I knew if I said best p4p fighter most of you would say GSP or Anderson Silva. So, combine skill with fan appeal.

Others that were to be included were (since you can only have 20 in the poll):

Rich Franklin
Kazushi Sakuraba
Jon Fitch
Mark Kerr
Wanderlei Silva
Mark Coleman
Kevin Randleman
Gina Carano
Cristiane Santos
Matt Serra
Megumi Fujii
Urijah Faber
Peter Aerts
Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic
Satoko Shinashi
Rashad Evans
Igor Vovchanchyn
Jake Shields
Frank Mir
Forrest Griffin

Or add your own, I guess.

An Aussie voting for Captain America...how terrible.

Since the list has Kimbo Slice, factors such as skill & cardio must mean nothing at all when you vote.

So I'm gonna go ahead and vote on Butterbean, at least he is 10x more accomplished in the world of professional sports than Kimbo is.

Seriously, I am gonna vote on Overeem.

I really believe he is the man that can beat Fedor right now.

I voted Georges St Pierre. First a few fighters that come up high on my personal p4p list.

Don't see Fedor as todays p4p fighter, since he outruns the top of the competition (not signing with ufc, not agreeing on fighting overeem, delaying the werdum fight, fighting 1-2 times a year). In the years of PRIDE he was the best p4p without a doubt, but now he's not coming close.

Penn had a good shot for the spot, but he lost claim to the #1 spot here due to his recent loss against Edgar (and his takedowns).

Overeem really has a chance to beat the legend Fedor, doing well in both MMA and K1 recently, but does not deserve the number 1 spot for me cause he failed most of the time against the top contenders in the sport in his past. Recently I'm only impressed by his Rogers win, the rest of his recent fights doesnt make him the best p4p of this moment. But I think he can beat anyone at this very moment.

Lyoto Machida could maintain up to 15-0 in what many claim the toughest division of the sport, but really showed he's not unbeatable against the last two Shogun fights. He still earns a place up high on the list IMO.

Then there is José Aldo. Really cleaned out the WEC featherweight, but besides a couple of tough dudes, I don't see his competition equal to those of GSP or Silva. Really curious how he handles himself in the UFC Lightweight, cause there he can earn my p4p number 1 spot.

Then the best p4p spot goes between two guys that dominated their weightclasses in the worlds most competative organisation, Georges St Pierre and Anderson Silva. Both only suffered a few losses in their early carreers but have shown to be unbeatable for the last few years and I don't see anyone beat any of those right now.

Tough call then, who do I choose. IMO a champion should behave like a champion and on that GSP beats Silva. GSP shows up at most of the UFC shows, always in for a nice word, always does his best to speak English and Silva, we all know his Maia fight and he only speaks English when he wants to. In a GSP vs Silva match I probably would still bet on Silva, but for this very moment, GSP is my favorite p4p fighter.

My Top10 looks pretty much like this (and note, personal opinion, personal criteria, etc. And I'm not an expert :p)

01. Georges St. Pierre (CAN/UFC/WW)
02. Anderson Silva (BRA/UFC/MW)
03. José Aldo (BRA/WEC/FW)
04. Alistair Overeem (NED/SF/HW)
05. Mauricio Shogun Rua (BRA/UFC/LHW)
06. Lyoto Machida (BRA/UFC/LHW)
07. Shane Carwin (USA/UFC/HW)
08. Fedor Emelianenko (RUS/M1/HW)
09. BJ Penn (USA/UFC/LW)
10. Rashad Evans (USA/UFC/LHW)

Btw, besides Kimbo, what is Badr Hari doing there? That piece of shit is not a mixed martial artist to begin with. He's to scared to still do the promised Overeem MMA fight and he's giving the entire K1 sport a bad name because of his retarded actions. Besides, if you want a list of p4p best martial artist or strikers, then where are guys like Semmy Schilt, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao for example?

DNial nice post.

I like it because it sheds a light on many fighters for those who are not expert and does not know every fighter in the world (me ).

Also from your top 10 list we can see the brazilian dominance in the sport

Yeah, I've watched all these amateur video release Brazilian Vale Tudo events (RioHeroes being my favourite) and there sure isn't a lack of fighters willing to bang and who know what do on the ground. In one fight it's a man who looks like a middleweight, possibly light heavyweight (going by UFC weight classes), quite tall, and he takes on a girl because she wanted to fight (she isn't a princess or anything, shes as ugly as a handful of arseholes) and he just stands there and lets her punch him in the face but I remember something said at UFC 3, I think, where the Gracie's view on ground fighting is like fighting underwater, as in you both weigh exactly the same and strength means nothing on the ground. So he's being a smartarse and letting her hit him, thinking he's King Shit when she shoots for a double leg (imagine a rugby tackle, or tackling a tackle bag), takes him to the ground, gets full mount, starts pounding away at his face, then they split em up and he's got a broken nose and blood all over his face and they start again, again with the double leg, again full mount and she transitions into an armbar and he taps. Of course when the ref splits em up he claims he didn't tap or he didn't tap 3 times or something (because he lost to a girl and will never live it down), but he was in a proper armbar, legs around the neck, everything and this tiny woman who weighs 115lb beat someone who weighed around 200 and was male (I'm not being chauvinistic, but males have more muscle mass). You Brazilians can bang. It seems all you need to do to get into the UFC is own a TapouT shirt and have a Brazilian Passport.

If we're going to do lists, my favourite fighters (in the sense of fan appeal) would be:

1 - Randy Couture (he just seems so down to Earth when he has every reason not to be. He's not the most skilled fighter but he more heart than any fighter who's ever entered the MMA game and that's why he's won so many titles. That and he's a master of figuring a fighter out. The amount of times he's commentated a fight and picked the underdog to win and picked right is astounding. He simply knows MMA inside and out)

2 - GSP (he doesn't talk smack unless you provoke him, and even then it's not really bitterness or attitude he throws back, he'll just say something to change the subject really, like in TUF 4 when they were in that restaurant and Matt Hughes was yelling across the room to GSP he could coach him on a defense to an armbar (because that's how he lost to him the time they fought) and he just looked like he was being picked on and bullied and didn't know how to get all up in his face because he was too nice a person, he didn't have that arsehole attitude that Matt Hughes has (who I think is a stuckup jock, great fighter but I really don't like him). The way he treats fighters like long lost brothers after he's bashed their faces in which I find humorous and admirable. Goldy always says "class" about every fighter in the UFC but I think, just above Randy, he has the most class in the MMA world.)

3 - Mark Kerr (old school, aye. A lot of comes from watching The Smashing Machine which if you haven't seen it, definitely recommended. It just shows how humble and incredibly intelligent he is. His story is so depressing. I just recently saw the fight with him against King Mo and he's 40 and fat and balding and he gets knocked down and taken out in the first 10 seconds. The old Mark Kerr would have broken Mo's face. The man obviously has many demons but when he was on, he was on. There is no fighter in the history of MMA who could fight like him when he was on song. I really feel sorry for him that other factors in his life prevented him from being a Legend. He reminds me of Randy Couture a little bit. At UFC 14 when Joe Rogan interviews him after his fights he's so gracious for everything and comes across as one seriously cool dude. Again, a real pity he didn't live up to his potential which was Monstrous. The Smashing Machine, watch it, it's on this site I think.)

4 - David "Tank" Abbott (I'm not that old, I'm 24. The reason I include him in this list is because he got me into MMA. I just love a brawler and there was a time in the UFC when you could do just that, brawl, and he was the king of it. I just loved the fact that when I watched him fight I knew I was gonna see someone get knocked out. Then he fought Frank Mir and if I remember correctly Mir shot in and got him in a toehold within about 20 seconds and Tank submits, Mir runs up to the camera and says "DID HE HIT ME?!?! NO!!" then threw in an MF-bomb to top it off. That day I began my hatred of Frank Mir. I love watching him fight because I love a heavyweight who is primarily a submission fighter, making giants cry uncle. But that fight got me started in MMA because I realised this guy I idolised could be beaten so easily, there were other facets to this sport, really cool other facets too. I prefer a submission over a knockout and a brawler taught me that. Strange Days.)

5 - Bas Rutten (He released a DVD set of all his fights with commentary and it was just great listening to him yell at himself to do things. His first fight in Pancrase lasted under a minute I think because he's the most vicious striker I've ever seen, open palm strikes and the guy goes down for the count and doesn't get up. Also in that commentary in like his third fight he has a guy in a headlock (the head being next to his hips) and he says (paraphrasing) "I waited for him to breathe out so the liver was completely exposed" and he knees this poor ol' chap right in the liver (or as he says "the leever") and the guys goes down, enters the fetal position and just rolls back and forth in agony, which I imagine is the correct response for being hit in the liver by Bas Rutten. He's funny, his color commentary on PRIDE was great fun to listen to, he filmed his bachelor party and leaked it, his website is hilarious (you can buy a signed photo of him for $10 and that money goes to stopcancer.net if I remember correctly, not the most prestigious cancer research centre.) He's a freak of nature. His ability to learn was like that of BJ Penn. He knows thousands of different submissions or ways to get to them. He's just a freak and a total laugh riot and a savage technician of MMA.)

"Btw, besides Kimbo, what is Badr Hari doing there? That piece of shit is not a mixed martial artist to begin with. He's to scared to still do the promised Overeem MMA fight and he's giving the entire K1 sport a bad name because of his retarded actions. Besides, if you want a list of p4p best martial artist or strikers, then where are guys like Semmy Schilt, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao for example?"

I did say at the start it's favourite, not best, fighter in the world, not mixed martial artist, but since we're on an MMA board I figured I'd throw in fighters who are on the MMA side of fighting (UFC -> K-1 -> DREAM etc.), I also said add your own (I do regret not putting Semmy Schilt in, though). I put Badr Hari there because many people, including me, consider him to be one of the best and exciting (remember, favourite) fighters in the world whether he's a dickhead or not. If you wanted to talk about Pacquiao then go ahead, as I said before, add your own, Mr. Hostile.

I absolutely didnt meant to be rude or hostile, so if it seemed so to people, I'm sorry for that . It's just that I can't stand Badr Hari at all and sometimes in discussions I can get upset about him :p

But I understand the 'favorite' part and I also understand that some people have Hari as their favorites, it's just that I don't consider K1 as MMA, just a sport thats very close, thats why I'd found it weird to only see Hari in that list as a non MMA-fighter, so I wondered