The 5 best UFC men's flyweight fights of all time, ranked

Whether we’re talking about mainstream sports, combat sports or sports entertainment, the spectacle of large athletes long has been a promotional tool to help draw in casual crowds and create almost larger-than-life standards that helped set the bar to where it is today.

It’s why “the baddest man on the planet” is determined within the heavyweight division and why title fights on cards are typically prioritized from largest to smallest – unless there’s an outlier like Conor McGregor on the card, of course.

The unfortunate byproduct of this traditional format, however, is that lighter-weight fighters, who typically are more technical and arguably more entertaining, often get under-appreciated and sometimes lost in the shuffle.

In fact, the UFC historically has struggled with whichever division falls on the bottom of its proverbial totem pole. Whether we’re talking about the UFC’s three failed attempts to establish its lightweight division, which now is one of the deepest divisions going on two decades, or its self-induced flyweight purge that started around 2018, the organization has not exactly handled these divisions with care.

Even now, the UFC matchmakers still fail to regularly promote lighter divisions like flyweight on their main cards, usually relegating fights at 125 pounds to the prelims. The UFC may be headlining with a fun flyweight fight between Kai Kara-France and Amir Alabizi this week, but that will be the first non-title flyweight headliner since Brandon Moreno fought Sergio Pettis in August 2017 – more than half a decade ago.

With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to look back at this first decade of flyweight affairs under the UFC banner and rank my top five.

Without further ado …