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.)
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.
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.
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.