For a company that is always promoting the next big event, the new star on the rise, and what is to come, it spends one night honoring its history.
The UFC Hall of Fame ceremony has undergone significant advancements, evolving from a presentation inside the Octagon to the Fan Expo and undergoing a revamp a decade ago into its standalone event, similar to WWE’s version.
Like WWE, the inductees are determined internally without any voting process or criteria and lean toward fighters in good standing with the organization. The modern presentation, including various wings and a category for individual fights, is credited to the work of former executive Ant Evans. This change in presentation coincided with an attempt to shore up a gaping hole with the exclusion of Frank Shamrock. The sides got close to an agreement, but the deep-seated rivalry between Shamrock and Dana White could not be overcome, and Shamrock remains a major omission in the Hall of Fame.
For better or worse, this is the best (and only) version of an MMA Hall of Fame in existence with the promotion that dominates the market and controls so much of the sport’s history, Unlike boxing and professional wrestling, it’s a sport that rarely focuses on its history and with a constant churn of fans and creation of new eras of its base, the figures of yesterday become distant memories. Forget the stars of the SEG era, we are in a period where even giants like Georges St-Pierre, BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, and Fedor Emelianenko are becoming cursory figures among the modern audience.
There is no better example of a figure that has been ousted from UFC’s history than Randy Couture. Although the two-division weight class champion was inducted nearly twenty years ago, he is persona non grata today and largely exorcised from the company’s history. Instead of being the promotion’s Babe Ruth figure, he is akin to Bruno Sammartino when he was on the outs with the WWE.
Couture, like Tito Ortiz, understood their values and would fight the company for their fair share while seeing the growth forming through their contributions. It was easy for Ortiz to be cast as the villain despite many valid criticisms that are much more mainstream today, but in 2005, he was considered a malcontent and cast as the one “ducking” Chuck Liddell when he knew the two deserved more for that big fight. Couture was the opposite, dubbed “Captain America” by Joe Rogan and defying father time in 2003 with upset victories against Liddell and Ortiz. When the company launched the Ultimate Fighter in 2005, it was Couture and Liddell who spearheaded the series as the respective coaches and fought at the season’s conclusion, with the UFC surging in popularity. After a brief retirement, he returned in March 2007 and provided one of the most memorable wins in the company’s history when he beat Tim Sylvia for the UFC heavyweight gold, capped off with a memorable countdown from the audience in Columbus, Ohio that night as the clock hit zero in the fifth round, signaling Couture’s latest improbability.
When the fight began, Couture could control his outcome, but behind the scenes, he had less success. A rift was always in play and came to a head that year as Couture announced his resignation from the UFC in the hopes of leaving his contract and pursuing a big fight with Fedor Emelianenko. The UFC had other plans, and after a year of tumult, Couture returned to the UFC for a fight with Brock Lesnar and five additional bouts before his 2011 retirement.
Couture resumed an affiliation with the UFC as an analyst during the start of the Fox partnership, but after accepting a role on Spike TV’s “Fight Master” reality series, Dana White severed ties permanently and went to such lengths as banning Couture from cornering his son, Ryan. The ice has not thawed as Couture remains a fixture on the PFL broadcast while UFC is left to seek Couture’s contributions through the search function on Fight Pass.
The four wings are dedicated to the Pioneers (those who fought before the introduction of the unified rules in November 2000), Modern (after November 2000), Fights, and Contributors.
It is the latter wing, which has recognized lesser names with significant impact, including past inductions of the late Jeff Blatnick, Art Davie, Marc Ratner, and will add producer Craig Piligian this year. It’s a portion of the Hall of Fame that could go much deeper with figures such as John McCarthy as an obvious choice for inclusion.
The pioneer additions for 2025 will be represented by Vitor Belfort and Mark Kerr, two candidates where it is impossible to discuss their careers without the subject of drug use, which is just going to be a reality across the sport’s history.
Belfort had the appropriate nickname of “The Phenom”, bursting onto the scene as a teenager and initially marketed with the “Gracie” surname, despite a lack of any type of biological connection to the family. He was rushed to the UFC by his second pro fight at the age of nineteen and blitzed past Tra Telligman and Scott Ferrozzo in two minutes total at UFC 12 in Dothan, Alabama. He provided one of the greatest highlight reels in the sport’s history, becoming a favorite of future owner Lorenzo Fertitta, but also the poster boy for the TRT era of the sport. Belfort was prescribed testosterone replacement therapy and allowed usage by the various commissions, but struck people with the conflict of why he had low testosterone to begin with. It became a frustrating cat-and-mouse game with fighters transforming in front of fans’ eyes, with no greater example than Belfort and his 2013 campaign of vicious knockouts.
Belfort won the UFC light heavyweight title in January 2004 after cutting the eyelid of Randy Couture in the first round of their UFC 46 contest, forcing a halt to the fight, and Belfort was declared the winner. He lost the title back to Couture in their rematch later that year. Belfort would earn three more championship fights in the UFC over the next eleven years, but failed to win another championship in the promotion before retiring.
Kerr is a unique pick, which is a circumstantial one as a movie on his life is being released this year, where he is played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who will induct Kerr. During the dark ages of the sport, he was a bright light at heavyweight with an NCAA Division I championship under his belt. Kerr fell to the increasing demands of a physical sport and an inability to curb those habits in his downtime, falling into a deep hole physically and emotionally, as outlined in the 2002 documentary, which was the impetus for the film. While the documentary ends with the Pride Grand Prix in 2000, Kerr’s career continued with a less-than-stellar 3-10 record over the next decade and faded from the sport, never realizing the potential he was believed to exhibit.
Amanda Nunes and Robbie Lawler will be the additions to the Modern Wing with the greatest female fighter the sport has seen, and one of the greatest action fighters of any era.
It is a strange set of circumstances where Nunes has been retired for years but is now staging a comeback for a fight with new bantamweight champion and former training partner, Kayla Harrison. Nunes’ inclusion is a slam dunk, rising from Strikeforce and absorbed after the UFC’s purchase, where she was considered a very good fighter but plagued by cardio problems late in fights. This was typified in her loss to Cat Zingano at UFC 178 in September 201,4 and was a crossroads fight where Nunes would rebound and didn’t lose another fight for more than seven years.
With wins against Olympic silver medalist Sara McMann and future champion Valentina Shevchenko, she earned a title fight with Miesha Tate, which ended up headlining UFC 200. Nunes was so dominant that night that it overwhelmed Tate and didn’t allow the fight to ever reach a shred of doubt. Five months later, she placed a stamp on the division becoming hers when she obliterated Ronda Rousey and sent the former champ into permanent retirement. Nunes would dominate the bantamweight division while moonlighting at featherweight and becoming its one (and only) champion. She suffered an upset loss at the hands of Julianna Pena in December 2021, but like GSP and Matt Serra, avenged the loss before retiring two years ago.
Lawler had a lot of similarities to Belfort as he started his UFC campaign at the age of twenty and became a stalwart in the embryonic days of Zuffa. After back-to-back losses to Nick Diaz and Evan Tanner, he left the UFC for nearly a decade and became a “gun for hire” for organizations with a ring and a paycheck. He bounced around promotions, landing on CBS for Elite XC and Strikeforce, where it seemed his motivation and interest were waning. It was exemplified by a famous shot of Lawler falling asleep at a press conference and a belief that his best days were behind him.
It was a semi-surprise that the UFC brought Lawler back in 2013 after the dissolution of Strikeforce and paired him with Josh Koscheck. Lawler was cutting back to welterweight for this UFC campaign and stopped Koscheck in the opening round, which was considered an upset. He followed with wins against Bobby Voelker and Rory MacDonald to earn a fight with Johny Hendricks for the vacant welterweight title, which Georges St-Pierre had abdicated. The fight came down to the final minute of the fifth round, where Hendricks executed a takedown off the fence, and the look on Lawler’s face acknowledged that he let it slip.
Instead of becoming forgotten, Lawler ripped off wins against Jake Ellenberger and Matt Brown, earning a rematch with Hendricks and striking gold in December 2014, setting the stage for two of the biggest fights of his career. First was the rematch with MacDonald at UFC 189 in July 2015, an all-time classic and one where neither fighter was the same afterward. The images and moments between rounds are the stuff of legend and exemplify the beauty and the horror of the sport all in one.
Lawler left with the championship and followed with another epic against Carlos Condit at UFC 195 in January 2016. Many believed Condit won the fight, but it was the champion who earned the split victory. Where the audience was not split, was that this fight clinched “Fight of the Year” on the second day of the year.
The clock struck Midnight for Lawler in July, losing the title to Tyron Woodley and sending Lawler into a spiral, including a four-fight losing skid between 2017 – 2020.
Lawler was one of the few to get a proper sendoff, knocking out Niko Price in thirty-eight seconds at UFC 290 in July 2023 and retiring. His legacy will not be as the top welterweight of all-time but one of the best pure action and “game day” fighters the sport has seen, who made a remarkable comeback for his second UFC stint and greatly overachieved by winning a championship that late into his career and leaving behind a catalog of fights reserved as the best in UFC history.
This year’s contributor is Craig Piligian, the producer of The Ultimate Fighter, and this award is as much a celebration of the launch of the boom period as it is of Piligian. It has been documented thoroughly, but the landmark series had many obstacles to navigate from the initial desire of Dana White to have a series akin to Tuesday Night Fights or today’s Contender Series, rather than the reality show format. The concept was initially pitched as one based around White as the promoter, and then, you had no networks besides Spike willing to take a chance on the series, and even providing the airtime, would not finance it. Adding to this was the blessing of WWE and Vince McMahon, which was reportedly necessary for TUF to air after Raw on Mondays, which was crucial to the early success of the series. It was the series that built the foundation using cable and turned those viewers into pay-per-view buyers, and allowed Zuffa to realize a profit after years of heavy losses and flirting with a sale of the promotion.
The UFC 236 title fight between Israel Adesanya and Kelvin Gastelum is being added to the Fight Wing. The April 2019 bout was for the interim version of the title and set up Adesanya challenging Robert Whittaker later that year. For twenty-five minutes, the two engaged in a war, which was the defining fight of Gastelum’s career and among the top-tier performances from Adesanya. While rightfully acknowledged as a great fight, it only shared Fight of the Night honors that night, as the main event between Dustin Poirier and Max Holloway was also bestowed that honor.
The UFC will also honor Charles Oliveira with the Forrest Griffin Community Award for his work with ICBronxs, which allows youth the opportunity to receive free education and jiu-jitsu classes. Past recipients include Dustin Poirier, Max Holloway, Giga Chikadze, Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira & Antônio Rogério Nogueira, and Beneil Dariush.
The UFC Hall of Fame ceremony will stream at 10 p.m. ET tonight on Fight Pass.
