The List: Some of the brighter moments from a tough 2016

For too long, our writers’ hyper-specific arguments have been confined to the private corridors of the Internet. Welcome to The List, where we take their instant message bickerings, add a little polish, and make them public. Today, we look at a few of the good stories from the dumpster fire that was 2016.

* * * *

Holly Holm and Miesha Tate

Miesha Tate’s title win, because sometimes when you try, try, and try again, you succeed

Steven Marrocco: For me, the first one that jumps to mind is Miesha Tate’s fifth-round submission of Holly Holm at UFC 196, the proverbial bottom-of-the-ninth home run. Of course, it was impressive she managed to interrupt her opponent’s consciousness at the last moment after getting lapped the preceding four rounds. But the thing that made it so warm-feely was the knowledge of what she’d gone through to get to that belt. She’d been on the ropes many times in her life before that fifth round, and she’d suffered many a setback. Yet she’d kept fighting on, and kept persevering. And when Holm’s flailing ceased in that final frame, she realized a dream that didn’t even exist in the old-school days she fought.

My introduction to Miesha was the same as countless other hardcore fans – watching her take a shin to the face from Kaitlin Young, who used that as a calling card for a CBS fight with Gina Carano in the soon-to-be doomed EliteXC. To put it lightly, Tate’s career did not start on the right foot. But she kept training, living in a trailer outside Dennis Hallman’s gym with her longtime boyfriend Bryan Caraway. She got a contract with Strikeforce. She won the title. Then Ronda Rousey came along.

That setback might have looked definitive to some. But Tate was no stranger to comebacks. She didn’t listen when the boys wrestling team didn’t want her in high school, and she went on to win a state title. Her very first fight, she had her nose badly broken – the first of many such injuries – and kept on fighting. At least initially, she chose her career over Caraway. And after Rousey beat her again, she fought back into UFC contention after another nose-breaker against Cat Zingano.

There are many truly resilient fighters out there, fighters who overcome immense odds to do what they do in the cage. Few of them, however, get to win a UFC title, and no less win it after so many comebacks that might have stopped others. Tate’s tenure as champ was, of course, extremely short-lived, and many will write it off in the shadow of Rousey. As we saw this past month at UFC 205, the moment arrived where she was just too tired to keep coming back. But for a brief time, she arrived at the pinnacle of the sport and her full potential. Hard not to feel good about an MMA vet doing that.

Michael Bisping

Michael Bisping’s unlikely run, because we may never see its like again

Ben Fowlkes: Say the year is 2012 and a time machine materializes in your backyard. Say I hop out of that time machine and grab you by the shoulders, shaking you with a wide-eyed excitement as I explain that I have come from four years into the future, where Michael Bisping is UFC middleweight champ after having beaten Anderson Silva, Luke Rockhold and Dan Henderson all in the same calendar year. Say you can resist the urge to yell at me for making such poor use of time machine technology. Do you think there’s any way you’d possibly believe me?

Just one presidential term ago, Bisping’s rise would have seemed unlikely, bordering on impossible. He ended 2012 going 1-1 on the year, with a decision loss to Chael Sonnen and a decision win over Brian Stann, and to a lot of us it looked like his best hope of ever earning a title shot had just evaporated. This suspicion would deepen in the first month of 2013, when he got knocked out by Vitor Belfort shortly before his 34th birthday.

That’s about when we were ready to carve the tombstone on his career. Here lies Michael Bisping. Trash-talker. Decision master. Meme fodder. Always a contender, but never a champ.

So then how did he end up here, a few short years later, with a year for the record books? A lot of it was timing. Testosterone-replacement therapy went away, and it had arguably affected his career more than any other. Plus some legends got old in a hurry while Bisping eased into his later thirties like a well-aged cheese.

Remember how he used to talk about fighting for the belt and we were all like, “LOL, bro, that’s Silva’s belt and he would murder you”? Turns out, nope. Not if Bisping catches him on the downslope. Or a rematch with Rockhold, the man who trucked him easily once? Bisping not only won the rematch, he straight-up starched the man. Then there was Hendo, who built his legend on Bisping’s descent into the dark lands. Somehow Bisping clawed his way back and eeked out some measure of revenge.

Other fighters may have had better years, but no one had a more unlikely one. No one reached such heights by combining such a stubborn belief in themselves with that almost pathological willingness to absorb punishment. No one else got to the mountaintop by refusing to believe us when we told him he’d never make it.

And through it all, success hasn’t changed him. He’s still the same sneering, cocky bloke he always was. Only now there’s UFC gold around his waist. And who could have seen that coming?

Dominick Cruz

Dominick Cruz’s comeback, because … well, do I even need to say it?

Fernanda Prates: For a few years, it was hard to even hear Dominick Cruz’s name without a sympathetic tilt of the head. In a sport in which consensuses are slim – take any picks grid, decision cards or rankings systems – one thing we seem to be in collective agreement with is: As far as having been thoroughly screwed over by your own body goes, Dominick Cruz reigns supreme.

In MMA, that is no easy feat. For Cruz to take on this unfortunate title, it took having to vacate a title after two knee surgeries and a groin tear that left him sidelined for more than three consecutive years. It took a quasi-comeback in 2014, when a cathartic first-round KO was soon spoiled by his other knee. It took all of that happening before his 30th birthday, while he was on a 10-win run and seemingly well on his way toward all-time greatness.

That’s why, when he was finally cleared to reclaim the belt he’d been made to vacate, it was hard to escape the obvious narrative. The famously intelligent Cruz saw himself answering variations of the same question, rehashing some of the most difficult moments of his life in a loop. Then-champion T.J. Dillashaw could have been the most masterful of interviewees and it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. That fight told a very clear story.

It wasn’t easy (or even unanimous), but Cruz pulled off a win against a very prepared Dillashaw. On January 17, he became bantamweight champion again. Yes, the belt was nice and all, but the biggest takeaway seemed to have less to do with that than with the question: Had Cruz wasted his best years while his body refused to cooperate? While one fight couldn’t possibly answer such question in full, it did show promise. Cruz still had it.

It’s impossible to tell what would’ve happened if Cruz hadn’t been sidelined for so long. A scheduled fight with then-champion Renan Barao, for instance, could have either extended his comeback story a couple of years or put an end to his winning streak. In this interim, Cruz could have been knocked out, submitted, decisioned. Or he could have gone on to squash all types of high-level competition on his way to the top of multiple pound-for-pound rankings.

But if Cruz himself has been able to move past the “could haves” of his stellar career, we should all be able to do the same. In the present, Cruz is in possession of the UFC’s bantamweight belt. He defended it once, against the only man to ever beat him, and is set to try another defense in just a few days. He has become a FOX Sports analyst – a good one, at that – and is still regarded as one of the most skilled mixed martial artists we’ve ever had.

But, most importantly, he came back.

That one Conor McGregor press conference – wait, no, not that one – because “Notorious” showed his true character

John Morgan: Conor McGregor might have a hard time picking his own favorite moment from 2016. After all, the brash Irishman banked “truckloads of cash” during his three in-cage appearances over the course of the year. The heart he showed in the fifth round of his UFC 202 win over Nate Diaz certainly served to answer some questions that might have existed about his will to win. And his dominant victory over Eddie Alvarez at November’s UFC 205 etched McGregor’s name in the history books as the only fighter to simultaneously hold UFC titles in two divisions.

But my favorite McGregor moment came late in the evening on March 5 in the ballrooms of the MGM Grand Garden Arena. It was there that McGregor, fresh off his first UFC loss – a second-round submission to Diaz in a welterweight clash at UFC 196 – showed up to the event’s post-fight news conference and conducted himself with both dignity and class.

McGregor’s pre-fight antics have become legendary, for sure, but in large doses can easily lose a bit of their power. With his bravado stripped away, McGregor’s simple, honest evaluation of his performance – immediately after an emotional defeat, nonetheless – struck me as a sign of the then-featherweight champ’s true character.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow,” McGregor admitted. “I took a shot. I went at it, and I feel I was simply inefficient with my energy. Usually, I fight a man in the division I am champion in, and they crumble over those shots, but Nate took them very well. The weight, I think, allowed him to take those shots well. So I think with a little bit of an adjustment and the recognition that with the bigger man, you must be a bit more efficient with your striking, you must not put everything into the shots – but I was simply inefficient with my energy. I made some errors.

“It was simply a battle of energy in there, and he got the better of that. This is the game. We win some. We lose some. I will never shy away from a challenge. I will never shy away from defeat. This is part of the game.”

It’s been amazing to watch McGregor’s meteoric rise to superstardom. With just a little more than three years in the promotion, he’s made a real case that he does, indeed, deserve to own a share of the company. But a man’s true character is often revealed at his lowest point, and on that particular evening it appeared to me that while McGregor’s brash persona has assisted in his rise up the ranks, he remains a true martial artist at his core – a quality that’s certainly admirable to find in a UFC champion.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.