Bleacher Report MMA Awards: 2015's Best Comebacks, Breakout Stars and Quote

A few weeks back, the Bleacher Report MMA team brought you the 2015 MMA Awards and named the best fighter, fight, finishes and moment of the year. With the year officially, 100 percent closed out, we now bring you one final roundup for the year that was.

Welcome to the Bleacher Report MMA Awards Part 2. Here, we will look a bit deeper into the year and bring you several new categories, including:

• Comeback of the Year, which picks out the single wildest turnaround during a fight.
• Comeback Fighter of the Year, which names a fighter who turned a corner following serious adversity.
• Breakout Star of the Year, which pinpoints the fighter who built the most value for his brand.
• Breakthrough Fighter of the Year, picking out the fighter who either improved his in-ring work the most or did the best job of establishing himself as an elite talent.
• Feel-Good Moment of the Year, which is exactly what it sounds like.
• Quote of the Year—the quote that had the most impact on the sport or reached fans in a new, interesting way.

So who takes these honors? Find out here.

Comeback of the Year: Patricio Freire Defeats Daniel Weichel at Bellator 138

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Daniel Weichel hurt featherweight champ Patricio Freire badly at Bellator 138 on June 19. After a tentative four minutes, the German tagged Freire with a hard punch and poured on punishment until the bell sounded. While Freire miraculously survived the opening round, he was visibly wounded. Stumbling and with a dead look in his eyes, it seemed like the fight would be called on the stool.

When the second round started, the outcome felt all but guaranteed. The wobbly Pitbull seemed ready to come out and accept his knockout loss like a Spartan. Seemed, of course, being the operative word.

Weichel pressed forward with a confidence reserved for the final seconds of the fight. That wasn't a bad approach, necessarily, but Freire managed to muster up one final left hand that found a perfect home on the German's chin. The challenger crumbled, and the champion endured in what may go down as one of the greatest moments in his career—and one of the most shocking in Bellator history.

Comeback Fighter of the Year: Mo Lawal

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Back in 2010, "King" Mo Lawal was one of the hottest prospects in MMA. An accomplished amateur wrestler who ran through the competition in Sengoku, he signed on with Strikeforce in 2009 and quickly took the light heavyweight title off indy darling Gegard Mousasi. While he would drop the belt not long after, getting knocked out by Rafael Cavalcante, the sky still seemed to be his limit.

Then came a knee injury. Then a failed drug test. Then a near-death experience. Then his release from Strikeforce.

Setbacks came in bunches, and that didn't stop when he found new homes with Bellator MMA and TNA Wrestling. He never entered the TNA ring, and Spike TV would unceremoniously boot off the wrestling organization. Worse yet, his cakewalk to the Bellator title was stopped dead by Emanuel Newton, who knocked him out with a spinning backfist. From there, Bellator's (more or less) strict adherence to its tournament system had Lawal spinning his wheels for years, seemingly dooming him to be a B-level player in a B-level promotion.

Then came 2015, and everything changed. With Scott Coker at the wheel and Bjorn Rebney's MMA model in the rearview mirror, Lawal got some big opportunities in the cage and made the most of each one.

He started the year off by taking a heavyweight fight and defeating Cheick Kongo in impressive fashion. Then, he entered the the Bellator Light Heavyweight Tournament and dominated Linton Vassel (though he couldn't compete in the finals due to injury). Most importantly, and lucratively, he wrecked the opposition in the Rizin Fighting Federation Heavyweight Tournament.

Within 12 months, Lawal went from being a "what if" story to a legitimate contender riding a seven-fight winning streak.

What changed is anyone's guess. Has he finally recovered from those health issues? Has he found a good home at American Top Team? Has he found the proper balance between his wrestling and striking?

Who knows? The important thing is that the king has returned.

Breakout Star of the Year: Holly Holm

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Does this one really need to be explained?

Ronda Rousey achieved a never-before-seen level of celebrity in 2015, attracting the attention of A-list celebrities and tapping into demographics that were previously seen as unreachable by combat sports promoters. This is Rousey's world, they said. Everyone else is just living in it.

Then came UFC 193 in November. With a few punches and a big kick, Holly Holm became the new UFC women's bantamweight champ, and Rousey became a mere mortal.

Though Rousey likely remains the biggest name and most identifiable face in MMA today, Holm has certainly stolen a bit of her spotlight. While she isn't quite hosting Saturday Night Live yet, she has taken over a good portion of Rousey's beat, appearing on daytime talk shows, rubbing elbows with celebrities and getting spotted in the front row for big sporting events.

Not bad, considering it wasn't all that long ago that UFC President Dana White was saying the UFC wasn't interested in Holm.

Breakthrough Fighter of the Year: Joanna Jedrzejczyk

Adam Nurkiewicz/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images

One of the biggest blunders in recent UFC history was The Ultimate Fighter Season 20. While, theoretically, locking 16 women into a tournament to decide the inaugural strawweight champion is a great idea, the execution was, well, terrible.

The show's promotion was somewhere between stultifying and sexist. The show itself was reality television at its worst. The worst thing, though, was how the UFC handled the strawweights who skipped out on the season and landed straight on the UFC roster.

Each and every strawweight fight was booked for Fight Pass preliminary cards. That, intentional or not, sent a clear message to fans. Joanna Jedrzejczyk? Claudia Gadelha? Paige VanZant? 

Ignore them. They're below the Akbarh Arreolas and Yosdenis Cedenos. The real talent? That's on TUF.

Because of that, Jedrzejczyk started 2015 as an afterthought. She was an easy out for the new champ, Carla Esparza, it seemed. A fringe Top 10 name, at best.

Boy, did she prove everybody wrong.

She took the title off TUF 20 winner Carla Esparza at UFC 185 in emphatic fashion and transformed herself into a weapon of face destruction shortly thereafter. She put a big hurt on Jessica Penne for her first title defense and handily defeated a steely Valerie Letourneau to close out the year.

Within 12 months, Jedrzejczyk managed to go from being a non-factor in the UFC's most overlooked division to one of the scariest fighters in the sport. Add to that her magnetic personality and mean promo skills and you have somebody who could become a major draw in the near future.

Feel-Good Moment of the Year: Aisling Daly Wins in Dublin

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Aisling Daly has been around for a long time. With a career dating back to 2007, she predates many of her women's MMA counterparts and most of her fellow Irish fighters. Despite competing for more than eight years in the sport, however, she has never really gotten her big moment in the spotlight.

Sure, she had had her big victories. She has fought big names in big promotions on more than one occasion and had won titles in smaller promotions, most notably defeating Jessica Eye for the NAAFS women's flyweight championship in 2011. On the grander stages, though, she consistently stumbled. 

When she missed weight for her UFC debut and followed that up with a loss to Randa Markos, it felt like she was poised to quietly wash out of the UFC without ever really making an impact. Then UFC Fight Night 76 on October 24 happened.

Daly was a hometown favorite for the raucous Dublin crowd and was received with a level of excitement that is traditionally reserved for main eventers. The packed 3Arena sang along as she walked out to "Zombie" by the Cranberries and exploded every time she landed a punch on Ericka Almeida. It was a touching scene that ended in storybook fashion, with her getting the win and surrounded by her teammates and countrymen.

Quote of the Year: "Fifth Amendment"

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The NSAC is a kangaroo court. Observant MMA fans have known this for years now. The commissioners have nearly unlimited power and no oversight and have used it freely for a long time now.

For the most part, they have done so without controversy. If an athlete is accused of using a performance-enhancing drug, the court of public opinion instantly turns, and few will even question a first-time offender (who also happens to be a husband and father) being banned for three years. The veil of secrecy that surrounded their tribunals only made them bolder in exercising their authority.

That made the Nick Diaz September hearing a unique experience for all involved. 

Diaz has long been a thorn in the side of the NSAC, publicly flaunting and discussing his marijuana use during a time where a hint of a metabolite would result in a lengthy suspension. That audacity, unsurprisingly, never sat well with the stuffy commissioners, and when Diaz failed a third drug test following his UFC 183 fight with Anderson Silva, they used that as an opportunity to vent years of frustration.

At Diaz's hearing, each member took turns airing his or her frustration with the former Strikeforce champ, bringing up a multitude of issues including his two previous failed drug tests and a 2009 incident ahead of his Strikeforce title fight with Jay Hieron. While Diaz wisely let his lawyer do most of the talking for him, he was eventually called to the stand.

When asked by Pat Lundvall if he competed at UFC 183, he explained that he was not going to answer the question. When asked for a reason? "Fifth amendment." 

It was a surprising back-and-forth for such an innocuous question, but it became awkward when Lundvall kept running through the questions with no regard for Diaz's answers. Is he an unarmed combatant? Fifth amendment. When did he find out he would be booked for UFC 183? Was he aware the NSAC would request a drug test? Did he have difficulty producing said test?

Time and again: "Fifth amendment."

That may have been standard operating procedure for the NSAC, or it may (as Diaz's counsel suggested) have been a way to embarrass him. Either way, what the NSAC didn't anticipate was how poorly that would sit with the public that was watching the hearing live on UFC Fight Pass. When the punishment was announced as a hefty fine and five-year ban from the sport? Mass hysteria.

In an instant, Diaz went from being a controversial figure to a beloved martyr. "Fifth amendment" evolved into both a meme and a rallying cry for frustrated fans.

Impressively, that rage didn't just fade off. Fellow fighters and celebrities alike would rally around Diaz in a variety of ways, with many getting behind a 115,000 signature petition on WhiteHouse.gov. Though President Obama's staff gave the lame-duck response, it certainly feels like the outcry made a difference. The NSAC is expected to reach a settlement with Diaz's legal team in the near future.