6. Paul Daley
The longtime world-class striker comes in at No. 6. Despite a career spanning an amazing 64 MMA fights and over 19 years, the scouting report on Daley was always the same. He was a fantastic striker, one of the best the sport has ever seen, with one of its all-time greatest left hooks: a blisteringly fast, tight, technical, powerful, and laser-accurate shot that knocked out countless foes. On the flipside, he never liked or was especially good at grappling, which was always his Achilles' heel. He did slightly improve over the years, but this was counteracted by grappling in MMA as a whole getting better over the same period. His career saw highs and lows, and pure excitement. Among the lows, many will recall him striking Josh Koscheck after their fight, leading to his ban from the UFC. Personally though, I think of him losing a one-sided decision at Bellator 199 to Jon Fitch, who utterly confounded Daley by grappling him into knots. A frustrated Daley loudly booed in the middle of the fight, with Fitch draped over him!
Outside of his encounters with top welterweight wrestlers like Fitch and Koscheck, Daley had plenty of success, knocking out Duane Ludwig, Mark Weir, John Alessio, Martin Kampmann, Dustin Hazelett, Scott Smith, Brennan Ward, Lorenz Larkin and Saad Awad, and defeating Jorge Masvidal, Dave Strasser and Erick Silva by decision. It's an impressive list of victims, many of whom were top 10 when Daley beat them or shortly afterwards. Even Daley's defeats that weren't simply him being out-grappled were often great fun, like his one-round battle against Nick Diaz, where each man took turns badly hurting the other, with Diaz finally winning the war of attrition. Daley had a lot of success and produced a lot of highlights while never reaching the top, but that's good enough to make sixth on this particular list.
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