Quick apologies for the lateness, but we’re here with my Top-25 MMA Fighters of All-Time 15-11 today. All five on this portion of the list are currently active, and all five are former UFC champions. Enjoy.
#15 CAIN VELASQUEZ
Cain Velasquez is like the Juggernaut. Once he gets moving nothing can stop him. He’s a two-time UFC Heavyweight champion and currently has a record of 14-2. His only two losses came in championship fights.
His defining moment came when he was the next man in line to fight champion Brock Lesnar. Brock was coming off of a number of dominant wins, and he looked unstoppable.
Enter Cain.
The fight started how everyone thought it would, and Brock took Cain down. However, it quickly turned to shock when Cain shed Brock off him and stood up. It was the way he did it too. He made it look easy. He came right at Brock and took Brock down! No one ever did that before. Suddenly Brock was in unfamiliar waters, and he floundered. Lesnar got back to his feet, and Cain hit him with a punch that sent him stumbling across the Octagon and onto his back. Velasquez walked over, stood over him, and punched his face in until the referee stopped the fight.
Cain dominates his fights with wrestling, constant pressure against the cage, knockout power, and the best gas tank in heavyweight history.
He hasn’t fought since 2016. Velasquez has always been an injury-prone fighter, which hurt his ranking for me. If he could’ve stayed healthy he may have had a longer championship run. That would have landed him higher, but that was not the case.
We’ve all been waiting for his return, and who knows when it will come. So, the book isn’t closed on Cain. I ranked all these fighters without projecting into the future. As of now, Cain ranks at #15 on my list.
#14 FRANKIE EDGAR
The Answer. If you take Allen Iverson’s nickname, you better live up to it. And this little guy from Jersey didn’t disappoint. He’s one of the toughest fighters I’ve ever seen, a great UFC lightweight champion, and also fought for the featherweight title.
Frankie Edgar shocked the world when he beat BJ Penn for the UFC Lightweight title. It isn’t talked about enough when discussing the biggest upsets because of how good Edgar went on to be. People look back and aren’t shocked about it. At the time, however, he shocked the world. BJ Penn was at the top of his game during his run as the greatest lightweight of all-time. Frankie came in and completely shut him down. The fight was such an upset they gave BJ an immediate rematch which was held in Boston and was the main event for the first UFC event ever to be held in Boston.
I was in attendance that night, and like most people, I thought the first fight was a fluke and BJ would win this rematch to regain his title. That didn’t happen. The fight went the same as the first, and Frankie won another unanimous decision. After losing his title, he jumped down to featherweight and had a hell of a fight with Jose Aldo for the belt but never was able to become the two-division champ.
Edgar is currently 23-6-1 and still isn’t giving up his chance to become the featherweight champion. Those chances are still very high, and I’ll never count out “The Answer.”
#13 MAURICIO “SHOGUN” RUA
“Shogun” Rua is one of the most legendary names in MMA with some of the most legendary fights. He’s a legend in both PRIDE and UFC with a long career that still hasn’t ended.
In 2005, Rua entered the PRIDE middleweight Grand Prix Tournament. Like all PRIDE Grand Prix tournaments, winning means going through a murderers row of the best fighters in the world.
“Shogun” won the tournament in dominant fashion, winning three out of the four fights by TKO/KO. What fighters did he beat in that tournament, you ask? As I laugh out in loud in amazement I’ll tell you. He beat Rampage Jackson (TKO Soccer Kicks), Antonio “Little Nog” Nogueira (decision), Alistair Overeem (TKO punches), and Ricardo Arona (KO punches).
He beat Alistair Overeem and Ricardo Arona in the same night, and won the Grand Prix belt. Not too long after, he was in the UFC.
Rua worked his way to a title shot, which he lost to Lyoto Machida in a razor close decision, so close that the UFC gave him an immediate rematch. In the rematch, Rua seized his moment and knocked out Lyoto in the first round to hand him his first loss and become the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. His reign was short lived as he lost the title in his next fight. Can you blame him? It was Jon Jones.
Shogun Rua will always be remembered by a lot of people for his fight with Dan Henderson. It was one of the greatest fights I’ve ever seen. These two beat each other to a pulp. It was a damn bloodbath. Back and forth they went for five full rounds, beating the shit out of each other. Henderson got the decision victory, but that fight will be remembered more for its greatness, not for who won.
Rua’s illustrious career is coming to an end very soon, and I’ll always remember the great moments he gave MMA fans. All those moments got him to #13 on my Top-25.
#12 STIPE MIOCIC
Stipe Miocic is a true blue-collar champion. He’s currently working as a fireman in Cleveland. As I said, he’s a true blue-collar champ. He’s also the greatest heavyweight in the history of the UFC. The brash fan favorite had the greatest UFC heavyweight title run of all-time, defending his belt three times.
Miocic is one of the best knockout artists I’ve seen. He had a five-straight KO streak, knocking out some of the best heavyweights ever. In those five fights he KO’d Mark Hunt, Andrei Arlovski, Fabricio Werdum (champion at the time), Alistair Overeem, and Junior Dos Santos.
However, his greatest performance was not a KO. It was a unanimous decision victory over Francis Ngannou. I was able to attend the headline in Boston in January of this year. Ngannou was the scariest fighter I think anyone ever saw early in a career leading up to that fight. Stipe already defended the belt twice and found himself as the underdog against Ngannou. I’ll admit, I thought Ngannou was going to KO Stipe. I was wrong, and I’m so happy I was.
Stipe gave us a performance of a lifetime, wore the big man down, and whooped his ass. He took the big shots that Ngannou landed and moved forward to dominate one of most hyped fighters in a long time. Stipe ended that hype train real quick and defended his belt for a record third time.
He recently lost his belt to Daniel Cormier, but his career is anything but over. He’s very eager to get back into the Octagon and make another run for the belt. His current record stands at 18-3, and I have him as the #12 greatest MMA fighter of all-time.
#11 Demetrious Johnson
Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” “DJ”, Johnson! This is maybe my second most controversial ranking, being that a lot of people say he’s the best fighter they’ve seen. He’s an amazingly exciting fighter, and when I sat down to do this I would’ve bet anything I had him in the top ten. It just didn’t turn out that way when I figured everything out, and losing his belt recently to Henry Cejudo did not help him. However, the 11th greatest fighter of all-time is pretty fucking good.
The UFC created the flyweight division (125 pounds) in 2012 for the handful of fighters that were left in limbo being too small for the 135-pound division. That sounds crazy. They held a tournament which DJ won to become the inaugural UFC Flyweight Champion. He then went on an unprecedented run in UFC history by defending his belt eleven times.
DJ gave us some of the greatest performances we’ve seen inside the Octagon. None more impressive than his flying armbar victory over Ray Borg in his record title defense fight. He threw Ray Borg through the air, and in mid-air, locked up an armbar. Borg was forced to submit moments after hitting the ground. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in all of sports.
The skills and technique that Mighty Mouse displays on a regular fight-to-fight basis is merely incredible and possibly the greatest we’ve ever seen. My slight against him that makes me keep him out of the top ten is his competition compared to other weight divisions. The flyweight is the weakest division in the UFC.
He is far, far from done. He’ll probably regain the flyweight title that he lost at some point. Maybe one day, when I revisit this list, he’ll be higher. For right now, though, in my opinion, he sits at #11.