The History of UFC Champions

The next upcoming series of articles are going to be basically a history lesson for anyone out there just getting into MMA or the UFC. I wanted to write this to start off my page about MMA to resemble how quickly the UFC is changing. From long-tenured champions, legends, and hall-of-famers, to now short-tenured champions watching legends fall and even stronger, more talented up-and-comers shortening the gap between contender and champion. At times making it almost indistinguishable between the two.

The UFC has become more competitive than it’s ever been before. The level of talent that have come thru the UFC fighter pool is better than we have ever seen before.  We are past the days of Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, Anderson Silva, Georges St.Pierre, José Aldo, Dominick Cruz, Demetrious Johnson, and Ronda Rousey. You may be a little confused as to why I named all these fighters together in comparison. I do it because all these fighters had very long tenures as champions in the UFC. When they were fighting, it was clear they were levels above the next contender that came and went in the same octagon as them.

Fighters, announcers, and promotions could hype up the fights as much as they want but it was easily noticeable that these champions were the champs for a reason. We’ve had more recent long tenured champions in Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Max Holloway, Alexander Volkanovsi, Amanda Nunes, and Valentina Shevchenko. In 2022-2023 alone, Adesanya, Usman, Oliveira, and Nunes, and Shevchenko all lost their belts via submission or knockout. I will break down every belt from every weight class from the last decade to present day.