My greatests

Happy New Year.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business. I think it’s time I put some markers down. I’m often asked who my favourite fighters are so why not make the first blog post of 2011 a treat.

I’ll start with MMA. My current favourite fighter is Jose Aldo.

It shouldn’t be too hard to see why. He’s as exciting a fighter as I’ve ever seen. Skilled everywhere and looks to finish the fight at every opportunity.

My all time favourite is Randy Couture.

Randy might have lost some of his lustre in recent years but hey, he was in his late 40s and still didn’t look out of place. I’ll always remember his demolition of Tim Sylvia as one of the greatest Rocky-like moments in MMA.

My current favourite BJJ player is Rafael Mendes

Rafa is still only 22 and has already done it all. There’s talk of an eventual move into MMA but to be honest, I hope he can continue to do BJJ and earn his crust from that.

My all time favourite BJJ player is Rubens Charles “Cobrinha”

I was lucky enough to go and train with Cobrinha for a day last year and I’d heard stories about him being “crazy”. Well he’s a great guy, really nice and relaxed and easy to talk to. About 3 years ago someone gave me a DVD of some of his matches and it blew me away. Interestingly, BJJ Heroes totally disagrees with me.

My favourite fighter of all time is Tommy Hearns

Like a lot of 80s kids my first exposure to combat sports was boxing on TV. This was the era of the fabulous four of Hearns, Hagler, Leonard and Duran. Out of those four, Tommy Hearns is probably the least well known and celebrated. He had devastating power as you can see, but was let down by not having a champion’s chin. I’ve heard recently that he’s fallen on hard times. like a lot of ex-boxers, he lived fast and hard and wasn’t always the good guy, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Motor City Cobra.