Sherdog’s Top 10: Most Aggressive Fighters

---

4. Matt Brown

Ohio’s Brown might be the purest example of an aggressive pressure fighter in mixed martial arts today. A monster moving forward, he offers nothing off his back foot, and without his willingness to walk through his opponent’s shots in order to land his own, Brown would hardly be a noteworthy fighter. With his exceptional aggressiveness and a hefty dose of technical skill, Brown has become one of the most dangerous welterweights in the world and easily one of the most exciting.

A loss to Seth Baczynski in November 2011 dropped Brown’s record in the UFC to 5-5, and he looked like an entertaining journeyman who perhaps did not have the skills to compete at the highest levels of the sport. However, seven consecutive wins, all but one of them devastating stoppages, put him near the top of the welterweight division and earned him a fight against Robbie Lawler. A title shot was on the line, and it symbolized Brown’s incredible turnaround. How did he do it?

Paradoxically, Brown owes his success to both modulating his always-aggressive nature and then turning it up even higher, all the while improving his skills. Where he had once panicked when the fight hit the ground, Brown’s greater confidence in his grappling left him less vulnerable to submissions in transition. On the flip side, he became even more relentless on the feet, pushing his opponents backwards at every opportunity with long right hands and high kicks to cut them off and force them to the fence. In the clinch, he began to unleash an ever-more-devastating arsenal of knees and elbows, taking his foes to pieces with slashing shots to the face and body.

Few fighters can match Brown’s footwork and skill as a pressure fighter, and his strong commitment to aggression and seeming lack of concern with what his opponent can throw back at him makes him all the more effective. This was not something Brown was born to do but instead the product of years of work and improvement.

Number 3 » Two things defined the Chute Boxe style: powerful punching and fight-ending clinch work. An unchecked streak of violence and aggression made both of those viable strategies, and in his case, they were backed up with freakish, next-level athleticism.