Hardest Puncher at every weight class in UFC History?

[Brit_Brawler]

Rampage at lhw ? Rumble was destroyer.
Literally touch of death.
God rest his soul Devastating fighter

 

[samko32]

Punching power?

125: Dodson
135: Cody Garbrandt
145: Chad Mendes
155: Justin Gaetchje
170: Johny Hendricks
185an Henderson
205: Rampage Jackson
265: Shane Carwin

I'm not talking about skills or technique simply 1 punch power.

Shane carwin loooool

 

[saionaru]

Funny how vast majority of people have dan henderson and Romero over Pereira. I think people that do that are confused. This question is about who is the hardest puncher, NOT which big puncher has the best resume. Pereira hits considerably harder than Romero and Dan Henderson. Pereira doesn't even need to swing to put you down.

 

[Travis Alexander]

HW- Ngannou
LHW- Rumble
MW- Mcfedries
WW- Daley
LW- Guillard (maybe Gomi)

Also Manhoeff can be inserted almost any division he wants.

I won’t get into the lower classes as power dissipation at the small classes is steep.

 

[JustBleed69]

FLW: Dodson
BW: Lineker
FW: McGregor
LW: Gaethje
WW: Hendricks or Daley
MW: Hendo
LHW: Rumble
HW: Ngannou

 

[LEWIS540]

I can't take any list seriously that doesn't have Drew McFredries on it.

The guy was power punching personified

.......at least get his name right then.

 

[Tyr XIII]

Also...Tank Abbott exists and is probably the right answer.

that mother fucker is power incarnate. He’s one of those natural fighters that no one wants to fight outside of a cage or ring.

with a training camp and video, sure you can whoop his ass. But on a normal day at the bar or whatever I’d always put my money on him

anyway I’m happy to see rumble getting the respect he deserves at lhw

 

[markg171]

I honestly feel like Gaethje's power is slightly overrated at times. Like he's absolutely a heavy-handed guy and hits harder than the majority of 155ers, but he's not really the "touch of death" guy that people think he is. He's a volume-striker who throws everything with bad intentions. There are a few guys even in the UFC's Lightweight Division who I would arguably rank above him in terms of pure explosive one-punch knockout power while fresh, especially in their prime: Chandler, Johnson, McKinney. Frevola seems to be up there. I've seen Dober's name tossed around, but I'm not sure he surpasses Justin's power so much as maybe matches it. Some of these guys are hard to rank due to comparative level of competition, to be fair.

I'm never not ceased to be amazed by how often Sherdog confuses pressure/volume punchers with actual power punchers.

KOing somebody after you hit them 5+ times in a row isn't a power puncher. You're KOing the guy because you eventually hit him with the shot he simply didn't see coming or could no longer continue to absorb. The finishes are mostly based off the previous work and the last strike is just the tipping point. It's like a video game where the opponent has a health bar you simply chipped long enough away at.

That's wildly different than hitting guys with 1 shot and the lights are shut off. That's power.

Obviously everybody can occasionally do this. Anybody can 1 shot somebody if you hit them perfectly. But if the majority of your KOs are coming off long combos or repeated strikes, you're not a power puncher. You may hit hard yes, but you're not a power puncher. Nor should you try fighting like one where you're looking to land that 1 big shot as your opponent will likely just be able to absorb your strikes without going down. You need to stay in their face to put them down.

 

[chiefwiggum]

Paul Daley had the most devastating punch at ww. Probably in the history of the sport other than pereira.

 

[Sano]

LW Melvin gulliard noobs

Yes.

 

[noobsterish]

My list, just based of raw power, not necessarily how effective they were:

125: John Lineker
135: Garbrandt
145: Jeremy Stephens
155: Gaethje
170: Hendricks
185: Drew Mcfedries, honorable mention Vitor
205: Rumble (could slot into 170 and 185)
265: Hunt/Ngannou/Carwin ... hard to tell who hits harder when everyone looks like they got shot.

Some honorable mentions: Chuck, Rampage, Arlovski, Aldo, Lawler, Dodson, Anderson Silva, Romero, Costa, JDS, Woodley, Guillard

As an edit: I completely forgot about Daley and Manhoef. Manhoef at 185 is a sure thing with honorable mention to Mcfedries.

 

[jeff7b9]

125- Lineker
135- Lineker
145- Conor
155-
170- Rumble*
185- Anderson..edit: Melvin Manhoef
205- Rumble
HW- Francis


* I can see a strong case for Paul Daley

 

[Ace70 V2]

I would say Pav hits harder than Ngannou. He doesn't put all his strength behind his punches but is still able to badly hurt his opponents.

Nah man. Francis hurt guys with weaker punches too. But when he loaded up it was bed time. Pav has to show this for me to really compare the two.

 

[Safton]

I'm never not ceased to be amazed by how often Sherdog confuses pressure/volume punchers with actual power punchers.

KOing somebody after you hit them 5+ times in a row isn't a power puncher. You're KOing the guy because you eventually hit him with the shot he simply didn't see coming or could no longer continue to absorb. The finishes are mostly based off the previous work and the last strike is just the tipping point. It's like a video game where the opponent has a health bar you simply chipped long enough away at.

That's wildly different than hitting guys with 1 shot and the lights are shut off. That's power.

Obviously everybody can occasionally do this. Anybody can 1 shot somebody if you hit them perfectly. But if the majority of your KOs are coming off long combos or repeated strikes, you're not a power puncher. You may hit hard yes, but you're not a power puncher. Nor should you try fighting like one where you're looking to land that 1 big shot as your opponent will likely just be able to absorb your strikes without going down. You need to stay in their face to put them down.

I mean, here are the totals for Significant Strikes Landed Per Minute for a number of prominent UFC fighters who are generally accepted to be volume-punchers when fighting on the feet:

Spoiler

All of these men with the exception of Dustin have been decried as being "pillow-fisted" over the years because they actively favor volume and just don't have that much pop in most of what they throw. Sure, they'll occasionally sit down on something big and/or catch somebody clean, but for the most part they're very much attrition-based "death by 1000 cuts" swarming sort of fighters with limited go to sleep power on a punch-for-punch basis.

Now let's look at Gaethje's tally:

He blows most of them out of the water by a massive margin. He lands nearly 25% more strikes than Dustin and edges out Max, who is renowned for being more or less the Output King for his shutout performances against Kattar & Ortega. Holloway has been scheduled for nothing but five-round fights since 2016 and has put up triple-digit significant strike counts in every single one of those performances except against Pettis where he TKO'd him in the third. But Gaethje still lands more strikes on average.

"But that doesn't count!" some might say. "Gaethje throws a lot of leg kicks which skews the numbers!" Sure, I'll wholeheartedly admit that Justin's heavy predilection for calf kicks makes up a good percentage of his sig. strike count. But if you actually go and look at a lot of his fights, especially recent ones, his low kicks don't actually make up as much of his volume as people might think compared to him head-hunting or even mixing in body shots. He's certainly more active to the legs than most, but it's not like it generally constitutes half of his overall output and in many cases it doesn't even account for a third of his strikes. You could try to control for the low kicks by subtracting, like... 33% (just to throw a very generous number at the wall) from his career strike count and he'd still be sitting at a SLpM rating of 4.98 which would put him ahead of everyone except Poirier and Max... i.e. still a very solid volume-striker by any metric.

So what's my point? Basically this: if Gaethje really had the touch of death that people think he does, I don't think he would be able to land so many punches per minute on his opponents without them going to sleep.

Again, I want to stress that I don't think Justin is pillow-fisted by any means. In fact, I think his punching power is well above-average. I would happily put him in the Top 5 of current UFC Lightweights when it comes to that trait. Could maybe make an argument for Top 3, but I'm not sure. He's especially good at generating power at weird angles or very close range. He can absolutely hurt guys anytime he lands, even with a single blow. I certainly wouldn't want to get hit by him. He nearly killed Chandler with that uppercut in the second round. He was the only guy to ever really do Barboza the way he did -- while lunging and a bit off-balance no less. And he comically sent Vick flying halfway across the cage with that KO. But even these instances arguably have certain mitigating factors to them: Chandler & Vick have questionable durability, Barboza had been eye-poked and didn't see the shot coming, etc.

We saw a similar phenomenon with Costa on his come-up when he was being hyped as a knockout artist to dethrone Adesanya "who just needs one clean shot". Somehow people forgot that just because he was a big, jacked Muay Thai bruiser with a lot of TKOs on his record didn't mean he had one-punch knockout power. Like Gaethje, he puts pressure on guys and melts them against the cage before getting them out of there with heavy-handed volume. Does Costa hit hard? Yeah, for sure. But he's no Pereira. Same thing here.

 

[McGeezle]

Always laugh when people pretend Carwin hits harder than Ngannou just because "short punches"

 

[Fight Professor]

Carwin is the hardest hitter at HW. He never needed to learn big punches and put everyone down with either a short 1-2 or an uppercut. If he was fighting like Francis or Fedor, there would have been way more scary KOs.

 

[VAfan]

i wonder if george foreman was the hardest hitter of all time, in any sport. read an interview the other day where foreman said that sonny liston was the only guy he ever fought in his entire career who made him back up. gave me some new respect for liston, for sure.

 

[VAfan]

HW: Carwin
LHW: Rumble
MW: Hendo
WW: Hendricks

these are good.

 

[OldBoy91]

125- Lineker
135- McDonald maybe
145- Conor
155- Gomi
170- Daley.
185- Hendo
205- Rumble
HW- Ngannou/Carwin

 

[OldBoy91]

Nice to see Gomi getting some love

And rightly so. The lightweight GOAT.