The 10 best fighters to never fight in the UFC

#3 Shinya Aoki

Shinya Aoki was one of the most feared grapplers in the Lightweight division

One of the most polarising fighters in MMA history, it's easy to write Shinya Aoki off as a product of everything bad about Japanese MMA, right down to strange matchmaking and some arguably biased officiating during his period in DREAM. But simply taking a look at his list of victims is enough to qualify him for this list and to place him highly, too.

For all of his faults – he was a pretty terrible striker and his game seemingly didn't translate at all when he briefly came to the US for fights in StrikeForce and Bellator – Aoki was a phenomenal grappler at his peak, able to trap even great fighters like Joachim Hansen and Eddie Alvarez with his submission game, an attack that relied mainly on his insane flexibility and creativity.

At his peak, Aoki went unbeaten for a period of three years, winning a total of 12 fights in a row using those slick grappling skills. And when he won the DREAM Lightweight title in 2009, avenging a loss to Joachim Hansen in the process, he was probably the biggest star in Japanese MMA as the popularity of the sport there began to slowly wane.

Accusations of poor sportsmanship dogged Aoki throughout his career – he broke the arms of Keith Wisniewski and Mizuto Hirota with vicious submissions and both incidents could probably have been avoided – but only a fool would deny his effectiveness in the ring.

Even if he probably would’ve struggled in the UFC due to the different rules and the cage, you simply cannot sniff at wins over Hansen, Alvarez, Tatsuya Kawajiri, ‘Shaolin’ Ribeiro and Gesias Cavalcante. For me, Aoki is the best Lightweight to never fight in the UFC, period.