MMA
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
95 free MMA trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free MMA trivia questions with answers. Are you a true MMA fan? Put your knowledge of mixed martial arts to the test with our engaging trivia quiz covering legendary fighters, historic battles, and iconic moments from the UFC and beyond. Whether you're a casual viewer or a dedicated combat sports enthusiast, this quiz will challenge your understanding of the sport's greatest athletes and unforgettable events.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Boxer Art Jimmerson famously wore just one of what at UFC 1?
Boxing glove
Boxing glove: Jimmerson kept one on his jab hand and left his punching hand bare, but he was taken down and tapped out within minutes, and was known as 'One Glove' ever after.
Q 02Which U.S. city hosted the inaugural UFC event?
Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado, got UFC 1 because its organizers found that the state's rules would let bare-knuckle fights go ahead at McNichols Sports Arena.
Q 03Which women's MMA pioneer went on to star in Haywire and The Mandalorian?
Gina Carano
Gina Carano's 2009 title bout on Showtime was the first time two women headlined a major MMA event; two years later Steven Soderbergh built the thriller Haywire around her.
Q 04The final of the first UFC tournament ended with which choke, still a staple of MMA?
Rear-naked choke
Rear-naked choke: applied from behind, it made a Dutch savate fighter tap in the UFC 1 final, hours after he had kicked a sumo wrestler's teeth out in the night's opening bout.
Q 05What is the widely recognized nickname of the Irish fighter Conor McGregor?
The Notorious
Conor McGregor fights as 'The Notorious'; under that name he won the UFC featherweight title by knocking out José Aldo at UFC 194 in December 2015.
Q 06Which promotion did UFC owner Zuffa buy in 2011, then shut down and absorb?
Strikeforce
Strikeforce began as Scott Coker's San Jose kickboxing promotion in 1985 and staged MMA only from 2006; Zuffa bought it in March 2011 and folded it after a final show in January 2013.
Q 07Ben Askren reached the UFC in 2018 through a fighter trade with which Asian promotion?
ONE Championship
ONE Championship let Askren, its retired, unbeaten welterweight champion, go to the UFC and took a former UFC flyweight champion in exchange, a swap of the kind MMA had hardly seen.
Q 08How much did the Fertitta brothers pay to buy the UFC in January 2001?
$2 million
$2 million bought the struggling UFC for Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta in January 2001; in 2016 they sold it to a group led by WME-IMG for about $4 billion.
Q 09Which fighter set the UFC record of 11 consecutive title defenses from 2013 to 2017?
Demetrious Johnson
Demetrious Johnson passed the old record of 10 with his 11th straight flyweight defense in October 2017, letting go of a suplex in mid-air to snatch an armbar on Ray Borg.
Q 10Which ancient Greek Olympic combat sport is often called a forerunner of modern MMA?
Pankration
Pankration mixed boxing and wrestling and banned only biting and eye-gouging; Pausanias tells of Arrhichion, crowned Olympic champion as a corpse because his opponent gave up first.
Q 11Who was the first fighter to win UFC titles in two different weight divisions?
Randy Couture
Randy Couture won the heavyweight belt in 1997 and the light heavyweight belt in 2003, retired in 2006, then came back a year later at 43 and beat the 6ft 8in Tim Sylvia to rule the heavyweights again.
Q 12Which format do most non-title UFC fights follow?
Three five-minute rounds
Three five-minute rounds with a minute's rest between them is the Unified Rules standard; UFC 2 in 1994 had no rounds, no time limit and no judges, so a fight ran until someone quit or was stopped.
Q 13Which former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion is famously known by the nickname 'The Iceman'?
Chuck Liddell
Q 21Besides title fights, which UFC bouts run five rounds?
Main events
Main events have run to five rounds since UFC 138 in 2011; the first of them, Chris Leben against Mark Muñoz, never needed the extra time, because Leben's corner stopped it after two.
Q 22What is the MMA term for taking an opponent down and striking them from a dominant top position?
Ground and pound
Ground and pound was developed by wrestling-based UFC pioneers such as Dan Severn and Don Frye, who found that holding a striker down was not enough to win and began punching from the top.
Q 23Who is known as 'The Spider' in MMA?
Anderson Silva
Chuck Liddell was named 'The Iceman' by his trainer John Hackleman, who watched him sit calmly in the locker room before an early kickboxing bout, showing no nerves at all.
Q 14The UFC's pandemic-era 'Fight Island' cards of 2020 were staged on Yas Island in which city?
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi closed off part of Yas Island as a safe zone in July 2020, so that fighters kept out of the United States by pandemic travel limits could still compete.
Q 15Lyoto Machida and Stephen 'Wonderboy' Thompson brought which traditional striking art's style to the UFC?
Karate
Karate: Machida learned the Shotokan style from his father, a Japanese master who had emigrated to Brazil, and used it to knock out the unbeaten Rashad Evans for a UFC title in 2009.
Q 16Who took the strawweight title from Joanna Jędrzejczyk with a first-round knockout at UFC 217?
Rose Namajunas
Rose Namajunas handed the champion the first defeat of her MMA career in November 2017, ending a run of five title defenses, then won their rematch on points five months later.
Q 17Who was appointed UFC president when Zuffa bought the promotion in 2001?
Dana White
Dana White was managing UFC fighters when he learned the promotion was for sale and alerted Lorenzo Fertitta, whom he had first met at high school in Las Vegas.
Q 18Which UFC Lightweight champion retired undefeated at 29-0?
Khabib Nurmagomedov
Khabib Nurmagomedov retired in the cage at 29-0 after UFC 254 in October 2020: his father and coach had died that summer, and he had promised his mother this fight would be his last.
Q 19What is the name of the cage in which UFC fights take place?
The Octagon
The Octagon won out over wilder ideas for the first UFC event, among them a moat with alligators and an electrified fence; the eight-sided cage is now a UFC trademark.
Q 20Who is often referred to as 'The Last Emperor' in the sport of MMA?
Fedor Emelianenko
Fedor Emelianenko, 'The Last Emperor', went unbeaten for nearly a decade, a run that ended in June 2010 when Fabrício Werdum trapped him in a triangle armbar barely a minute into their fight.
Anderson Silva says he became 'The Spider' after wearing a Spider-Man shirt before a fight, when the ring announcer introduced him as 'Brazil's Spiderman'.
Q 24Which network took over the UFC's US broadcasts in 2019 when its seven-year Fox deal ended?
ESPN
ESPN agreed to pay about $1.5 billion for five years of UFC rights and moved many of the fights, and later every pay-per-view, onto its ESPN+ streaming service.
Q 25Which Olympic wrestling gold medalist went on to hold UFC titles in two weight classes at the same time?
Henry Cejudo
Henry Cejudo won freestyle wrestling gold at Beijing 2008 aged 21, then held the UFC flyweight and bantamweight belts together in 2019: three titles, hence his nickname 'Triple C'.
Q 26Which featherweight is known as 'The Korean Zombie'?
Chan Sung Jung
Chan Sung Jung earned the name for the way he kept walking forward through punches; in 2011 he landed the first twister submission in UFC history.
Q 27UFC 306 in September 2024 was the first live sporting event held at which Las Vegas venue?
Sphere
Sphere, opened in 2023 as a concert hall wrapped in screens, was booked for a one-off card over Mexican Independence Day weekend that the UFC billed as 'Noche UFC'.
Q 28Who knocked out Ben Askren with a flying knee five seconds into their UFC 239 bout?
Jorge Masvidal
Jorge Masvidal rushed in at the opening bell and caught Ben Askren with a flying knee as he dived for a takedown in July 2019, breaking Duane Ludwig's record for the UFC's fastest knockout.
Q 29Which greasy substance does a cutman smear on a fighter's face before a bout?
Petroleum jelly
Petroleum jelly makes the skin slippery, so a glove is more likely to slide off than tear it; too much is frowned on, because it ends up on the gloves and then in a fighter's eyes.
Q 30Which striking art, known as 'the art of eight limbs', anchors many MMA fighters' stand-up game?
Muay Thai
Muay Thai earns the name because fighters strike with eight points of the body, two each of fists, elbows, knees and shins, where a boxer has only two.