Sports biopics aren’t anything new in Hollywood, and some of the best sports movies of all time are inspired by true stories. Rare is the year that goes by without at least one inspirational (or perhaps notorious) athlete getting the Hollywood spotlight. To that end, one of 2025’s most talked-about indie features has been A24’s The Smashing Machine, which depicts UFC beast Mark Kerr’s life and has earned much acclaim for its performances from Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Bader and others.
Granted, The Smashing Machine didn’t take over the box office, but I don’t think that’s an indication of audiences not wanting to see movies about wrestlers, fighters and UFC icons. Especially not with that “Macho Man” Randy Savage biopic on the way, as well as talks about a potential Mick Foley movie happening. Pro wrestling and MMA are seemingly as popular as ever, with more and more future icons rising up each year.
With that in mind, here are five marquee UFC fighters whose stories are, in my humble opinion, absolutely worthy of getting dramatized and magnified for the silver screen. (Or if anyone out there wants to go the four-episode-tops limited series route, I’m all for that as well.)
Bas Rutten
No more applicable place to start than with the bouncer-turned-brawler who not only helped train Mark Kerr in regards to the original Smashing Machine documentary in real life, but did the same thing while playing himself in Benny Safdie’s movie. And he still looks capable of punching a hole through another person’s torso, even at 60 years old.
Rutten was a bullied youth in the Netherlands who started looking to Bruce Lee as an idol as he began training in martial arts and boxing. He soon became a masterful kickboxer, a Pancrase champion, a UFC champion, and a star within New Japan Pro-Wrestling, to name but a few highlights, with a post-fighting career that includes acting, coaching and commentating. I can imagine he’d help craft a particularly spirited version of his story for a screenplay, given how engaging his self-defense videos and interviews can be.
Daniel Cormier
A more contemporary superstar within the UFC, Daniel Cormier was a world-class athlete from his teen years up to his retirement in 2020. Starting in the ninth grade, Cormier found his calling as a freestyle wrestler, and he was a true all-star throughout the rest of his high school and college years, competing as part of Team USA in the Olympics, medaling in various world championships, and more. His MMA domination began with championship runs in Xtreme MMA and Strikeforce from 2009-2013, and then along came the UFC.
Daniel Cormier’s wrestling and brawling skills were on display throughout his largely successful UFC run, where he became the second fighter to hold both the Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight Championships, and was the first to successfully defend both. His legitimate rivalry with former champ Jon Jones is one of MMA’s most controversial, with the latter’s doping violation nullifying their second match. Even as he was still fighting, Cormier joined the long list of athletes who transitioned into delivering analysis as an Octagon-side commentator, which he’s still handling today.
Is part of my reason for wanting to see a Daniel Cormier biopic that he grew up around my neck of the woods in Lafayette, Louisiana, and that he has arguably the most prominent South Louisiana accent in all of sports and entertainment? Yes, absolutely. And I’m fine with it.
Ken Shamrock Vs. Royce Gracie
Sure, this is kind of a cheat, since it’d technically be about two Hall-of-Famer athletes instead of one, but there would be no better way to explore the early years of the UFC than through the lens of Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie’s epic rivalry, as it’s long been considered to be the organization’s first, which certainly helped give the UFC more prominence and respect. Not to take anything away from Shamrock’s later success in the WWE and TNA, or from Gracie’s runs in PRIDE and Bellator, but this biopic would be best served focusing on the years building up to, and including, their shared UFC clashes.
Royce Gracie is the descendant of a jiu-jitsu grandmaster, and the family name is among the most respected in all of martial arts, to the point where the fam’s self-edited “Gracie Challenge” videos served as a direct inspiration for what eventually became the UFC. With an eventual record of 15-2-3, he competed in the first tournament for UFC 1, where he faced and defeated Ken Shamrock, thus sparking their years-long rivalry.
On the flip side, Ken Shamrock was born Kenneth Kilpatrick, and had a far less regimented childhood, which was marred by frequent fights, a stabbing at 10 years old, and being kicked out of his home at 13 by an unruly stepfather. After a year of living in foster homes, cars and group homes, he was adopted by Bob Shamrock, an event that set him on a more athletic path to stardom at Pancrase and the UFC, earning him the nickname “The Most Dangerous Man.” Seeing a third act of a biopic culminating in their fights would be magical.
Amanda Nunes
Given how prominent and celebrated women’s MMA fighting has become over the years, there are certainly several superstars worthy of a biographical project, but arguably no one with a more exciting trajectory than Amanda Nunes. Born in Brazil and raised for much of her life by a single, hardworking mother (herself a boxer), Nunes was a natural athlete, and trained in Brazillian jiu-jitsu, boxing and judo throughout her teens, reaching black belt status in BJJ and brown belt in judo.
She was 19 when she began her pro MMA career, and later found success with Strikforce and Invicta FC. But it was when she hit the UFC in 2013 that her career exploded; she became the first openly gay women’s champion less than three years later, and two years after that, Nunes became the first woman to hold belts in two different weight classes, handily knocking out many of the UFC’s toughest female fighters along the way. Despite announcing her retirement in 2023, Nunes claimed in June 2025 that she aims to fight again, and what’s better at the end of a sports biopic than a coda where the athlete is still kicking ass?
Conor McGregor
Given the amount of swagger that Conor McGregor brings to any given situation, I can only assume that he would unnaturally pop up on the end of this list even if I didn’t intentionally put him here, so I might as well avoid reality breaking in such a way by just doing it voluntarily, even though a Conor McGregor biopic would no doubt be a lot of the dude just talking about how great he is, and then proving it every so often.
So let’s make this choice more interesting by avoiding a full live-action approach and instead opting to tell McGregor’s story through puppets and/or stop-motion animation. In part, because it would be amusing and legitimately entertaining to see buff puppets’ fight choreography, as well as seeing his gnarly leg break vs. Dustin Poirier via stop-motion. Okay now I kind of want to see this one more than any of the others.
