On Oscar nominations day, we give you the best (and worst!) MMA movies of all time

Nominations for the 92nd Annual Academy Awards were announced Monday morning, and once again, fighting movies didn’t make the cut.

The closest thing martial arts fans probably have to a nominee to pull for this year is “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The Quentin Tarantino gem set in 1969 Hollywood features a scene with Bruce Lee, who finds himself in a brief fight on a movie set with professional stunt double Cliff Booth, played by the nominated Brad Pitt. (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is nominated for 10 Oscars.)

Or maybe the scene in “1917” in which Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) gets full mount on a German soldier and chokes him out – literally, like, to death, to save his own life – counts? (“1917” is up for 10 Oscars, as well.)

There’s a great fight scene between Ken Miles (Christian Bale) and Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) in “Ford v Ferrari,” and it even involves a loaf of Wonder bread.

There’s not much MMA to speak of in this year’s nominees. But that’s OK. We’ll live to fight another year at the movies. And until then, let’s take a look back at some of the best – and worst – MMA movies of all time.

It may not be surprising to hear that in the history of non-pure boxing fighting movies, there haven’t been many that would contend for accolades – unless we’re opening it up to the Golden Raspberry Awards (The Razzies), which honor the worst movie achievements, to be generous, every year. Really, only one – our top choice – was ever part of the conversation (and got an Oscar nod) for some of its acting.

Yes, there have been some pretty awful efforts out there – and those seem to be movies that were trying to take advantage of the MMA boom late in the Chuck Liddell-Tito Ortiz era and early in the Anderson Silva-Georges St-Pierre era. You remember the time – you and all your buds were wearing Affliction and TapouT shirts, and if you were, you had to see these movies.

Who knows? Maybe over time, some of them will grow to the point of being so bad, they’re actually good – like “Showgirls” or “Howard the Duck” or “Superman IV.” It’s doubtful, but this is MMA – stranger things have happened.

Let’s take a look, then, at the best (but mostly worst) MMA movies out there.

(And if we left some off the list, don’t be offended – just add them in the comments. For the record, if a movie was purely karate or kickboxing or boxing, etc., we left it off – we’re looking for reasonably modern-era mixed martial arts cagefighting kind of stuff to make the cut for this list. Sorry, old Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme flicks. We’ll save you for a different list.)