Tag: Rankings/List

No sport needs prospects like MMA needs prospects. 

It’s the hard truth underpinning a high churn rate. Pro fighters fall injured or surpass their athletic expiration dates all the time, and for each one there is a host of young competition scaling a human tower to take their place.

A loose web of local and regional MMA shows covers the globe, snaring the gems while allowing the rubble to pass through. The gems, with some polish, become bona fide prospects. The best prospects end up here.

This is the fifth annual installment of Bleacher Report MMA’s list of the top prospects in the sport. These are the 25 men and women with the tools to make the biggest leaps in 2017.

As in previous years, we’ll do this in two parts. This, as you may have gathered, is part one. In this part, I, Scott Harris, will take you from No. 25 to No. 13. One week from now, our senior analyst, Patrick Wyman, will carry you all the way to No. 1.

The rules of the game are as follows:

• No fighters who have competed in the UFC
• No champions from Bellator, World Series of Fighting or ONE Championship, with others from these promotions included sparingly
• No fighters age 30 or older, with exceptions possible for those who have switched careers to pursue MMA (e.g. Holly Holm, Daniel Cormier)
• No fighters with more than five years of pro MMA experience
• In cases where a fighter competes for multiple promotions, the most recent promotion listed on his or her record is the one listed here.

Ready to get it on? Let’s get it on.

All record information courtesy of Sherdog.com. 

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Was this the biggest card in Bellator history? If it wasn’t, it was pretty close.

In the main event, you had two very famous fighters in former UFC contender Chael Sonnen, who came out of retirement for this fight, and former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz, who went into retirement after this fight. On a Saturday night that didn’t have any UFC event—or much of any sports, for that matter—this was a prime opportunity for Bellator to shine.

Who cares that the combined age in the main event was 81 years? Never mind that! Let’s just try to have fun for once, OK? That should actually be Bellator‘s slogan.

There was plenty more action outside the main event. In the co-main event, you had a cracker of a slugfest between honey badger welterweights Paul Daley and Brennan Ward. Then, jiu-jitsu palace court member Ralek Gracie made his Bellator debut against knockout artist Hisaki Kato in a classic striker-grappler matchup.

As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from Bellator 170 in Inglewood, California.

 

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With less than a week separating 2017 from it’s predecessor, it’s easy to look back and pick out the best fights and overall cards of the year gone by. After all, it’s relatively fresh in our minds, vivid and visceral as only combat sports can be.

But, over time, memories fade. UFC 199 and UFC 205 will be less distinct as the years pass, and specifics will disappear with the days.

What’s left, what really matters, are the moments.

Whether it was Kevin Randleman’s monstrous suplex on Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St-Pierre dropping to his knees to beg for a title shot or Ronda Rousey refusing to take Miesha Tate’s outstretched hand, MMA consistently delivers snapshots fans will never forget. 2016, of course, was no different.

What follows are six of our favorites during the year, a mix of the silly and the sublime. Collectively, they are what make MMA the greatest sport on Earth. If you have a different moment playing on repeat in your head, don’t be shy. Let us hear about it in the comments.

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Traditionally, MMA flows like a sine wave. Highs are inevitably followed by comparable lows, and any joy one feels will likely be offset by a similar helping of disappointment 12 months later. 2015 was a damn good year of mixed martial arts and, as such, it was easy to feel bearish entering 2016.

Boy, was that streak broken. That strong 2015 was followed by an even stronger 2016, which delivered shocking twists and turns on an almost monthly basis.

There were the usual roundups of amazing fights, of course, like Doo-Ho Choi vs. Cub Swanson and Robbie Lawler vs. Carlos Condit. There were plenty of feel-good moments like Michael Bisping capturing UFC gold and Stipe Miocic riding shotgun at the Cleveland Cavaliers’ NBA Championship parade. And there was major, industry-shaking news on an almost monthly basis with MMA being legalized in New York, free agency coming front and center and major chatter about fighters organizing as a workforce.

There was a lot to love in 2016 and that made it incredibly difficult to pick the winners for the Bleacher Report MMA Awards. The team of Patrick Wyman, Scott Harris, Nathan McCarter, Steven Rondina and Josh Gross was up to the task, though, and managed to sift through all the action to pick out the year’s biggest and best.

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The UFC is increasingly running a star-driven business.

Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey accounted for 61 percent of the UFC’s pay-per-view business in 2015, a much greater proportion of the total than the biggest stars in the past have drawn. McGregor is the biggest draw the sport of MMA has ever seen.

The UFC knows this, which is why the promotion has gone out of its way to invest in new stars. Up-and-coming talent is on the rise in practically every division, injecting new blood into even some of the more static weight classes.

Let’s take a look at 10 fighters who could break through in 2017.

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