another big shakeup in the Bleacher Report rankings.

The combat sports world stopped in its tracks for UFC 196 and rightly so. Newly minted champions Conor McGregor and Holly Holm both suffered tough losses to Nate Diaz and Miesha Tate, respectively. It wasn’t just the tip-top of the rankings getting shaken up, either.

Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva returned to the middleweight Top 10 following a year-long layoff due to a drug-test failure. Stephen Thompson turned the welterweight division upside down with his knockout victory of Johny Hendricks, going from the Top 10 fringe all the way to the Top Three. To top it all off, established names like Amanda Nunes, Gegard Mousasi and Donald Cerrone all benefited from wins.

So want to see where everyone stands following UFC 196? Read on and find out.

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UFC 196 Results: The Real Winners and Losers from McGregor vs. Diaz Fight Card

A late change in opponent doesn’t typically lead to a change in career trajectory.
That’s just more evidence that Conor McGregor is not your typical fighter.
At UFC 196, which went down Saturday from Las Vegas, McGregor was competing in a weight class …

A late change in opponent doesn’t typically lead to a change in career trajectory.

That’s just more evidence that Conor McGregor is not your typical fighter.

At UFC 196, which went down Saturday from Las Vegas, McGregor was competing in a weight class he hadn’t tried in the UFC before. He originally had a shot to make history, as the reigning featherweight champ made a run at lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos and two-division dominance.

McGregor, who held two title belts while competing in Europe, is clearly someone who wants to make big statements. After Dos Anjos pulled out with a foot injury, the potential statement grew even bigger when the Irishman moved up yet another division to welterweight, where Nate Diaz agreed to take the fight on less than two weeks’ notice.

Therein lies McGregor‘s new career path. Even as he spent the week matching invective with the wildly popular Diaz, the name of welterweight champion Robbie Lawler suddenly began to bubble up, overtaking Dos Anjos as the favored target of the moment. Even UFC brass got behind (h/t Sherdog) the idea. 

But first, there was Diaz, a dangerous boxer and jiu-jitsu ace. Did McGregor turn the Lawler talk up to 10, or was Diaz the one to finally quash McGregor‘s Big Mo?

Oh, and Holly Holm—remember her?—defended her women’s bantamweight title for the first time, facing Miesha Tate in the co-main event.

There were 10 other fights on this card, and as always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from UFC 196.

For the literal-minded among us, full card results appear on the final slide.

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The Best Finishing Moves in the UFC

The finishing move is a pro wrestling concept. It’s the culminating hold or blow that puts away an opponent (at least ostensibly) for good, and all great wrestlers have one that belongs entirely to them.
Being products of the real world and all, MMA fi…

The finishing move is a pro wrestling concept. It’s the culminating hold or blow that puts away an opponent (at least ostensibly) for good, and all great wrestlers have one that belongs entirely to them.

Being products of the real world and all, MMA fighters don’t have such moves. The circumstances are simply too varied and unpredictable to make finishing moves possible.

Or so it would seem.

On closer review, there actually are some elite fighters who have taken a move and made it their own. Because they invented it, because they’re better at it than everyone else, because it’s a tool they consistently use to finish fights, because it’s exceptionally dramatic or some combination of these factors, one might say some MMA competitors do, indeed, have what one might call a finishing move.

Let us now look at the top signature finishing moves in the UFC right now. They are ranked based on their uniqueness, their effectiveness and the prominence of the fighter using them.

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UFC Fight Night 84 Results: The Real Winners and Losers from London

It wasn’t quite Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock 3. But the main event of UFC Fight Night 84 in London was the UFC’s version of a legend vs. legend bout.
Anderson Silva is arguably the greatest MMA fighter ever, given his 33-6-1 record and longtime strang…

It wasn’t quite Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock 3. But the main event of UFC Fight Night 84 in London was the UFC’s version of a legend vs. legend bout.

Anderson Silva is arguably the greatest MMA fighter ever, given his 33-6-1 record and longtime stranglehold on the middleweight strap. But he’s now 40 years old, coming off a yearlong steroid suspension and fighting for only the second time since 2013.

Michael Bisping’s place is a little more open to interpretation. He has never fought for a UFC championship, but he is probably still the most famous English fighter in MMA history. You don’t stay around in the UFC for a full decade, as Bisping (27-7) has, unless you’re doing something right. A lot of things right, in fact. Nevertheless, he’s now 36 years old and probably grooming himself more for a full-time broadcast gig (he already pitches in at Fox Sports 1) than an imminent title shot.

Bisping has been calling out Silva for years now, and in front of his home crowd Saturday, he got him. What would he do with the opportunity? And what about Silva? Were his decline and demise greatly exaggerated, or was he what we thought he was? Would Bisping’s steady stream of steroids trash light a fire under the former champ? 

This was just one of 13 bouts on the card, which featured eight English fighters. If you missed the action and want to catch up—it aired Saturday afternoon in the U.S. and was broadcast entirely on the UFC’s Fight Pass subscription streaming service—you are in the right place.

As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from UFC Fight Night 84.

Full card results appear on the final slide.

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