The 10 greatest UFC fights of the last decade (2010-2019)
The decade between the start of 2010 and the end of 2019 has treated us to some truly exceptional fights in the UFC’s Octagon, with every year producing at least a handful of classics.
With just a handful of days remaining in the decade, here’s a list of the best fights of the last ten years – one for each year – with clashes between some of the UFC’s biggest stars amongst the selection.
2010: Anderson Silva vs Chael Sonnen – UFC 117
The opening year of the decade was filled with tremendous fights, with other bouts like Brock Lesnar vs Shane Carwin, Chris Leben vs Yoshihiro Akiyama and Alan Belcher vs Patrick Cote all lighting up the Octagon, but standing head and shoulders above the rest was Anderson Silva’s epic title defense against top contender Chael Sonnen.
Silva had never been beaten in the UFC in 11 fights prior to this clash, but Sonnen came into the fight talking a ridiculous amount of trash, promising to be the one to end the title reign of ‘The Spider’. And to everyone’s surprise, it looked like he was going to pull it off, as he landed huge shots on the Brazilian standing before taking him down to beat him up for essentially five straight rounds.
By the fifth round Silva was looking like a beaten man; the most offense he’d had during the fight were some elbows from his back that had cut Sonnen but hadn’t really hurt him. Somehow though, with just under two minutes to go, ‘The Spider’ threw a triangle choke up from nowhere, caught Sonnen in the submission, and forced him to submit.
It was a comeback for the ages to end one of the greatest title fights in UFC history, and was comfortably the best fight of 2010.