The 5 heaviest fighters in UFC history

#1 Emmanuel Yarbrough

When it comes to the heaviest UFC fighters, nobody really comes close to Emmanuel Yarbrough. The amateur sumo wrestler – who also competed in judo, wrestling and American football – supposedly weighed 320lbs by the time he was 14 years old. By the time he competed at UFC 3, he was a true giant, standing at 6’8” and weighing in at a monstrous 616lbs.

Naturally, with this being the good old days of the UFC, he was paired with a much smaller man – the Kenpo practitioner Keith Hackney, who stood at 5’11” and weighed around 200lbs. It remains the biggest size difference in UFC history. The fight sent Hackney into UFC immortality as the ‘Giant Killer’, as he managed to survive being literally shoved through the fence of the Octagon by his larger foe to land a series of unanswered punches to the back of the head for a TKO in around two minutes.

It was the only time Yarbrough competed in the UFC, unsurprisingly. He continued in MMA, though, winning a fight in Shooto before being beaten in PRIDE by the even smaller Daiju Takase, who managed to escape from underneath the giant to score a TKO via punches.

After leaving the world of MMA, Yarbrough’s weight continued to rise to the point where he weighed 882lbs at his heaviest in 2007. He was advised to lose weight by doctors and managed to get down to around 670lbs, but a man of his size was always going to have problems and sadly he passed away in 2015 at just 51 years old, the victim of a massive heart attack. It’s hugely unlikely we’ll ever see such a large man inside the UFC again.

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