There's a reason why ultimate fighting is getting to be so popular - it's bloody great to watch. And I do mean bloody. The action is real, the intensity is palpable and you feel just a little bit less civilized (in a good way) after watching it.
And if you watch even a little bit of mixed martial arts, and you start to get hooked, you're inevitably going to start trying to figure out who the best fighters are.
Here's my attempt to do just that with my top pound-for-pound MMA fighters. Though the UFC is obviously the top of the MMA heap, and will be the source of most of the fighters on my list, I'll also draw fighters from PRIDE. There are a couple of reasons - the two groups are closely aligned since UFC bought PRIDE, and PRIDE has some truly scary buggers in their ranks.
A quick disclaimer before I start - making a list like this is almost impossible. It would be very subjective at the best of times. It certainly doesn't help that recent upsets have totally thrown things out of whack - Matt Serra over Georges St. Pierre, Rampage Jackson over Chuck Liddell, Gabriel Gonzaga over Mirko Cro Crop. Without further ado:
Fedor Emelianenko - PRIDE's heavyweight champion is the kind of guy that shows up in your nightmares. He only lost once, and that was back in 2000. Since then he has run roughshod over his opposition, and he has rarely needed more than a single round to do it.
The fight that really showed how good he was was when he beat Cro Crop despite having a hand injury that severely limited his ability to go for a submission. It was also impressive that he beat Mark Hunt in December with a broken toe. His last fight was for BodogFight, and he has shown little desire to move to UFC. However, a fight with Randy Couture would certainly be worth paying for. He's not the biggest guy out there.
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