The popularity of Mixed Martial Arts as a sport is growing more and more these days. Lot of people can name at least several MMA fighters, the MMA maniacs can list even hundred or two hundreds of them. The popularity is a magical and most important word for all MMA promotion companies, fighters and also fans. So who is the most popular MMA fighter ? And who is the second ?

It is really hard to determine, which fighter is the best – there are several weight categories so we can only set the best fighter for each category. But with the popularity – there is a possibility to count it. Today in the age of social and communities focused websites the fans are gathering around the groups and fanpages of their favorite MMA fighter. So we only have to research these websites to get the list of popular fighters and find out, who is the most popular MMA fighter.

As for the research, I believe we can focus on the biggest social networking website – which is Facebook. With 400.000.000 registerd users Facebook is dominating the web and it’s growth is still very fast.

For the list of 100 Top MMA fighters sorted by the Facebook popularity there were only several criteria settled:
1. The fighter has to be relevant, not absolutely local fighter – that means that he has to be listed on the Wikipedia, which is quite trustable source.
2. On the Facebook, there was no distinction between the fanpage or group – only the number of fans was important.
3. The fanpage / group has to be directly focused on the fighter – not a general MMA or UFC fanpage.

I believe that with this list we can have an overview of the actual popularity of MMA fighters. And the results are here: The most popular MMA fighter is Georges St-Pierre with more than 270.000 fans worldwide. On the second place is very popular Anderson Silva with more than 120.000 fans. The gap between the first and the second place is enourmous. On the third place we have Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson, with more than 90.000 fans. I believe we all know these folks very well, now we know they ARE most popular. The numbers of fans can slightly change because the fanpages are quite vital and new fans are incoming every day or even every hour. The rest of top 100 MMA fighters can be found in the table with the number of fans recorded in the middle of May 2010 and with direct links to Facebook pages.

I hope you will enjoy the list, join your favorite MMA fighter on Facebook and support him your way. And do not forget to join my Facebook fanpage – the MMA Judo :) .

# MMA Fighter Number of Facebook fans Facebook page link
1 Georges St-Pierre 271584 Visit-click here
2 Anderson Silva 124253 Visit-click here
3 Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson 89900 Visit-click here
4 Fedor Emelianenko 87361 Visit-click here
5 Forrest Griffin 64047 Visit-click here
6 Randy "The Natural" Couture 54493 Visit-click here
7 Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell 52335 Visit-click here
8 Quinton "Rampage" Jackson 47580 Visit-click here
9 Frank Mir 36134 Visit-click here
10 Tito Ortiz 29548 Visit-click here
11 Urijah Faber 24903 Visit-click here
12 Bas Rutten 23082 Visit-click here
13 Brock Lesnar 22372 Visit-click here
14 Matt Hughes 22316 Visit-click here
15 Brandon Vera 21741 Visit-click here
16 Rashad Evans 21489 Visit-click here
17 Dan Henderson 17853 Visit-click here
18 Mauricio "Shogun" Rua 15958 Visit-click here
19 Royce Gracie 15194 Visit-click here
20 Wanderlei Silva 15131 Visit-click here
21 Rickson Gracie 14093 Visit-click here
22 Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira 12816 Visit-click here
23 B.J. Penn 12402 Visit-click here
24 Helio Gracie 11574 Visit-click here
25 Bobby Lashley 11037 Visit-click here
26 Cheick Kongo 10209 Visit-click here
27 Diego Sanchez 10154 Visit-click here
28 Jon Jones 9620 Visit-click here
29 Jake Shields 9461 Visit-click here
30 Jérôme Le Banner 9264 Visit-click here
31 Cain Velasquez 9121 Visit-click here
32 Dan Hardy 8976 Visit-click here
33 Houston "The Assassin" Alexander 8446 Visit-click here
34 Ryan "Darth" Bader 8080 Visit-click here
35 Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović 8075 Visit-click here
36 Kenny Florian 8007 Visit-click here
37 Joe Lauzon 7446 Visit-click here
38 Ian Freeman 7347 Visit-click here
39 Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski 6833 Visit-click here
40 Ken Shamrock 6649 Visit-click here
41 Cung Le 6623 Visit-click here
42 Renzo Gracie 6406 Visit-click here
43 Thiago Silva 6316 Visit-click here
44 Frank Shamrock 6292 Visit-click here
45 Nick Diaz 5377 Visit-click here
46 Bob Sapp 5356 Visit-click here
47 Jens Pulver 5287 Visit-click here
48 Clay Guida 5225 Visit-click here
49 Gegard Mousasi 5046 Visit-click here
50 Roy Nelson 4876 Visit-click here
51 Jeremy Horn 4600 Visit-click here
52 Mike Brown 4515 Visit-click here
53 Frank Trigg 4478 Visit-click here
54 Rolles Gracie 4452 Visit-click here
55 Kazushi "Gracie Hunter" Sakuraba 4374 Visit-click here
56 Gary Goodridge 4325 Visit-click here
57 Miguel Torres 4168 Visit-click here
58 Genki Sudo 4120 Visit-click here
59 Roger Huerta 3786 Visit-click here
60 Matt Hamill 3686 Visit-click here
61 Alistair Overeem 3617 Visit-click here
62 Shonie "Mr. International" Carter 3570 Visit-click here
63 Joe Stevenson 3464 Visit-click here
64 Jess Liaudin 3378 Visit-click here
65 Evan Tanner 3302 Visit-click here
66 Marcus Davis 3151 Visit-click here
67 Rich Franklin 3128 Visit-click here
68 Gabriel Gonzaga 2980 Visit-click here
69 Jonathan Goulet 2957 Visit-click here
70 Roger Gracie 2945 Visit-click here
71 Alessio Sakara 2810 Visit-click here
72 Thiago "Pitbull" Alves 2668 Visit-click here
73 Jon Fitch 2647 Visit-click here
74 Mark "The Hammer" Coleman 2583 Visit-click here
75 Jeff Joslin 2337 Visit-click here
76 John Alessio 2286 Visit-click here
77 Phillipe Nover 2240 Visit-click here
78 Eddie "The Silent Assassin" Alvarez 2180 Visit-click here
79 Lee Murray 2166 Visit-click here
80 Michael "The Count" Bisping 2164 Visit-click here
81 Jason MacDonald 2086 Visit-click here
82 Krzysztof Soszynski 2032 Visit-click here
83 Ryan Gracie 1997 Visit-click here
84 Heath Herring 1972 Visit-click here
85 Ricardo Arona 1969 Visit-click here
86 Semmy Schilt 1965 Visit-click here
87 Joachim Hansen 1921 Visit-click here
88 Chris Leben 1866 Visit-click here
89 Mark Munoz 1866 Visit-click here
90 Siyar Bahadurzada 1833 Visit-click here
91 "Ruthless" Robbie Lawler 1819 Visit-click here
92 Yoshihiro Akiyama 1789 Visit-click here
93 Keith Jardine 1733 Visit-click here
94 Josh Koscheck 1695 Visit-click here
95 Matt Serra 1652 Visit-click here
96 Todd Duffee 1642 Visit-click here
97 Ido Pariente 1640 Visit-click here
98 Spencer Fisher 1623 Visit-click here
99 Sean Sherk 1618 Visit-click here
100 Tank Abbott 1530 Visit-click here


Radovan Judoka