Sherdog's Top 10: Greatest UFC Fighters Never to Win a Title

10. Stephen Thompson

Sherdog's sixth greatest striker ever cracks another highly competitive list, thought the manner in which he did so is amusing. Only three of the 10 respondents included Thompson, but one had him all the way in first place. While Lyoto Machida might have popularized a karate-inspired striking style in MMA’s modern era, Thompson took it to a new level. Not only did he use a bladed stance, but unlike Machida, he held his hands all the way down. This was a highly risky approach, compromising his defense, but Thompson had the superb footwork, movement and instincts to pull it off, and having his hands so low made his own punches unpredictable and especially difficult to dodge. Despite the karate background, Thompson has great balance between his attacking limbs. His kicks are amazing, possessing perfect technique, flexibility and tremendous speed and power. His setups for head kicks are especially great and have hit pay dirt many times. However, I'm even more impressed by his hands, which are fast and incredibly sudden, with no wind-up or telegraph, delivering considerable power with deadly accuracy. He can also throw them in slick combinations, a rarity among many karate stylists, who tend to be one-shot snipers. Thompson had good takedown defense in his prime, though it was always a relative weakness.

Among Thompson's successes, he has a stellar first-round knockout of a young Robert Whittaker, a gorgeous spinning hook kick knockout of Jake Ellenberger, a first-round demolition of Johnny Hendricks, and a clear decision over Rory MacDonald before challenging Tyron Woodley for the welterweight championship, which resulted in a draw and then majority decision that went against him; two fights where he was tantalizingly close to the title. Afterwards, Thompson was far from done, delivering vicious beatdowns to Jorge Masvidal, Vicente Luque, Geoff Neal and most recently, Kevin Holland. Even now at 40 years old, Thompson is a fearsome striker.

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