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2010 Ground and Pound MMA awards

By Zach Arnold | January 18, 2011

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The vote for the sixth annual Groundandpound Awards is over. Once again we are glad to have improved readership participation from previous years, registering a total of 59,957 votes from 39 different countries on all five continents.

American Kickboxing Academy’s Cain Velasquez convinced 35% of our readers with his performances to vote for him as “Fighter of the Year”. The 28-year-old Mexican-American, who will unfortunately miss most of 2011 with a severe shoulder injury, knocked out former PRIDE superstar (Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira) and previous title-holder Brock Lesnar en route to the UFC heavyweight championship. Fellow UFC champions Georges St. Pierre (30%) and Jose Aldo (18%) came in second and third respectively.

Velasquez’s heroics were also the cornerstone that propelled his team American Kickboxing Academy to “Fight Team of the Year” honors. The San Jose based gym also had the likes of Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck and Josh Thomson in marquee bouts this year. AKA is also one of the few gyms to have fighters in the UFC, Strikeforce and DREAM. The vote had been a close three horse race between AKA, Jackson’s MMA and American Top Team.

Speaking of the premier promotions, the UFC has won “Best Promotion” for the fourth year in a row. The Zuffa flagship also managed to stop a marginal slide in popularity. The organization had its all-time high in 2007 with 66.8% of all votes, which decreased to 64.9% in 2008 and 60.8% in 2009. This time they clocked in at 62.0%. Interestingly, it’s sister organization WEC, came in second with 22.1%. Japanese organizations DREAM, Sengoku and Shooto only received 5.6% of the votes combined.

The biggest of all margins was to be found in the “Kickboxer of the Year” category. Dutch behemoth Alistair Overeem dwarfed the competition, amassing a whopping 80.2% of all votes. K-1 MAX champion Giorgio Petrosyan came in a distant second at 8.6%.

The closest race took place between two fighters who could not be much more different: Chael Sonnen and Jason “Mayhem” Miller went neck and neck in their quest to become the “Cult Fighter of the Year” which recognizes the most entertaining/notorious personality in the fight game. In the end, professional realtor Chael Sonnen took home the award on the back of his fantastic performances hyping up his title fight against Anderson Silva. Sonnen edged Miller by 2.8%.

Complete results:

FIGHTER OF THE YEAR

FEMALE FIGHTER OF THE YEAR

FIGHT TEAM OF THE YEAR

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

MOST IMPROVED FIGHTER

BEST YOUNG FIGHTER

CULT FIGHTER OF THE YEAR

KICKBOXER OF THE YEAR

GRAPPLER OF THE YEAR

FIGHT OF THE YEAR

KNOCKOUT OF THE YEAR

SUBMISSION OF THE YEAR

BEST PROMOTION

FIGHT EVENT OF THE YEAR

Topics: Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

3 Responses to “2010 Ground and Pound MMA awards”

  1. Paradoxx says:

    Wow…this just shows how many MMA fans know NOTHING about kickboxing other than PR for Overeem

  2. Dave says:

    Honestly, the readers on my site voted for Overeem as well, crazy frustrating.

    Petrosyan faced a deeper talent pool and handled it easier than Overeem did, plus is a repeat champion.

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