UFC 5 five-star fighters
Twelve cards on the UFC 5 roster hub carry the 5-Star tag. That is the closest thing the game has to an official "best fighters" list, and it is worth understanding what the tag does and does not mean before you build a game plan around it.
The twelve
| Fighter | Division | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Georges St Pierre (Legacy) | Welterweight | Legacy card |
| Joanna Jedrzejczyk (Legacy) | Women's strawweight | Legacy card |
| Jon Jones | Light heavyweight | Also a 5-Star heavyweight card |
| Jon Jones | Heavyweight | Same fighter, different division card |
| Alexander Volkanovski | Featherweight | Cover athlete |
| Amanda Nunes | Women's bantamweight | Also a women's featherweight in the sport, bantamweight on the hub |
| Khabib Nurmagomedov | Lightweight | Retired; base card, not tagged Legacy |
| Valentina Shevchenko | Women's flyweight | Also a women's bantamweight card |
| Anderson Silva (Legacy) | Middleweight | Legacy card |
| Fedor Emelianenko | Heavyweight | Base card |
| Israel Adesanya | Middleweight | Cover athlete |
| Islam Makhachev | Lightweight | Base card |
Twelve cards, eleven fighters — Jon Jones holds two of them. That is not a quirk of the list, it is how the hub counts: a fighter with cards in two divisions gets a star tag on both.
What the 5-Star tag actually means
It is a curation tag, not a rating. The hub's data model has a star field, and twelve cards carry it. Nothing in the published data explains the threshold, and the hub does not show an overall number next to it.
Two things follow. First, the tag is a shortcut for "the developers consider this fighter a headline name", which is useful when you are picking a fighter to learn. Second, it is not a power ranking: a 5-Star fighter with a move set you cannot use is worse for you than a four-star fighter whose game plan fits your hands.
The tag also does not update with balance changes. It is applied to the card, not recalculated per patch.
The five Legacy cards
Five of the twelve are Legacy versions: Georges St Pierre, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Anderson Silva, plus two more in the wider roster (Demetrious Johnson and Conor McGregor carry Legacy tags without the 5-Star tag).
A Legacy card is a retired fighter's version rather than an active one. In practice that means two things: the move set is built from their career rather than a current camp, and the physical model is a historical one. Legacy cards are also the ones most likely to have an Alter Ego counterpart, because the Alter Ego system is built around career moments.
Building around the list
The useful way to read the twelve is by archetype rather than by name.
Submission-first: Khabib Nurmagomedov, Islam Makhachev, Georges St Pierre. All three have grappling as the primary route, and all three are cards whose base move set includes chainable submissions.
Striking-first: Israel Adesanya, Alexander Volkanovski, Anderson Silva (Legacy), Joanna Jedrzejczyk (Legacy).Range management and volume, with the Legacy cards leaning more toward the historical style than the modern one.
Power: Fedor Emelianenko, Jon Jones (heavyweight). Both are cards where a single clean shot changes the fight.
Complete: Amanda Nunes, Valentina Shevchenko, Jon Jones (light heavyweight). Cards with no obvious hole, which is exactly why they are the most-picked fighters in online play.
What the list does not tell you
It does not tell you which fighter is best in the current meta, because there is no published meta data and no attribute values on the hub. It does not tell you which fighter is easiest to learn — that is usually the one with the simplest move set, which is rarely the 5-Star card.
And it does not include every strong fighter in the game. The hub shows five cards per weight class, so a division's fifth-best fighter may not appear at all. The 5-Star tag is a highlight reel, not a census.
A practical way to use it
- Pick one 5-Star card and one non-5-Star card in the same division. Learn what the tag is actually worth to you by comparing them in Practice Mode.
- Use Legacy cards to learn history, not to win. Their move sets are the most distinctive and the least forgiving.
- Ignore the tag in online play. Your opponent's fighter choice tells you more about the matchup than the star field does.
How to test whether a 5-star card suits you
Pick the card and the division, then run three drills in Practice Mode. Throw ten jabs and check the range at which they land — that tells you whether the fighter wants to be at kick range or in the pocket. Throw five takedowns from open space and see how fast the animation is; a slow shot tells you the grappling stats are not the card's strength. Then throw five head kicks and watch the recovery — a long recovery means the card cannot afford to miss.
The tag tells you the fighter is a headline name. The drills tell you whether the headline fits your hands, and no roster page can answer that for you.
Next: Weight classes · Roster overview · Alter egos