The 10 best fighters to never fight in the UFC

#9 Sergei Kharitonov

In his prime, Sergei Kharitonov was one of the best Heavyweights in the world

During the early to mid 2000's, PRIDE could claim to have the majority of the world’s top Heavyweights on its roster. The trio of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko Cro Cop were widely considered to be the 'holy trinity' of the big men, but right behind them was Sergei Kharitonov. While the majority of all those Heavyweights eventually made their way into the UFC, Kharitonov never did.

It's quite easy to see why a UFC run never came about for the big Russian; he was a revelation during his early PRIDE days, beating the likes of Semmy Schilt and Fabricio Werdum, but he hit a slide in 2006, losing to Alistair Overeem and Aleksander Emelianenko, and when PRIDE was bought out by the UFC a year later, it appeared that Kharitonov's best days were behind him and he was never signed.

The idea that he was finished wasn’t really true, though. Sure, he never looked as good as he’d done in PRIDE circa 2004/05 again, but he still picked up some excellent wins, avenging his loss to Overeem in 2007 and beating Andrei Arlovski in StrikeForce in 2011, for instance. Currently he’s signed with Bellator, and after a disastrous KO loss to begin his run there, he’s now on a 5-fight win streak and recently knocked out Roy Nelson.

At his peak, Kharitonov was technically one of the best boxers in the Heavyweight division, and hit like a ton of bricks to boot. He’s never held gold in a major promotion but that definitely doesn’t stop him from belonging on this list – had he signed with the UFC in 2005, for instance, he'd have been a shoe-in to claim the Heavyweight title there.