The Creepiest Fighters in MMA Right Now

/Door creaks open

Good eeeeevening. Allow me the pleasure of a verse (ahem):

As we make our way to All Hallow's Night

We see a lot of scary sights!

And what better way to receive lots of fright

than to look at scary guys who fight in fights?!?

Great poems signal great times. And the great times are dripping from the ceiling right now here at Bleacher Report MMA. It's Halloween again, and that means it's time for our annual list of the creepiest fighters in the sport today. 

This might sound weird, but there's a lot of creepy, scary stuff in MMA right now. All the hardened criminals you could ever want are just a candy corn's throw away. Athletes fight in cages. And pay-per-view buys have reached a terrifying plateau. AHHHH, let's all hide in this dark basement!

Herein we rank fighters—active only—based on the general creepiness of their appearance and/or disposition in and/or around the cage area.

And now, we make our way inward. Right this way...if you daaaaaare.  

Honorable Mention: Mark Hunt Superfan Numero Uno

Hannah Peters/Getty Images

I realize I'm violating each and every one of the rules I just established, but that's why lists have honorable mentions.

Because of things like this!

Apparently, heavyweight slug-king Mark Hunt has a pretty creepy fan over in Japan. But not in a scary way; just the kind of way where the fan draws cartoons of Hunt doing things like cuddling his wife's pregnant belly. 

Creepy and talented—a double-threat person!

7. Katsunori Kikuno

Get your machetes ready, because Zombie Diaz is on the loose.

Katsunori Kikuno is how some fans know him, when he's not lurching toward opponents with his hands held limply in front of him like he's fixing to eat himself some brains. And even when he's not in that mode, he's still a guy with a rather strange grin. I don't trust that brain-eating grin as far as I can throw it.

6. Diego Sanchez

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Diego Sanchez's level of creepy grows in proportion to his level of actual crazy, which grows in proportion to the number and intensity of his cage battles, which are frequent and violent, respectively.

What's the big deal? He's just a guy who eats steak tartare and raw eggs right after his weight cut and walks to the ring with a crucifix like he's vampire hunting and yells out random things and bro-hugs you for making him bleed. What I say is, you might as well just pass the Stevia and enjoy.

5. Colin Fletcher

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Colin "Freakshow" Fletcher doesn't so much chill his opponents' blood as he flash freezes it in ice trays and lets it tinkle in his pre-fight beverage. Thank goodness for modern licensing requirements.

All in a day's work for a guy who files his teeth to points, has a huge pair of tattooed hands reaching up to perpetually grab his throat and rides to the cage in full demon-clown garb.

He's making a conscious effort over there. That's the point. The tooth point.

4. Kotetsu Boku

First, you have to consider his nickname. "No Face" is pretty doggone sinister. What does it mean, Kotetsu? Nothing good, comes the answer, as if bidden to you by the midnight wind.

There's also the fact that the ONE FC featherweight appears to be growing a set of mutton chops that originate below his eye sockets. That's just the look you want from "No Face."

3. Takuya Eizumi

How did he do this with his face?

After taking a decision over Yusei Shimokawa at Pancrase 259 in June, Takuya Eizumi contorted his visage into some kind of cartoonish rendition of what people look like after they're attacked from that horrible girl in The Ring. 

The thing is, outside of a reasonably well-kept mullet, he's totally normal-looking in his default mode. But to be not only able but willing to twist your face into this expression, well, it speaks to things about you.

2. Rory MacDonald

USA TODAY Sports

Give it up for the overwound, overdressed, overprogrammed prodigial child and violence robot that is The Canadian Psycho.

Rory MacDonald pretty much wastes everyone he fights, one way or another. And he's now in line for a shot at the UFC welterweight title. 

But no matter how far he gets, he'll still have that sublime combination of pure awkwardness and God complex that you couldn't teach if you had a million Firas Zahabis working around the clock in a million Tristars.

The funniest part about it is how, when he's talking to the media, he tries to keep his answers to cliches like "All I want is the belt" or "I'm just trying to get better every fight," but then will suddenly lapse into some strange tirade.*

"Rory, how did you prepare for this fight?"

"By training hard and trying to be a better fighter every day."

"How did your camp for this fight differ from the camps you've had before?"

/Gulps "Well, I ate a lot of extra mangoes. The flesh of that fruit is very high in vitamins, and the guy at the store told me I could use it as a body scrub? So now I mix it with honey, milk, and a little bit of sand, and I rub it all over myself. It leaves the skin feeling superior. And I smell like mangoes all day.

"I'm not sure I like the smell of mangoes, actually. But it's better than, just, like, a normal body smell. Like body odor, I mean. Nobody likes the smell of body odor. I hate being on the train or the bus or a crowded taxi and smelling everyone's bodies.

"No offense to anyone out there who stinks all the time, that's their choice, but I hate it. It makes me want to throw my own head through a window. By the time I get to the gym, I'm ready to spar, like, spar for real. For every one smelly cab ride I take, it takes three Mark Boceks to calm me down. So I've started eating mangoes. Was there another question in the back?"

*All coincidence to any actual conversation, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

1. Aleksander Emelianenko

Aleksander Emelianenko is the creepiest. The creepiest part? He's still a pro fighter.

It's hard to know when Fedor's little bro veered off the tracks. Maybe he's always been crazy. That actually makes the most sense. You don't just wake up one morning and decide you're going to be this creepy. This heady blend takes years of careful maintenance to achieve. He's that rare bird who combines religious fanaticism with a penchant for high-level bar fighting. He's a Russian novelist's anti-hero run through a sausage grinder and reconstituted like a snowman in the yard of some abandoned church.

Check out this long (but very worth it) two-part interview from earlier this year with the man himself. It's paranoid, aggressive, spiritual, acerbic and wonderful, and I'm very glad I wasn't the one conducting it. And if you're too lazy to read it, just look at the picture at the top of the article and know how comfortable I am resting my case right here.

Scott Harris would like to think he would crack the list of creepiest MMA writers. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.