The 6 Biggest Heels in the UFC Right Now

Heels are a crucial part of the UFC's product.

They are, by nature, easy to hate, but they make the sport more interesting because they give fans somebody to root against. They're the villains we want to watch our favorite fighters beat. The Lex Luthors, Darth Vaders, and Saurons of the Octagon.

In the past, the likes of Chael Sonnen, Michael Bisping, Josh Koscheck, and Tito Ortiz have attempted to fill the heel role with varying levels of success and nuance. But today, all of those men are long removed from their days competing in the Octagon, and a whole new crop of fighters have taken their place.

These fighters never waste an opportunity to talk a little trash, whether it's in an interview, at a press conference, or on social media—a tool that many heels of the past did not have access to. They're not afraid to push the envelope with remarks that increasingly seem to cross the line for some fans.

They are loud and often downright obnoxious. And if they do things properly, they can become some of the most talked about fighters in the promotion—if only because everybody is dying to see them get their comeuppance.

Without further ado, here are the biggest heels in the UFC today.

At this point, there is no denying that Khamzat Chimaev is one of the best fighters in the world.

The Chechen-Swede, who has drifted between the welterweight and middleweight divisions since joining the UFC in 2020, is 12-0 overall, 6-0 in the Octagon, and has achieved all but one of his victories—an April decision win over former title challenger Gilbert Burns—with astounding ease.

Li Jingliang didn't last a round with him. Kevin Holland didn't last half a round. Gerald Meerschaert didn't even hit the 20-second mark. Chimaev is good. Really good.

But he has also drawn the scorn of the fans and his fellow fighters with increasing frequency. Part of that is due to his trash talk. It's usually simple—sometimes it's little more than him screaming about killing everyone—but like all trash talk, it tends to rub many people the wrong way.

The most important moment in Chimaev's heel-turn, however, occurred in the lead-up to the recent UFC 279 event, when he missed a planned fight with Nate Diaz by a ridiculous 7.5 pounds and forced matchmakers to give six fighters new opponents to keep the card together.

It wasn't just that he missed weight or even that he missed weight by such a substantial margin. It's that he showed no remorse whatsoever for what was frankly one of the most embarrassing scale fails in company history. It drove fans into a frenzy of frustration, but that just guarantees they'll tune in for his next fight in hopes that somebody will finally find a way to beat him.

Sean O'Malley has a lot of loyal supporters, but in the eyes of many fight fans, he is a villain begging for some justice.

Like everybody else on this list, the bantamweight contender is a trash talker through and through, frequently targeting his rivals on social media and his podcast. Yet it's not O'Malley's talk that has made him a heel in the eyes of so many UFC fans. It's the way he comports himself.

The Arizonian, who is known for his flamboyant outfits and hairstyles, is unendingly confident. Case in point: He recently tweeted he'd be surprised if he gets hit once in his UFC 280 clash with former bantamweight champ Petr Yan, who is one of the best boxers in MMA. That kind of self-belief—the kind that verges on delusional—rubs almost everybody the wrong way.

If there is one thing that really turned fans and fighters against O'Malley, however, it's the way he responded to the lone loss of his career: a 2020 TKO loss to Ecuador's Marlon "Chito" Vera. The finishing sequence, a series of elbows from top position, came after Vera chopped O'Malley down with a leg kick and hit a nerve in his leg.

That, in the American's eyes, somehow totally delegitimized the outcome of the fight. In fact, he has repeatedly claimed that he is still undefeated in his own head despite that legitimate loss.

Unsurprisingly, comments of that kind have not gone over well. Nobody likes a sore loser.

Former flyweight and bantamweight champion Henry Cejudo retired after a 2020 victory over Dominick Cruz, but he's been talking about a comeback most of the time since.

He recently supercharged speculation by reentering the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) testing pool, which is a serious inconvenience he would surely not subject himself to if he didn't plan on competing again.

If Cejudo does fight again, expect him to ramp up his patented trash talk—much to the chagrin of the fans.

The former Olympian is objectively bad at trash-talking. While he seems like a fairly intelligent guy, he's neither clever nor quick on the mic and has caused some pretty strange scenes in an effort to get into his opponents' heads.

Remember that time he brought a toy snake to the press conference for his 2019 fight with TJ Dillashaw? Yikes.

It all led to fans dubbing Cejudo "The King of Cringe." Rather than let that monicker deter him, however, he has always leaned into it, to the point that you kind of have to respect his commitment.

He doesn't care if fans love him or hate him, only that they tune in for his fights. And in that regard, he has succeeded. For better or for worse, he is easily one of the biggest stars to have emerged from the UFC's lighter weight classes.

Jon Jones is one of the greatest fighters in UFC history and one of the promotion's greatest heels. But unlike most of the other fighters on this list, his heel turn was totally organic. He didn't decide to become a villain in hopes of capturing attention. It just happened.

When Jones arrived in the UFC, he was quite popular among fans, and it's easy to understand why. He was young, prodigiously talented, and for the most part, pretty classy. But gradually, things began to change.

While Jones' status as an all-time great inside the Octagon became more and more irrefutable, he also became a lightning rod for controversy, with many wondering if the UFC should book him in fights given his failed multiple drug tests and arrests on domestic violence, DUI, DWI and hit-and-run charges.

Throw in some truly malicious trash talk and an infamous press conference brawl, and he has given fans plenty of reasons to root against him. Unfortunately for those fans, the former light heavyweight champion has been just about unbeatable in MMA, with his lone loss coming by way of disqualification.

Time will tell how he looks in his long-awaited return to the Octagon, which is expected to take him up to the heavyweight division.

You had to know Conor McGregor would be on this list. The former featherweight and lightweight champion is far and away the biggest star in MMA history—but not everybody loves the Irishman.

McGregor arrived in the UFC in 2013, and by 2015, he was an international superstar fighting for world titles and headlining blockbuster pay-per-views. Much of that early success was because of his amazing talent and propensity for highlight-reel knockouts, but it was also because of his personality.

McGregor exuded confidence and swagger and was perpetually berating his opponents with sizzling trash talk. In fact, he's behind some of the most memorable lines in UFC history, many of which seemed to be totally off-the-cuff, which separated him from the likes of Chael Sonnen, who clearly rehearsed his best lines.

Many fans found McGregor's schtick extremely entertaining. But just as many found it totally offputting. That seemed to be the case for most of McGregor's opponents, too, some of whom admitted in retrospect that he was able to get into their heads.

He had the entire MMA community in the palm of his hand.

Unfortunately, that no longer seems to be the case. McGregor used to be the villain fans couldn't resist rooting for. However, after high-profile losses to Khabib Nurmagomedov and Dustin Poirier, fans seem to be having a harder time getting behind him.

Colby Covington is probably the most infamous trash talker in the UFC today, which is a bit surprising, considering he's not very good at it.

The Oregonian, who almost never breaks character, is constantly recycling his old lines, stumbling over his words, and mixing his metaphors, but it doesn't seem to matter. He's proof that you can spout nothing but drivel, and people will still pay attention as long as the volume is loud enough.

While people definitely pay attention to Covington, however, there is no question that he is almost universally detested. Just about everybody that tunes in to watch him fight does so in hopes of seeing him lose. Of course, that seldom happens because he's one of the best fighters in the world.

Covington is also a pariah among his fighters and, after bad-mouthing the bulk of his training partners, was even forced to leave his long-time training home of American Top Team.

He is easily one of the biggest villains in MMA, but it's all design. After failing to catch on with the fans for the first few years of his UFC career, he realized that, in MMA, almost all press is good press, and started to say whatever would stoke the most ire from fans and fighters alike.

The rest is history.