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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion, Kamaru Usman (The Nigerian Nightmare) will end this year as the best fighter on the overall chart for the martial arts sport.
Megasporrtsarena.com, however, reports that the award is not issued by the UFC itself, but by an independent news medium in the United States and is officially tagged 2021 Yahoo Sports MMA Fighter of the Year.
This much has been revealed by Yahoo Sports’ combat columnist, Kevin Iole, who noted that Usman is on the prized fighters that ensure the UFC’s best year business is at the highest level in its close to 30-year history.
Iole stated at length: Kamaru Usman is the clear, simple and easy choice as the 2021 Yahoo Sports MMA Fighter of the Year, despite the fact that there are so many legitimate candidates.
Usman went 3-0 in 2021 and did it by beating the best of the best of the best. At UFC 258 on Feb. 13, Usman knocked out Gilbert Burns in the second round of what was expected to be a pitched battle.
Instead, it was a one-sided mauling as Usman exerted his dominance early. He returned at UFC 261 on April 24 and put Jorge Masvidal to sleep just 62 seconds into the second rounds with a frightening combination.
Going into the fight, the conventional wisdom that it would be Masvidal’s striking against Usman’s wrestling, but Usman out-struck Masvidal and knocked him out cold.
Then, he capped the year by defeating arch-rival Colby Covington for a second time at UFC 268 on Nov. 6. Usman won a decision and overcame a bit of adversity when Covington hurt him with strikes.
Given the quality of opposition, the resounding way he won the fights and his activity level, Usman is an easy choice as Fighter of the Year.
Lightweight champion Charles Oliveira would have been the winner in most other years. He won the belt on May 15 at UFC 262 with a second-round TKO of Michael Chandler in one of the year’s most compelling bouts.
He was an underdog in his first defense, when he met Dustin Poirier at UFC 269 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Dec. 11. Poirier was coming off back-to-back one-sided victories over Conor McGregor and was ranked No. 2 in the Yahoo Sports pound-for-pound rankings at the time.
Oliveira survived a rocky first round, dominated Poirier in the second and submitted him early in the third.
It was a breathtaking performance that was his 10th consecutive win dating back to UFC 225, when he submitted Clay Guida on June 9, 2018. But despite that, it wasn’t enough for him to surpass Usman.
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