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#3 Takanori Gomi
A former champion in Japan’s Shooto promotion, Takanori Gomi was already widely recognised as one of the world’s best 155lbers when he signed with PRIDE in early 2004, and ‘The Fireball Kid’ quickly shot to fame with seven straight wins over tough opposition. By the end of 2005, he’d won PRIDE’s inaugural Lightweight title, and few could argue that he was the best 155lber on the planet.
An upset loss to Marcus Aurelio followed at the start of 2006, but by the end of the year, Gomi had regained his slot as the world’s best Lightweight by reeling off three straight wins and avenging that loss. But as 2007 began, things got strange.
Firstly, ‘The Fireball Kid’ was beaten by former UFC Welterweight Nick Diaz in a tremendous fight, but also one that seemed to suggest Gomi had begun to rely on his heavy hands a little too much at the expense of his overall game. And when PRIDE was bought out by Zuffa, rather than move to the UFC, Gomi headed over to Japan’s Sengoku promotion – where his form suddenly fell off, resulting in a pair of losses to unheralded opponents.
Gomi bounced back with two wins in 2009, and that was enough to earn him a UFC deal, but ‘The Fireball Kid’ that emerged into the Octagon just wasn’t the same fighter everyone knew and loved in PRIDE. He showed one flash of his former greatness – a brutal 2010 KO of Tyson Griffin – but outside of that, Gomi seemed slower, didn’t weather punishment as well as he once had, and his ground game seemed to have regressed too.
When the Japanese star’s UFC career finally ended in 2017, his overall record in the Octagon stood at 4-9, and his tenure ended with a painful five-fight losing streak. Had Gomi’s prime come a decade later, he could have become the UFC’s first Japanese champion, but as it was, UFC fans missed out on his greatness entirely.
