Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest MMA Strikers

10. Max Holloway

The legendary featherweight champion and perpetual attacking machine opens our list. In terms of general stylistic approach, Holloway is in the mold of most Hawaiian brawlers, throwing a lot of power punches and willing to engage in toe-to-toe battles where he will gladly eat punches to deliver several of his own. However, he is the very pinnacle and perfection of this approach. He possesses tremendous hand speed despite his enormous size for featherweight and throws constant punches in bunches. His combinations are beautiful, with textbook technique and accuracy. His endless cardio allows him to throw these combinations non-stop for a full five rounds if need be. While not gifted with big punching power, Holloway's attack is so overwhelming that many opponents eventually succumb to his blows. He holds many decisive wins over excellent and even great strikers, with dominant decisions over Ricardo Lamas and Jeremy Stephens, a late knockout of Anthony Pettis, a hellacious five-round beating of Calvin Kattar, a close verdict over the amazing Yair Rodriguez, the brutal drubbing of Brian Ortega, and of course, his greatest accomplishment, a pair of third-round knockouts of Jose Aldo, whom we will see later in this list.

Holloway has been defeated a few times by strikers with more sophisticated approaches and better defense, including Dustin Poirier—who came in 11th in our voting—and the superb Alexander Volkanovski, though their second fight could have easily gone Holloway's way. Still, Holloway is a truly unique and brilliant striker, able to weaponize his limitless energy to attack for the entirety of a fight. He is in many ways MMA's version of boxing legend Henry Armstrong.

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