POWER RANKED: The 10 best fighters in the MMA world right now

Organization and weight class: Bellator MMA lightweight.

Nationality and style: Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.

Why he's ranked: Since Freire suffered the fourth loss of his career against Benson Henderson at Bellator 160 in 2016, he has rebounded by not only winning the Bellator featherweight title but the lightweight title, too.

He's also put the featherweight belt on the line by entering the Bellator World Grand Prix.

Should he win that competition, then it would be fair to call him one of the gutsiest athletes in combat sports today, if he's not already.

Organization and weight class: UFC heavyweight.

Nationality and style: Cameroonian boxer.

Why he's ranked: Ngannou is one of the baddest men on the planet. He's 6-foot-4, 255-pounds, and the heaviest hitter in UFC history.

Insider asked Ngannou whether punchers are born or made, and where he got his concussive power. He told us last year that he is a made puncher, and it was because of child labor in Africa.

Ngannou moved to France later in life, learned to fight, and was signed by the UFC after his sixth bout.

During his time in the UFC he has scalped many big names, including Curtis Blaydes, Andrei Arlovski, Alistair Overeem, Cain Velasquez, and Junior dos Santos.

A super-fight beckons for Ngannou, and it will likely either be a straight title-shot against Stipe Miocic, or a ruck with fellow pound-for-pound star Jon Jones.

Organization and weight class: UFC featherweight.

Nationality and style: Australian striker.

Why he's ranked: Volkanovski has won 19 fights in a row in a run that stretches back to 2013.

But his recent victories are the ones that elevated his name to global recognition.

In his most recent fights he has finished American wrestler Chad Mendes, out-pointed Brazilian veteran Jose Aldo, and defeated Max Holloway to claim the UFC featherweight championship in December 2019.

To top Volkanovski's run, he beat Holloway in a rematch in Abu Dhabi in July 2020.

He will likely be keeping an eye on Abu Dhabi this month, as the winner of Holloway and Calvin Kattar's featherweight bout on January 16 will probably decide his next challenger.

Organization and weight class: One Championship flyweight.

Nationality and style: American wrestler.

Why he's ranked: Johnson was one of the most dominant athletes in all sports through the 2010s.

He was a winning machine, making 11 title defenses of his UFC flyweight belt, including victories over Joseph Benavidez, Kyoji Horiguchi, and even Henry Cejudo.

But when Cejudo beat him in a rematch in 2018, it was unclear where Johnson would go.

He ended up moving to Singapore-based firm One Championship, and won three fights in a row, being crowned the company's Flyweight Grand-Prix champion in his first year of competition.

Winning is what Johnson knows, and a title shot at One is in his reach.

Organization and weight class: UFC flyweight.

Nationality and style: Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt.

Why he's ranked: God damn, Figueiredo is vicious.

There were concerns that the flyweight division could be canned after long-reigning king Demetrious Johnson left for One Championship, but Figuereido's performance-level has raised interest in the 115-pound weight class.

The 33-year-old didn't just beat Joseph Benavidez at Fight Island last July. He scored three knockdowns and four submission attempts until he bloodied then choked Benavidez unconscious in one of the most brutally dominant performances the division had seen.

The UFC boss Dana White called it "pure violence."

Figueiredo's year was not done, however, and he returned to the Octagon in November and scored a first-round guillotine choke from bottom guard against Alex Perez.

The following month he engaged Brandon Moreno in a fight of the year bout. We'll likely see a rematch of that matchup in 2021, with White seeming keen.

Organization and weight class: UFC heavyweight.

Nationality and style: American boxer.

Why he's ranked: Miocic is one of the most decorated heavyweights in MMA history.

He's a two-time heavyweight champion, the division's current ruler, and he has the most heavyweight title defenses in UFC history — four.

During that run, he has beaten a who's who of tough guys: Fabricio Werdum, Junior dos Santos, and Francis Ngannou. Miocic has brutalized them all.

He's even gone 2-1 with Dan Cormier, and options for his next bout include fellow pound-for-pound talent Ngannou, or even a super-fight with Jon Jones.

Organization and weight class: UFC welterweight.

Nationality and style: Nigerian wrestler and jiu-jitsu black belt.

Why he's ranked: Usman has been crushing the UFC competition ever since his debut in 2015.

He's already beaten Leon Edwards, Rafael dos Anjos, and Tyron Woodley; a bout which saw him crowned middleweight champion.

It was his first UFC title defense against the MAGA hat-wearing Colby Covington that edged him further into the consciousness of wider combat sports fans, as he beat Covington so bad he left his jaw hanging off its bloody hinges.

Usman then followed that with a controlled win over the "bad mother-f-----" Jorge Masvidal at the UFC's inaugural Fight Island event last July.

It is hard to see who can beat Usman on this form.

Organization and weight class: UFC middleweight.

Nationality and style: Nigerian-born New Zealand striker.

Why he's ranked: Adesanya was competing in kickboxing shows in 2017 before making his UFC debut in 2018.

One year later, he won the UFC middleweight championship, and now he's lining up the division's beastliest men to defend his title.

Adesanya is not normal.

The way he lit up the division in a clear trajectory to the top bore comparisons to a young Conor McGregor, who flew through the UFC's featherweight and lightweight divisions half a decade ago.

Adesanya has beaten Anderson Silva, Kelvin Gastelum, Robert Whittaker, Yoel Romero, and Paulo Costa in his last five matches.

His next fight is a March 6 title challenge against the light heavyweight ruler Jan Blachowicz at UFC 259.

Victory there would seal two-weight champion status and seal the 31-year-old as the rarest of fighting men.

Organization and weight class: UFC light heavyweight.

Nationality and style: American mixed martial artist.

Why he's ranked: There was a time when Jones was on a killer run. That Jones was awesome.

But then things unraveled.

Forget about the controversies, the out-of-Octagon misdemeanors, and the failed drug tests, Jones hasn't looked like the old Jones for a long time.

Though his standards have slipped, Jones remained a light heavyweight champion with the UFC until 2020, and continues to collect wins.

But for how long? His next move may be to heavyweight, where matches against the hulking Ngannou or the champion Miocic await.

Organization and weight class: UFC lightweight.

Nationality and style: Russian wrestler.

Why he's ranked: Here he is, Insider's pound-for-pound No.1 athlete in all MMA.

Nurmagomedov is unbeaten after 29 bouts and has smashed his way through all his opponents while barely even losing a round.

The only round he may not have won is arguably the third of his 2018 fight against Conor McGregor, but he dropped the Irishman in the second and stopped him with a neck crank in the fourth. He also trash-talked McGregor throughout the fight.

Nurmagomedov went on to beat Dustin Poirier, in style, in Abu Dhabi in 2019 before returning to the region the following year, in the middle of the pandemic, to sleep Justin Gaethje in the second round.

The 32-year-old gave a dramatic, emotional, and abrupt retirement speech but the UFC boss Dana White is hopeful of talking Nurmagomedov into returning for at least one more fight.

Should White bring him back into the UFC, a rematch with McGregor, or super-fight with Georges St. Pierre would both likely go on to become the biggest bout of the year it is made.

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