The Best 11 Fighters That UFC REJECTED & Wouldn’t Sign

It’s no secret that almost every MMA fighter on the planet wants a contract with the UFC. Whilst they are certainly not a perfect company, for the most part, they are able to pay fighters far more money than any other promotion on the planet. As UFC is a global company, their audience reaches every continent, so they can generate more money at each event.

In addition to this, the UFC has the strongest roster of fighters in the world too. Some promotions may have a few star names, but outside of the top few fighters, each weight division is significantly weaker the deeper it goes.

UFC has very different rules around the exclusivity of fighting under other promotions (unless you are Conor McGregor), as well as a ban on non-affiliated sponsorships. This restricts fighters to fighting only in the UFC and wearing exactly what they are told to. With that being said, this is a deal that works out most of the time, since the average fighter is very happy with this agreement.

As a result of this, UFC often takes the cream of the crop from various other promotions. This can happen when a contract expires, a promotion feeds fighters to the UFC on a pre-existing agreement or a buyout.

However, some fighters never quite make it to the UFC for a variety of reasons. These can vary from backstage politics, personal issues with a fighter, contractual obligations, and financial expectations from both parties not being met. In this case, the UFC and/or fighter choose to reject each other and stay with their current promotion. This is a fairly rare occurrence but does happen from time to time.

The Best Fighters Who Rejected Or Were Rejected By The UFC

Paulo Filho

After PRIDE became defunct, Paulo Filho signed with the WEC and claimed that Dana White had no interest in signing him since he would beat the entire UFC roster.

As things would turn out, it looks like Dana White made the correct decision, but for very different reasons. Filho spiraled out of control and missed weight for his WEC title fight. The WEC was absorbed by UFC, with Filho being cut due to his drug problems, combined with his career looking like it was about to become a car crash.

If Filho had chosen a different lifestyle he would very likely have been picked up by the UFC and been a decent contender at light heavyweight. However, due to cocaine and sleeping pill addictions, he was rejected.

Aleksandr Emelianenko

Even though Aleksandr has never quite achieved the heights of his brother, he is still an extremely accomplished fighter and was considered to be the gatekeeper of PRIDE’s elite fighters.

In interviews with Russian state TV, Emelianenko claimed that he was simply too good for the UFC and they didn’t want a Russian champion, so weren’t interested in signing him. Emelianenko has never fought in the USA and rumors circulated that he had Hepatitis B. These rumors became more believable when KSW would not let Emelianenko fight since they discovered he actually had Hepatitis C.

It is clear then, that Emelianenko won’t be fighting in the UFC or USA any time soon.

Sergei Kharitonov

Under rather unfortunate circumstances for Sergei Kharitonov, he was continually rejected by the UFC due to his involvement with Golden Glory. The aforementioned Golden Glory are a sports management company that negotiates fighter’s payments and are deeply involved in their finances.

For Kharitonov, this was a little much for the UFC who didn’t like the idea of Golden Glory being paid the full fee before Kharitonov got anything. This was furthered by the fact that many US athletic commissions will not allow such a relationship since it opens the door for fighters to not get any money and become a sport like boxing.

Despite UFC taking over the entire Strikeforce roster including Kharitonov, he was instantly cut due to his relationship with Golden Glory.

Mamed Khalidov

The Russian born, Polish citizen Mamed Khalidov is a superstar in his adopted country. As the poster boy of KSW, Khalidov has a 35-7 record and is well recognized as one of the best ever Polish fighters.

Despite having such a good record and wins over many ex-UFC fighters, Khalidov has not really been considered by the UFC since Poland is a relatively small market. KSW also get 50 000+ crowds at every event, as well as millions of viewers, so it would not really make financial sense for either party to send Khalidov to the UFC.

If Khalidov was living in another country, it’s likely he would have joined the UFC a long time ago, but he has a stranglehold on the niche Polish MMA market and seems to do very well from this arrangement.

Melvin Manhoef

An extremely powerful and explosive kickboxer, Melvin Manhoef has career wins against the likes of heavyweight Mark Hunt with a solid record of 32-15. As MMA fans will know, Manhoef is a particularly exciting fighter since his fights almost never end with a judge’s decision, making him very useful for marketing fights.

In the early 2010s Manhoef had been spotted talking to Dana White and both parties were believed to be interesting in signing a deal. However, Manhoef simply lost a lot of fights at the wrong time and nothing came to fruition. This was a shame for Manhoef since he is not the best fighter ever, but certainly was good enough to be given a UFC shot.

Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal

King Mo has always been a great fighter and has career highlight wins over the likes of Gegard Mouassi and Cheick Kongo. Always near the top of his division, King Mo was the Strikeforce champion and was pretty much all but signed to the UFC in terms of accomplishments.

However, when he tested positive for drostanolone, the UFC lost interest since they began to collaborate with USADA just a couple of years after this.

Ben Askren (later signed)

Perhaps the strangest beef ever in MMA was between Ben Askren and Dana White. It’s well known that Ben Askren is a little off the wall, but a fairly likable man with no real controversies in his career. What makes this so strange then was Dana White’s disdain and hate of Ben Askren for seemingly no reason.

Dana White has said the following “when ambien can’t sleep it takes ben Askren” and “I’d rather watch two flies f***”. In return, Askren has referred to Dana White as a “scumbag” which is likely why he spent the majority of his career in promotions such as ONE rather than the UFC.

Eventually, this all got put to one side when ONE essentially traded Ben Askren in order to sign Demetrious Johnson. Afterward, some of the most awkward press conferences between Askren and White ensued which were not helped by Askren’s complete lack of self awareness where he spoke over the boss several times.

Funnily enough, this is one of the few times Dana White managed to bury the hatchet and sign a fighter for the good of the promotion.

Shinya Aoki

A super technical and entertaining grappler, Shinya Aoki has spent the majority of his career in Asia, only venturing to the United States for rare fights in Bellator and Strikeforce. Aiko was not at all a boring wrestler and has an outstanding MMA record of 47-9 with submission wins on his record such as flying triangles and gogoplatas.

At one point it looked like there would be a cross-promotion superfight between BJ Penn and Aoki, but for unknown reasons, this fight never took place.

The UFC also made one last attempt to sign Aoki to a standard 3-fight deal in 2013, but Aoki rejected the UFC since ONE were paying him a lot more money at the time. Whether this is still the case now, nobody knows, but Aoki is one of the few fighters to turn the UFC down on at least one occasion.

Rickson Gracie

Retiring with a perfect MMA record of 11-0 and winning every contest without the need for a decision, many people were left scratching their heads why Rickson was not chosen for the original UFC tournaments, or even had a superfight after the meteoric rise of the promotion.

Rickson Gracie is a fighter that was rejected by the UFC and also later rejected their offers of fights. Due to his complicated relationship with his brother Rorion (who owned a percentage of the UFC before he sold it), Rickson was not considered to enter UFC 1, 2 or 3 and instead his half-brother Royce was chosen. There are many reasons offered as to why this was, but Rorion is quoted as saying “Rickson is difficult to manage”, which is a somewhat cryptic and non-detailed explanation.

After this, Rickson was contacted by the UFC and offered fights, but insisted to be paid $1 million per fight. Even in modern day, this is a lot of money, but during the early 2000s this just wasn’t possible with most fighters earning well under 6 figures, let alone 7.

Gina Carano

A fighter, model, and actress, Gina Carano is one of those people who has succeeded in life in a variety of disciplines. Despite being 7-1, Carano never quite got in to the UFC, mostly due to timing and not seeing eye to eye with Dana White.

Some of these criticisms were justified since White didn’t want to bring in a fighter who couldn’t make weight, with Carano missing her cut in 50% of her career fights.

Allegedly Carano was offered $1 million for a super fight against Ronda Rousey which fell through and left White explaining “she is the hardest f****** athlete we’ve ever dealt with”. Whether this was true, or yet another one of Dana White’s infamous vendettas we will likely never know.

Fedor Emelianenko

There is still a lot of confusion surrounding why one of the greatest fighters of all time never got to fight in the UFC. It centers around a disagreement between Dana White and the agent of Emelianenko, Vadim Finkelstein.

Finkelstein owns M-1 Global fight promotions, which is the closest thing to a Russian UFC. Both Emelianenko and Finkelstein could not agree terms with UFC which centered around money, but mostly about exclusivity, and Emelianenko not have the ability to fight in any other promotion.

White, on the other hand, does not dispute the exclusivity, since this is what all UFC fighters are bound to. However, White did claim that Fedor would have made “more money than he has ever made in his entire life” if the contract had been signed. He also seems to have a vendetta against Finkelstein stating “he blew it in every way possible you could blow it“.