The late growth of the Mixed Martial Arts as a sport can not be overlooked any more. For some people, MMA has been here for ages, for others the modern rules define the new sport category. But all of them agree that the spirit of MMA in today’s life is young, but sound. So what is the current situation among the top MMA gyms? And where can you start to participate?



Based on their popularity, some MMA fighters already hit the big game as the natural superstars. Let’s mention only fighters like Royce Gracie, Fedor Emelianenko, Brock Lesnar, the Nogueira brothers, Lyoto Machida, Gina Carano or Mirko Crocop. I am sure anyone can easily add many more, because there is just uncountable number of MMA fighters in the world. They appear in every continent and every part of the planet and fight for their right to gain the popularity, fans and even paycheques. These fighters are “produced” in the gyms.

We can consider the modern MMA as a young daughter of other kinds of martial arts but there are already hundreds of MMA gyms, associations or clubs out there. Lot of them claim they are the best, lot of them prepare very good fighters and all of them train hard and have fun. But is there any notable top MMA gym near your location? Can you reach or even train with some of the top 1000 MMA fighters? You can find out now…

As I already mentioned, there are lot of MMA gyms and I was not able to list them all. I had to use the selection, so I based it on these criteria:

1. They attend the real MMA contests such as UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator, etc. 2. Their fighter/fighters, who are listed as notable had a fight at least in 2009 or 2010. In fact, I was able to gather info about 993 MMA fighters. 3. They are “real” – some associations are only management companies, but the fighters train in their home cities etc. 4. There was a possibility to gain at least basic information about the gym and the fighters –I was not able to list some of them due to lack of info and for some gyms I had to choose only 1 location out of several.

I have to say that the TOP 120 MMA gyms is not the authoritative and definitive list and the destination may not be 100% precise. In some cases google maps positioning system is not reliable.

But apart of that, there is as much information as I was able to get and if the map can be useful for you, your friends or your blog, than I think that good job has been done :).

Enjoy.