Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Punchers

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8. Takanori Gomi

Japan’s Gomi is one of the best lighter-weight fighters in the sport’s history. He came up in the old Shooto organization and strung together 14 straight wins to begin his career, almost all on the strength of his outstanding athleticism, strong wrestling and sharp submission repertoire. Following consecutive losses to Joachim Hansen and all-time great B.J. Penn, however, Gomi began to showcase a sprawl-and-brawl game predicated on the ridiculous power in his hands.

A former baseball pitcher, Gomi had an incredible innate understanding of weight transfer that translated perfectly to winging brutal punches with both hands. He was far from a one-note brawler, however, using a solid jab and mixing up shots to the body and head to draw his opponent’s hands out of position. He phase-shifted beautifully, landing hard strikes off clinch breaks and takedowns.

All of that translated to a stretch between 2004 and 2006 that saw him become one of the most fearsome punchers in MMA and easily the scariest the sport had ever seen at the lighter weights to that point. His knockouts of Jens Pulver, Luiz Azeredo and Hayato Sakurai cemented that status, and were it not for a brutal stretch between 2007 and 2010, Gomi might be much higher on this list. He has recently reinvented himself as a volume striker with some power and has managed to stick around with that approach, but the days of “The Fireball Kid” slinging carefree leather seem to be gone forever.

Number 7 » He serves as an excellent reminder that the puncher’s art is about more than slinging hands and that slick technique creates unconsciousness just as effectively as a mighty swing.