UFC 145 Results: Jon Jones and the 7 Most Confident Fighters in MMA

It’s a fine line between confident and cocky, and without some mix of the two, it’s a tough road to becoming a champion. Making it in combat sports at all is actually pretty tough, in fact.

Light heavyweight champion Jon Jones is leading the charge in terms of confidence, so much so that words like arrogance regularly make their way into the conversations about the champ. Even so, he’s not alone.

Here are some other guys known around the UFC for bringing confidence to the table.

Rashad Evans

Not entirely unlike the man he lost to at UFC 145, Evans has long been harped on for carrying himself with swagger. The thing is, though, so many people are busy hating him to really realize that he’s accomplished enough to warrant a little confidence in himself.

His loss to Jones was just the second of his career, and he’s a former world champion and TUF winner. He’s earned the right to carry himself how he does.

Anderson Silva

Silva isn’t about saying things to exude confidence, or even really carrying himself with excessive swagger away from the cage.

No, his confidence is all about execution inside the Octagon.

It’s pretty much routine for the man currently seen by most as the best of all time: enter the cage, calculate his opponent’s machinations, knock said opponent unconscious with frightening ease.

He never looks in trouble, he never looks worried and he always wins. He does confidence better than anyone in the business.

Chael Sonnen

Silva’s foil, the brash wrestler from Oregon, is no stranger to confidence in his own right. Sonnen is notorious for wild tirades, outstanding claims of bravado, outright denying losses on his record ever happened and even carrying around a fake belt in an effort to crown himself middleweight champion.

Any man willing to go to those lengths to make a name for himself outside the cage, and to enrage perhaps the most dangerous martial artist in the modern world, simply has to have confidence.

Either that, or he’s just plain insane.

Michael Bisping

If there’s a guy better at claiming he was robbed when he gets beat, he’s hard to name.

If a fight goes to the scorecards and Bisping isn’t the man on the winning side of the ledger, he’s quick to call it an injustice and even quicker to list all the ways he either a) won the fight or b) would have won the fight if it went on longer.

He’s also notorious for carrying himself with an air of unapologetic arrogance, something fans have really not taken to over the course of his career.

Say what you will, the man doesn’t lack confidence.

Junior Dos Santos

Perhaps a little different than the average guy on the list, Dos Santos is as confident as anyone in the game. He’s just really, really nice about it.

He regularly talks about having the best hands in the business, and often talks about how he truly believes there isn’t anyone in the sport who can stand in front of him and live to tell about it. Then he usually flashes a happy smile, maybe followed up by a chuckle at his choppy English.

Great guy and fan favourite, but he doesn’t lack confidence in his abilities.

Alistair Overeem

The man who, until Friday, was scheduled to face Dos Santos for the heavyweight title, Overeem might well be the most confident man in the game. He carries himself with unmatched swagger, and he has enough titles on his mantle that he can get away with it.

Plus, he’s legitimately bigger than a refrigerator, so no one’s going to call him out anyway.

Regardless, The Reem is going to need all the confidence he can muster when he has to explain a failed testosterone test in the coming weeks. That may be the biggest test of his career, much less his life.

Frank Mir

The man swooping in to pick the bones of the Dos Santos-Overeem fallout, Mir is absolutely as confident as anyone out there. Some argue it isn’t warranted, but he’s beat a laundry list of elite heavyweights and been in the heavyweight title mix for a decade – plus he’s held the title in the past.

He’s got incredible jiu-jitsu and an underrated stand-up game that’s shown steady improvement over the past few years, so perhaps he should be cut a little more slack. Guys who have accomplished less are out there and are far less shy with their swagger.