Year End Awards: 2009's Most Exciting MMA Fights

by Kelvin Hunt on Dec 23, 2009 12:00 PM EST in News Comment 11 comments

Randy Couture And Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira Photo: Sherdog

You may recall that we did the top ten fights of 2009 at the halfway point in June of this year. We've endured another 6 months of epic battles, title fights, and more. Here's the list from June:

Martin Kampmann vs. Carlos Condit, UFN 18

Miguel Torres vs. Takeya Mizugaki, WEC 40

Diego Sanchez vs. Clay Guida, UFC TUF 9 Finale

Hideo Tokoro vs. Abe Cullum, DREAM.9

Mike Brown vs. Urijah Faber II, WEC 41

Scott Jorgensen vs. Antonio Banuelos, WEC 41

Donald Cerrone vs. Jamie Varner, WEC 38

Mac Danzig vs. Josh Neer, UFN 17

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Andrei Arlovski, Affliction 2

Tyson Griffin vs. Rafael Dos Anjos, UFN 18

Check after the jump to see who stayed on the list, and who got added in the past six months.

I feel like I've watched more MMA this year than any other year of my life. There were a lot of GREAT fights, and I know I missed a few. In fact, I can't put Thomson/Melendez on this list because I only saw about 10% of that entire fight. So without further ado...here it is:

Martin Kampmann vs. Carlos Condit, UFN 18
Miguel Torres vs. Takeya Mizugaki, WEC 40
Scott Jorgensen vs. Antonio Banuelos, WEC 41
Hideo Tokoro vs. Abe Cullum, DREAM 9
Randy Couture vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, UFC 102
Nate Quarry vs. Tim Credeur, UFN 19
Cyborg Santos vs. Gina Carano, Strikeforce
Carlos Condit vs. Jake Ellenberger, UFN 19
Mike Nickels vs. David Heath, MFC 22
Shogun Rua vs. Lyoto Machida, UFC 104

What about yours?

0 recs | Comment 11 comments | Share

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

The only glaring omission on that list would be Henderson/Cerrone and the aforementioned Melendez/Thopmson 2… personally my fav is Condit/Kampmann – for a couple of reasons

1) It involved all facettes of MMA, it was literally all over the place with striking, takedowns and submissions
2) It was at an insane pace while being technically advanced
3) It was razor close
4) It involved one of my favorite fighters that I’ll cheer for no matter what

Bloody hell.

by 3PA on Dec 23, 2009 1:03 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I almost put Cerrone/Henderson...

http://www.mmaforreal.com
Follow Me On Twitter@MMA4Real

by Kelvin Hunt on Dec 23, 2009 1:05 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Word, daps on Shogun/Machida though – some said it was boring but to me it was an intense strategic battle… I’ll take that over a sloppy slugfest any day of the week.

Bloody hell.

by 3PA on Dec 23, 2009 1:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

My reasoning

was the fact that nobody thought Shogun would give Machida a fight…much less win…so for that..and the war of attrition that it was….I had to put it on there….

http://www.mmaforreal.com
Follow Me On Twitter@MMA4Real

by Kelvin Hunt on Dec 23, 2009 1:53 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Scott Smith/Benji Radach, Kazuo Misaki vs Jorge Santiago and Diego Sanchez vs Clay Guida best fights I watched this year.

by scrambledeggs on Dec 23, 2009 7:51 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

by Kelvin Hunt on Dec 23, 2009 9:27 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The only thing that made Shogun vs Machida exciting was the fact that Shogun and Machida were fighting

Honestly.. 25 minutes of leg kicks one of 2009’s most exciting fights?

by Charger567 on Dec 23, 2009 11:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

There was more to it than that; the movement, the timing and the story of the fight (Machida was pretty much considered untouchable going into this shit).

Bloody hell.

by 3PA on Dec 24, 2009 2:07 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs