6. Gegard Mousasi
In 2017, Mousasi was in his prime, riding a five-fight winning streak in the UFC that featured brutal finishes of Thiago Santos, Vitor Belfort and Uriah Hall, capped off with a sensational knockout of recent middleweight champion Chris Weidman. Seen as perhaps the best middleweight in the world, Mousasi grew tired of waiting for lame-duck middleweight champion Georges St. Pierre and made the shocking jump to Bellator. While it hasn't been pure smooth sailing, as Mousasi is 7-2, every fight has been big, and he makes it on our list at seventh. Mousasi has some of the best striking in MMA history as well as some of its very best ground-and-pound, decimating countless foes with strikes from the top. However, he always had a relative weakness to elite grapplers with at least decent striking and solid defense, which cropped up in Bellator, too. Mousasi's debut fight in the promotion was difficult, facing the excellent Russian veteran Alexander Shlemenko. Shlemenko crushed Mousasi's orbital bone with a casting punch in Round 1, but using his own quality grappling, Mousasi fought on and won a decision. After that, he went back to the same dominant knockouts as his UFC tenure, finishing reigning champion Rafael Carvalho with ground-and-pound in the first round, and then systematically ripping apart reigning welterweight champion Rory MacDonald before a second-round stoppage. Mousasi then suffered a shocking majority decision loss to undefeated grappling phenom Rafael Lovato Jr., a very close fight where the Brazilian's takedowns just barely edged it over Mousasi's strikes on two of three scorecards. Mousasi then gained revenge against fellow legend Lyoto Machida, who had beaten him clearly in the UFC, by winning a decision that shouldn't have been a split, regained the middleweight crown for a second time by defeating yet another reigning welterweight champion, this time Douglas Lima, then finished elite grappler John Salter in the third, and finally, needed less than 90 seconds to demolish undefeated challenger Austin Vanderford. At 37 years old, Mousasi is likely past his prime, and this past June he lost a decision to the dynamic, undefeated Johnny Eblen, who, I had 10th on this list and may climb even higher in the future. Still, Mousasi has made a large mark on Bellator, a two-time middleweight champion with three title defenses who has won some of the biggest fights in the promotion's history.
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