Kickboxer who took the UFC Heavyweight Championship from Mark Coleman in 1997 and proved a striker could beat the wrestlers.
Maurice Smith is a retired American kickboxer and mixed martial artist. In kickboxing, he held the WKC world light heavyweight championship, the WKA world heavyweight championship, and the ISKA world heavyweight championship. In mixed martial arts, he held the Heavyweight championship in Battlecade Extreme Fighting and the UFC, and became a member of the UFC Hall of Fame in 2017. Smith has also competed in shoot-style professional wrestling in Japan for the Universal Wrestling Federation and Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, where he was pitted against prominent pro wrestlers in interstyle "pro wrestling vs. kickboxing" matches.
Fighters whose careers began before the Unified Rules era (debut before November 17, 2000).
Kickboxer who took the UFC Heavyweight Championship from Mark Coleman in 1997 and proved a striker could beat the wrestlers.
No freely licensed portrait was found in approved sources for this inductee (15 candidates rejected on license or identity), so the monogram plate is shown.
This inductee does not yet have a canonical row in the PropBetEdge fighter archive, so no archive profile is linked. Recorded as a backfill candidate; no fighter record was created.
Independent PropBetEdge tribute. Hall of Fame membership, wing assignment and induction class are credited to the UFC Hall of Fame; fields without a confident source are left blank rather than guessed. PropBetEdge is not affiliated with or endorsed by UFC.
