MMA Fighter of the Year of each year since 1993. (1993-2025)

[Bullitt68]

That's what sucks about Pancrase. Sometimes I don't want to include any those fights because A) you don't know how many were works, and B) it has such unusual rules that it's damn near a different sport. It certainly muddies the waters though.

There were very few works, and they all occurred in the first couple of years when they were still close to their pro-wrestling origins. Ken's second loss to Suzuki was a work, his first loss to Funaki was a work, and his win over Matt Hume was a work. Funaki/Suzuki was also a work. That's it. As for the rules, that doesn't matter to me since a lot of orgs had different rules early on. Not to mention it doesn't make sense to complain about Pancrase but argue that Bas should rank higher than Ken despite Ken beating him twice, including the year you think he should rank higher than Ken.

One time I looked up the weights of everybody Ken fought in Pancrase and the vast majority of them were way smaller than him, which makes his Pancrase wins less impressive even if they were legit.

You're greatly exaggerating this, not to mention it also makes no sense why Ken would have a mark against him for being 220 pounds but Severn at 260 is cool in your book suplexing poor Anthony Macias who was giving up a hundred pounds. From 1993-1996, Ken pretty much stayed around 220 pounds. He leaned down to 205 against Royce at UFC 5 specifically to mitigate the whining about weight that he knew would inevitably follow and then he bulked up to 225 to lock horns with Severn at UFC 6 who he knew was way bigger than him. Throughout 1993-1996, he was regularly fighting guys his size or bigger. He only had 10-20 pounds on Funaki, Yoshiki Takahashi, Manabu Yamada, Bas, Leon Dijk, and Christophe Leininger; he was around the same size as Pat Smith, Maurice Smith, Felix Mitchell, and Brian Johnston; and he was smaller than Andre Van Den Oetelaar, Ryushi Yanagisawa, Severn, and Kimo.

 

[JPOMMA]

You're thinking of pound for pound FOTY.
General FOTY is just taking a single calendar year and rating how sensational a particular fighter was.
P4P is just one aspect.
For example, if you have Person A who is clearly the most skilled person in the sport but he only fought once the entire year and won via boring decision... How can you possibly make him fighter of the year over Person B who fought 3-6 times all by finishes or earned fight of the night/year candidate?

Listed all my criteria in post 2.

I understand and saw your criteria but something about the list still feels very GPT-ish. Like you put that criteria into an LLM and it spit out that list. But I could be wrong

 

[fjodor]

Anderson Silva in 2007 and 2008. There is just no way Anderson was never fighter of the year.

 

['Suga Daddy']

Sorry but 2016 being Conor or Stipe is crazy. Its Bisping or Garbrandt all day. I'd say easily Bisping due to the fact he had the fairy tale moment, plus beat 3 world champions

 

[CombatSports55]

Anderson Silva in 2007 and 2008. There is just no way Anderson was never fighter of the year.

Anderson Silva would have won 2007 if not for Rampage. Anderson and Randy are my runner ups that year.
2008 he fought twice while Mousasi fought 6 times all victories with amazing finishing sequences and won Dream title + Grand Prix.

Silva had great 2006 as well. Need to do a review of him compared to Chuck that year tbh

 

[CombatSports55]

Sorry but 2016 being Conor or Stipe is crazy. Its Bisping or Garbrandt all day. I'd say easily Bisping due to the fact he had the fairy tale moment, plus beat 3 world champions

Cody Garbrandt deserves a shout. Three 1st round KOs of:

Augusto Mendes (good win but this guy only had 5 MMA fights)
Thomas Almeida (Amazing win over 21-0 prospect) - Won Performance of the Night
Takeya Mizugaki (okay win. spotty record & already had RD1 ko losses recently)

However... Stipe ALSO had 3 First Round KOs over better opponents and Won + Defended Title

1st RD KO of Andrei Arlovski (Former Champion) Who was on a 6 Fight Win Streak - Performance of the Night.
1st RD KO of Fabrício Werdum (current UFC Champion & one of the greatest HWs all time) Was on a 6 fight win streak - Performance of the Night.
1st RD KO of Alistair Overeem who was on a 4 fight win streak - Fight of the Night.

And you're absolutely right about Michael Bisping that year. He deserves a runner up spot.
Won Fight of the Night twice and Performance of the Night.

 

['Suga Daddy']

Cody Garbrandt deserves a shout. Three 1st round KOs of:

Augusto Mendes (good win but this guy only had 5 MMA fights)
Thomas Almeida (Amazing win over 21-0 prospect) - Won Performance of the Night
Takeya Mizugaki (okay win. spotty record & already had RD1 ko losses recently)

However... Stipe ALSO had 3 First Round KOs over better opponents and Won + Defended Title

1st RD KO of Andrei Arlovski (Former Champion) Who was on a 6 Fight Win Streak - Performance of the Night.
1st RD KO of Fabrício Werdum (current UFC Champion & one of the greatest HWs all time) Was on a 6 fight win streak - Performance of the Night.
1st RD KO of Alistair Overeem who was on a 4 fight win streak - Fight of the Night.

And you're absolutely right about Michael Bisping that year. He deserves a runner up spot.
Won Fight of the Night twice and Performance of the Night.

All true, but Stipe didn't feel like the main character at the time in the same way Bisping and Garbrandt did. People were impressed but I don't think what he did had nearly as much impact.