10 most notorious street fights in MMA

#2 Bas Rutten – UFC Hall Of Famer, voice of MMA and prison boss

Bas Rutten’s nickname, “El Guapo” or “Handsome”, is one of those sadistically ironic monikers that are fixtures in Mafia flicks. There was nothing pretty about what the former model did to his opponents when the bell sounded.

The former UFC Heavyweight champion might actually have had more fights outside the cage than inside it. He retired in 2006, unbeaten in his last 22 contests, but does his showdown with six Swedish bouncers go down as a W or an L?

According to Rutten, the one constant in his innumerable bar fights is that it was always the bouncers who sparked things off because they wanted to peacock their machismo in front of him, a proven badass.

In 1996 or 1997, Rutten and a friend were in a club in Sweden, cavorting and striking up conversations with the other patrons, when a bouncer called him aside. He told him to leave because he had “too much energy” and to his astonishment, Rutten agreed. When this thinly veiled excuse to start a fight failed, the bouncer did the one thing that was sure to set Rutten off – he poked a finger in his chest.

Sure enough, all hell broke loose and before he knew it, Rutten found himself fighting six bouncers simultaneously. Long story short (the whole incident is in the video), the fight ended when the cops showed up, though it is debatable to whom’s rescue. Rutten’s relief turned to shock when he was slapped with a 6-month prison term because one of the bouncers he had pummelled was a policeman!

But the part that Rutten was dreading the most turned out to be the silver lining. The prison guards rolled out the red carpet for Rutten because they were all huge fans. He had his own VIP lounge in a prison that sounds straight out of a movie – TV, VCR, coffee, cookies and unrestricted access to a phone were at his beck and call. Amongst the many takeaways from this anecdote, probably the most important is that if you see yourself landing up behind bars in the future, make sure you've got tons of street cred.