Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Combat Athletes

Welcome again folks, this time to Sherdog's list of the greatest MMA combat athletes. That's a mouthful, so let me explain. Many fighters come to MMA having already excelled in other combat sports, many more go on from MMA to do great things on the mats or in the ring, and some even manage to dominate in multiple disciplines at the same time. This list ranks MMA fighters based on their overall success across all combat sports. That includes MMA as well as anything else they were involved in, whether it be wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, judo, etc. This was compiled as an average of many different Sherdog contributors' lists, and I will note where my own views deviated considerably. Personally though, the appeal of any such list isn't the exact ordering, or who was included or excluded, but the actual discussion of each entry. Anyone can come up with a list with no further commentary and it's no more “right” than another. However, the best such lists have entertaining and informative explanations, which is a goal I hope to accomplish.

This was a unique list with many variables, especially how much to weigh accomplishments in each combat sport, MMA included. Also, since many of these fighters have had their MMA accomplishments discussed on past lists, I will focus on what they did in other sports. With that in mind, let us begin.

Continue Reading » Number 10

10. Ronaldo Souza

“Jacare,” who was Sherdog's sixth greatest grappler ever and sixth greatest Strikeforce fighter ever, just cracks the list. I consider Souza highly underrated in MMA, which is likely because he never held the UFC middleweight title. Given how capricious the UFC can be in granting title shots are, and that Souza joined the UFC when he was already 33 years old, I don't hold this against him. Furthermore, Souza was the Strikeforce champion, submitting future UFC champion Robbie Lawler and just barely losing a 5-round verdict to another future UFC champion in Luke Rockhold. Never mind that almost everyone thinks he deserved the decision against Yoel Romero, after which he would have certainly received a title shot closer to his prime. So I consider him a top 5 all-time middleweight or very close to it. In BJJ, Souza was one of the greatest names in the entire sport in the early to mid-2000s. He was an eight-time BJJ world champion and also achieved tremendous success at Abu Dhabi Combat Club, the premier grappling tournament held every two years. In 2003, he won a silver medal in the 88-kilogram division, then improved two years later, winning gold in the same division and taking a silver medal in the absolute category against Roger Gracie, who was much larger and arguably the greatest heavyweight grappler ever. In 2009, Souza was part of a featured superfight and triumphed over fellow BJJ legend—and solid MMA fighter—Robert Drysdale. Admittedly, BJJ wasn't as competitive or evolved 20 years ago as it is now, but nevertheless, Souza was not only the best in his weight class but one of the very best pound-for-pound in the entire sport. For attaining greatness in two different combat sports, he is a well-deserved inclusion on this list.

Continue Reading » Number 9

9. Yoel Romero

Souza's old nemesis Romero finishes one spot ahead of him. Like Souza, I believe Romero is underrated because he never held the UFC middleweight championship. It was a tantalizing string of near misses. In 2016, he destroyed recent former champion Chris Weidman. In 2018, he fought another recent former champion in Luke Rockhold for the interim belt, and despite demolishing him with strikes, came in over the weight limit. Later that same year, he fought Robert Whittaker for the middleweight crown for a second time and while most people, myself included, thought Romero either won or it was a draw at worst, Whittaker took the split decision. Even as late as 2020, when Romero was a mere 42 years old, most fans and plenty of media, myself again included, had him edging out Israel Adesanya for the middleweight crown. Clearly, someone up there just didn't want Romero to win the UFC crown, despite his greatness. Before all of that, Romero was a highly decorated world champion freestyle wrestler. Romero was a five-time Pan American Games gold medalist, a three-time World Cup gold medalist, won the World Championship in 1999 as well as silver medals in 2002 and 2005 and bronze medals in 1998 and 2001. Alas, he never quite won the Olympics, taking the silver medal in 2000 at Sydney. Nevertheless, that is a hall-of-fame wrestling career to go along with an all-time great MMA ledger.

Continue Reading » Number 8

8. Fabricio Werdum

Werdum is yet another BJJ turned MMA great, finishing. “Vai Cavalo” was a UFC champion, finishing as Sherdog's fourth greatest heavyweight ever. Along the way, Werdum scored one of the biggest wins in MMA history when he submitted Fedor Emelianenko in Strikeforce. That ended the sublime decade-long undefeated streak of the greatest heavyweight ever as well as handing him the first real defeat of his career. Possibly exceeding that was his amazing war-of-attrition victory over Cain Velasquez for the UFC crown, as Velasquez was then also considered the greatest heavyweight ever. Both before and incredibly during his legendary MMA run, Werdum found time to become the best heavyweight BJJ grappler in the world. He was a four-time BJJ world champion, with two at the blue belt level and two at heavyweight black belt in 2003 and 2004. Werdum also took home an incredible amount of hardware at ADCC, becoming a very rare two-time gold medalist at heavyweight in 2007 and 2009, but also taking two silver medals and two bronze medals. Moreover, these medals range in date from 2003 to 2011, the latter after he had defeated Fedor in Strikeforce! That's an insane period of longevity and easily makes him one of the most decorated ADCC champions ever, even surpassing “Jacare.” With so much championship gold in two combat sports, Werdum is another easy inclusion.

Continue Reading » Number 7

7. Semmy Schilt

The 6-foot-11 Dutchman is an utterly unique entry in this list. First, he is one of only two fighters not to have appeared in any previous installments of the series. Secondly, he achieved his greatness in a second combat sport after he had retired from MMA, which is unique among all the entries. Schilt did karate growing up, but never actually competed in kickboxing before starting MMA in the 90s. He started out in Pancrase where, after some early losses, he eventually won the Pancrase Openweight title by defeating Yuki Kondo, a man who was 3-0 against Schilt going into the showdown. Amusingly, the Dutchman beat Kondo by rear-naked choke, not a knockout as one may expect. He also scored knockouts over Guy Mezger, Minoru Suzuki and Masakatsu Funaki.

Schilt would eventually fight in the UFC and Pride Fighting Championships, where he would have mixed success. His deadly striking and solid submission skills off his back gave him some nice wins, like a knockout of former UFC heavyweight title challenger Pete Williams or a soccer kick finish of Akira Shoji in Pride. However, he was no match for the elite heavyweights, who simply took him down and dominated him there, losing twice by armbar to Josh Barnett, once in the UFC and once in Pride, getting submitted by Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, knocked out by Sergei Kharitonov, and beaten up for all 20 minutes in Pride by a debuting Russian named Fedor Emelianenko.

Here's where the story becomes very interesting, though. Realizing that he would never become a world champion in a major MMA promotion, Schilt began competing in kickboxing in 2002. Schilt was already 28 years old at the time and as I've noted, had no background in that discipline. The reason I keep stressing is that in my opinion and that of many others, Schilt went on to become the greatest heavyweight kickboxer of all time. With shockingly good speed and technique for a man who an inch shy of 7 feet tall, Schilt appeared unbeatable in his prime. Stand too far back and he would pick you apart with his vicious, long kicks and punches, including perhaps the hardest jab that heavyweight kickboxing has ever seen. Get too close, and his knees were overwhelming. He won an unprecedented four K-1 Grand Prix championships, was the Glory Heavyweight Grand Slam Champion, and was the K-1 Super Heavyweight Champion as well as the Glory Heavyweight Champion.

In addition to winning more titles more times than anyone else, Schilt proved his superiority against his fellow legends. He was 3-0 against Remy Bonjasky, with two knockouts. He had two wins and a draw against Ernesto Hoost, including a knockout. He was 4-0 against Jerome Le Banner, including two knockouts. A lot of people claim that Peter Aerts, another candidate for greatest heavyweight kickboxer ever, had Schilt's number, but I disagree. Schilt went 2-3 against him but his two triumphs were a clear decision and a knockout, while Aerts’ wins were majority decisions that could have easily been draws or gone to Schilt.

Most, myself included, assumed that Schilt's era of dominance was over in May 2009 when he was knocked out in just 45 seconds by Badr Hari. Hari seemed to be the new greatest heavyweight ever and superior to Schilt in every way, including speed, technique, and power. But the Dutchman was far from finished. When he rematched Hari in December 2009 at the relatively advanced age of 36, the result was the exact opposite, as Schilt brutally knocked down his rival again and again, prompting a stoppage due to the three-knockdown rule after just 74 seconds. In Schilt's last appearance, he won four fights in a single night. He defeated another legend in Gohkan Saki in the semifinals and knocked out highly skilled Daniel Ghita in the finals with a head kick, but the most significant win was one he recorded in the quarterfinals over a 23-year-old upstart named Rico Verhoeven, who has been the king of heavyweight kickboxing since Schilt's retirement. Certainly, Verhoeven wasn't yet in his prime, but neither was the 39-year-old Schilt. It's unclear how much longer Schilt would have continued ruling kickboxing, as it was discovered that he had a serious heart condition, and he was forced to retire in 2013. While his MMA career was merely good, there's an awful lot be said for being possibly the greatest heavyweight kickboxer ever.

Continue Reading » Number 6

6. Kayla Harrison

The superb Harrison makes her first Sherdog top 10 list. Judging her MMA career isn't easy. Certainly, she was tremendously dominant and ruthlessly destroyed almost all her opponents. However, due to competing primarily at lightweight, she very rarely faced serious opposition. Most of her opponents were blown-up featherweights or bantamweights that Harrison dwarfed in size and strength, doing whatever she wanted with them. Her two best wins were decisions over Larissa Pacheco in 2019. At the time, Pacheco was still improving, being 24 and 25 years old for those battles, and was fairly small at featherweight, never mind lightweight. When they fought for the third time in November 2022, Pacheco was much more skilled and had grown into the weight class, becoming bigger and stronger. She handed Harrison the first loss of her career, winning three of five rounds on the scorecards. However, there is no doubt about Harrison when it comes to her combat sport of choice before MMA, judo: She is one of the best ever. Winning countless major international tournaments, she was the 78-kilogram world champion in 2010 and then won back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 2012 and 2016 at that weight class. That's an incredibly rare achievement in women's judo for several reasons. Firstly, careers are very short due to the incredible strain on one's wrists and forearms, with some judo greats retiring in their mid-20s. Also, judo fights are often very close and decided by the whims of a judge. I should also mention that women's judo is highly competitive and popular in many countries, more so than women's boxing or kickboxing. For such amazing all-time greatness in judo and a very good MMA career that could still get even better, Harrison is a no-brainer on this list.

Continue Reading » Number 5

5. Ronda Rousey

“Rowdy” finishes in fifth place for a second time on a Sherdog list, equaling her placing on the list of greatest grapplers ever as well as being fourth on our list of the greatest female fighters ever pound-for-pound. Not surprisingly, she also finishes right next to Kayla Harrison, who has been compared to her frequently. In fact, Rousey finished just one point ahead of Harrison in this poll—personally, I had Harrison just ahead of Rousey on my list. We've discussed Rousey's MMA career before, which was far superior to Harrison's; Rousey was considered the greatest ever in her prime and utterly unbeatable, decimating all in her path, including many quality foes like Julia Budd, Liz Carmouche, Miesha Tate twice, Cat Zingano, Sarah Kaufman and Sara McMann. In judo, however, it was the other way around. Rousey was excellent, but nowhere near Harrison's level. A world junior champion and three-time Pan American Games champion, Rousey never quite achieved gold at the two biggest competitions. She won a silver medal at the 2007 World championships at 70 kilograms, followed by bronze at the 2008 Olympics. Perhaps she would have eventually struck gold had she stuck with judo, but on the other hand, that would have hurt her success in MMA. And one can make a similar argument with Harrison; had she started MMA after her first judo Olympic gold medal, she would have likely had even greater success there. Still, Rousey was an elite judoka and one of the greatest legends in WMMA, another obvious inclusion here.

Continue Reading » Number 4

4. Alistair Overeem

Overeem is an interesting inclusion, especially at No. 4. He certainly achieved tremendous success in both MMA and kickboxing, and I had him fifth on my own top 10, but where then is Mirko Filipovic, whose achievements in both are at least comparable? Overeem cracked Sherdog's list of the greatest heavyweights ever at No. 10, though in his absolute prime, he could have beaten most of the fighters ahead of him. He could never maintain consistency and lost many times, but his list of wins is utterly incredible: Igor Vovchanchyn (yes, technically at light heavyweight), Sergei Kharitonov, Mark Hunt twice, Fabricio Werdum twice (very controversially in the rubber match), Brock Lesnar, Frank Mir, Stefan Struve, Roy Nelson, Junior dos Santos, Andrei Arlovski and even Sergey Pavlovich as recently as late 2018.

Amusingly, the same criticism applies to Overeem's kickboxing career. His record stands at 10 wins, 4 losses, and 1 no contest, featuring enormous wins and some sobering losses. Early in his forays in kickboxing, he was knocked out by Errol Parris in 2001 and Glaube Feitosa in 2004. However, he sent shockwaves through the kickboxing world when he defeated Badr Hari on New Year's Eve 2009, probably the second-best heavyweight kickboxer at the time behind Semmy Schilt. Hari would get his revenge, knocking out Overeem in 2009. Overeem also lost a decision to another kickboxing legend in 2009 in the form of Remy Bonjasky. However, Overeem wouldn't lose after the rematch loss to Hari, including winning the 2010 K-1 Grand Prix. Besides the win over Hari, Overeem defeated legends Tyrone Spong, Gohkan Saki by knockout, and Peter Aerts twice, with the second being in the 2010 K-1 Grand Prix finals via 67 second knockout. Granted, Aerts was past his prime, being 39 and 40 years old for those fights, but he was still very dangerous and one of the best in the world. Overeem came back to kickboxing in late 2022 for a rubber match against Badr Hari. In a highly entertaining battle, Overeem knocked down Hari twice in the final round to initially win by a point on the cards. However, this was overturned after Overeem tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Mercurial though he is, Overeem's greatness in both MMA and kickboxing can't be questioned, especially at his very best.

Continue Reading » Number 3

3. Holly Holm

Holm is the first, though not the last, fighter on this list who had great success in not just two combat sports, but three. A former UFC bantamweight champion and longtime top contender, Holm was No. 8 on Sherdog's list of the ten greatest female fighters pound-for-pound. That includes perhaps the greatest victory in WMMA history, knocking out the undefeated, seemingly peerless Ronda Rousey with a head kick in 2015. Even now at 41 years old, Holm is one of the best bantamweights in the world, dismantling Yana Santos just a few months ago. However, by the time she had made her MMA debut at the age of 29, she was already a multiple-time champion in both boxing and kickboxing. In kickboxing, she attained a record of 14-1-7 (Yes, 7 draws! I'm surprised, too) winning an amateur title. She had even more success in professional boxing, going 33-2-3. She won world titles in three different weight classes: junior welterweight (140 pounds), welterweight (147 pounds) and junior middleweight (154 pounds). Furthermore, she was the undisputed queen at welterweight for a while and held championships from December 2004 all the way to her last boxing fight in May 2013, a successful defense of her IBA and WBF titles at 140 pounds. Not only was Holm genuinely great in two different combat sports, MMA and boxing, but she was also good in a third one, kickboxing.

Continue Reading » Number 2

2. Fedor Emelianenko

Sherdog's greatest heavyweight ever and greatest fighter of the 2000s just barely misses out on another top spot, though he garnered a third of the first-place votes, mine included. Emelianenko is one of only two fighters on this list, the other being Holly Holm, with significant success in three different combat sports. Furthermore, he is the best mixed martial artist on this list. Widely considered one of the greatest of all time at any weight, he finished sixth on Sherdog's list of the greatest fighters pound-for-pound. He was also the undisputed best in combat sambo. He was undefeated for many years, winning six straight Russian championships from 2002 to 2012, a European championship in 1999 and three straight world championships in 2002, 2005 and 2007, being as unbeatable in that sport through most of the 2000s as he was in MMA. Emelianenko finally lost in the world championships in 2008 to Blagoy Ivanov, who ended up having a good career in MMA himself and is active to this day. Yes, combat sambo is less competitive and popular than most of the other combat sports discussed on this list. However, there's something to be said for being the very best at it for a long time. Lastly, let's talk about the third combat sport Emelianenko excelled at; judo. He wasn't great at it; he never made the Olympics or medaled at a world championship. However, he was still plenty good, attaining the highly prestigious Russian title of “Master of Sport,” competing on the national team, and winning bronze medals at the Russian championship in 1998 and 1999 in the 100 kilogram and open weight categories, respectively. Also, judo is an incredibly competitive, popular sport, and even that degree of success is impressive. Yet, while I personally had him No. 1, there is no wrong answer when deciding between Fedor and the man ahead of him.

Continue Reading » Number 1

1. Henry Cejudo

Cejudo frequently calls himself the greatest combat sports athlete ever, and while one may disagree, it's a credible claim. He secured two-thirds of the first-place votes and the lowest anyone had him was third. He has had the second greatest success in MMA of anyone on this list, becoming a UFC champ-champ at flyweight and bantamweight and finishing ninth on Sherdog's list of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters ever. That was prior to his return to MMA in 2023 against Aljamain Sterling, though losing by split decision to a great champion at the relatively advanced age of 36 shouldn't hurt his stock much, if at all. However, before all that Cejudo famously won Olympic gold in freestyle wrestling in 2008 at 55 kilograms. There are several interesting observations to make about this. Firstly, Cejudo's win was a huge upset. He was a four-time Pan American Games gold medalist but wasn't as successful when facing the best of Europe and Asia. He had managed a bronze medal at the 2007 World Cup but had lost in the very first round of the 2007 World Championships. Furthermore, Cejudo didn't even win gold at the 2008 US championships, being pinned in the finals. Thus, his triumph at the Olympics was a shocking, magical upset. Secondly, Cejudo was at the time the youngest American to ever win Olympic wrestling gold at just 21. There is a good chance that had he stuck with wrestling instead of taking a three-year break, there would have been more gold at either the World Championships or Olympics, if not both, in his future. On the flipside, he likely wouldn't have been as great of a martial artist. Thirdly, there is a tremendous degree of competition in Olympic wrestling, and 55 kilograms is a particularly high-skill division. Thus, Cejudo's gold occurred in a more competitive combat sport than those of any previous fighter apart from Romero. However, Romero won Olympic silver while Cejudo won gold. For achieving the highest pinnacles in MMA and one of the toughest, most competitive combat sports in freestyle wrestling, Cejudo is a worthy pick.