The Sins of the Snowball King: A Light Heavyweight Championship History

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Who is the greatest 205-pound champion in MMA history?
	Jon Jones
	Chuck Liddell
	Wanderlei Silva
	Frank Shamrock
	Bobby Southworth

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was established, initially, as something between the world's greatest martial arts contest and an infomercial for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. While many of the faithful still pine for the no-rules, no-divisions standards of the industry's origins, between its niche appeal and the massive political opposition it faced, the UFC knew it had to remake itself in the rough shape of an actual sport if it was to survive.

But those changes were initially slow to come. When the UFC first separated into weight classes in 1997 it established only two divisions: Heavyweight, for everyone over 200 pounds, and Lightweight, for literally every other human on the planet. Over the next few years this would expand--Lightweight became Middleweight, to make way for a new Lightweight that handled everyone at 170 pounds, and that, too, carved out Bantamweight, for everyone at 155. This uncomfortable stage ended when New Jersey, of all states, built the first unified rules of mixed martial arts. The UFC, recently purchased by the Fertitta Brothers and their boxercise instructor Dana White, gladly incorporated these new regulations, and with it, formalized weight classes.

This included, for the first officially, legally recognized time, the 205-pound class known as Light Heavyweight.

Twenty years later, we are still paying for their grievous error.

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The landscape for the UFC in 1997 was as promising as it was difficult. They'd managed to scratch out some cultural cache for themselves to the point of being the subject of an episode of Friends, of all things, but they'd also lost most of their top stars. Promotional kingpin Royce Gracie had left for Japan after the entire Gracie family pulled out of the UFC in protest of its adoption of concepts like 'rules' and 'time limits' and 'people who might actually beat us,' and the American superstars--two-time tournament winner Don Frye, Superfight Champion Dan Severn, and their most popular star, Ken Shamrock--had all signed up with either New Japan Pro Wrestling or the World Wrestling Federation, making them altogether unavailable. The UFC needed stars, particularly now that it had two weight classes in need of standing champions.

Fortunately for them, there was another Shamrock.

Frank and Ken Shamrock were essentially stuck together. Both men came from difficult backgrounds, both men turned their lives around after being adopted by Bob Shamrock, and Ken personally trained Frank in catch wrestling and the house style of Pancrase, where he, too, became a veteran. But Frank struggled to escape Ken's shadow. Ken was Pancrase's biggest foreign star, a multi-time champion with a massive fanbase; Frank, while very visibly talented, just couldn't break through. By 1997 he was 14-7-1, his last two consecutive fights had ended in disqualifications, and when he was announced as the second half of the UFC's first-ever middleweight championship match, most saw him as a warm body waiting to be picked off by his opponent. Kevin Jackson was seen as a potential star for the UFC: A Pan-American and Olympic gold medalist in wrestling who went 3-0 in mixed martial arts, including a victorious tear through the UFC 14 tournament where he defeated two men in just two minutes.

Frank Shamrock submitted him in sixteen seconds. And for years to come, he'd be considered the greatest champion in the entire sport.

Whatever Frank Shamrock had lacked in Japan, he found in America. No one in the UFC could touch him. He defended his championship four times, each a devastating stoppage: A famous 22-second slam knockout of Igor Zinoviev that shattered his collarbone and ended his career, a one-round kneebar over Jeremy Horn, a submission legend who would only tap out eight times in a 120-fight career, an eight-minute thrashing of a game but outmatched John Lober, and, in his best performance, a TKO over the growing phenomenon that was Tito Ortiz, who was just too exhausted to fight anymore. Frank was the most dominant champion in the early days of the sport, and arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

So he retired.

The competition didn't excite him, or he wanted more money, or he was just being weird. No one had a great answer and Frank has changed his story a dozen times. This was the true beginning of the Legacy of Light Heavyweight. Before the division had its name, before the UFC was on cable television, before most of its future champions had even begun their careers, the championship's first father was, legitimately, one of the best fighters in the world--and he threw the belt away, because he knew the evil that lurked in its heart.

The UFC, somewhat mystified, had to move on, and as Frank had been crowned at UFC Japan back in 1997 the now-vacant belt, they decided, would be filled again at their next trip down to Tokyo.

The winner would, for better or worse, become the face of American mixed martial arts during its initial expansion.

Before he became a failed politician, an internet conspiracy addict and a laughingstock, Tito Ortiz was, for a time, the biggest mixed martial arts star in the western hemisphere. As one of the first successful self-marketers in the sport--and setting the bar as low as possible, those early forms of marketing were things like beating Shamrock associates Jerry Bohlander and Guy Mezger and then donning custom-printed t-shirts for his post-fight interview with slogans like "GAY Mezger Is my Bitch!" and "I JUST F**KED YOUR rear end!" on them, because in the 90s homophobic insults and rape jokes were fine but saying "gently caress" wasn't. Tito would get the first crack at the belt right after his loss to Frank, and he'd record what for years was the best victory of his career in the process, overcoming an early scare against Wanderlei Silva and wrestling him to a decision. Tito was the second UFC Middleweight Champion and, as the name changed during his reign, technically, the first Light Heavyweight Champion.

Numerically, it was the best reign the belt would see for the next decade. Contextually, boy, it had some weird fights.

Yuki Kondo was a Pancrase champion and a legend of the sport: He was also a man without a weight class who had most recently fought the 5'9" Saulo Ribeiro and the 6'11" Semmy Schilt, and he earned his shot at Ortiz by defeating Alexandre Dantas, a heavyweight grappler who had never fought before. Kondo actually dropped Tito with a flying knee ten seconds into their fight, but Tito responded by taking him down and punching him repeatedly in the brainstem, which was still legal at the time, and a choke ended it in two minutes. Evan Tanner was a fantastic 23-2 competitor and a Unified Shoot Wrestling Federation champion: Tito knocked him out in thirty seconds after picking him up by the chest and slamming him so hard their skulls cracked together. Elvis Sinosic, the KING OF ROCK 'N RUMBLE, was a 4-3-1 fighter out of Australia who'd won an upset victory after submitting Jeremy Horn in his UFC debut: Tito returned him to his normal routine by pounding him out in three and a half minutes. Tito was supposed to have the biggest fight of his career next against superstar Vitor Belfort, but Belfort busted his arm in training and his replacement, Kevin Randleman, had to pull out, so the division got its first replacement-for-a-replacement fight in the form of Vladimir Matyushenko, a 10-1 fighter with one solitary UFC fight against--hey, look at that, Yuki Kondo. It was Tito's longest and least interesting fight, a five-round decision that consisted mostly of Tito sitting in full guard for twenty-one minutes.

But it didn't matter. Tito had the three attributes nascent MMA fans craved: He looked scary, he was a huge rear end in a top hat, and he always won. He was the human equivalent of a Big Dog t-shirt, and people loved him for it. With the Heavyweight championship bouncing around too fast to crown a marketable star, and Middleweight champion Murilo Bustamante dropping the belt to head to Pride, and Matt Hughes having only just started his hall-of-fame run, and the Lightweight title having been deactivated altogether, Tito was the UFC's shining star. He just needed the right opponent.

But no one said the right opponent had to be good.

The WWF had made Ken Shamrock a household name, but he'd never quite gotten along with them, and after 1999 he missed Japan and actual, unscripted violence. A brief run in Pride led to the UFC opening up the pursestrings to bring him back, but it was a shot at Tito that really motivated him. Ken hadn't forgotten Tito's awkward t-shirt based mockery, and the two had nearly come to blows after the Guy Mezger fight back in 1999. Ken wanted revenge. Ken wanted justice. And Ken wanted to get even on trash talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_D2C2nAHXM

It didn't go well for him.

Neither did the fight.

At UFC 40 on November 22, 2002, Tito mauled Ken. There wasn't a single competitive moment in the fifteen-minute beating. Ken's own corner mercifully threw in the towel after the third round, and while Tito donned another of his trademark shirts--a comparatively chaste "I killed Kenny" South Park reference--he embraced Ken and buried the hatchet. Tito was, above all, a businessman, and he knew this was his starmaking fight. It was time to be respectful. It was time to get some fans.

The UFC couldn't have been happier. Their biggest star had crushed the most recognizable fighter in America, the mainstream attention brought brand new eyes to the UFC, and the night's co-main event had crowned a new star and #1 contender in "The Iceman" Chuck Liddell. The fans were rabid for a showdown between the former training partners turned rivals. The fans were rabid for more Tito Ortiz.

No one actually knew that night marked the end of the Tito Ortiz era. He didn't want to fight Liddell. He didn't want to fight anybody. He wanted to rehab injuries from his schedule and collect big sponsorship bucks. So the UFC decided to have Chuck fight for the first-ever interim championship in UFC history. He was matched up with a seemingly soft target: Former heavyweight champion Randy Couture, who had just passed 40, had just been knocked out twice in a row, and was dropping to the 205-pound division for the first time in his life.

But the best-laid plans often work the worst. At UFC 43 on June 6, 2003, the same night Vitor Belfort introduced the UFC to grotesquely large facial injuries after bashing Marvin Eastman's eyebrow open and rising heavyweight star Frank Mir took a disqualification win after Wes Sims decided to grab the fence and stomp his goddamn head, Randy Couture, the first man to hold the UFC up for money and drop a belt over contract disputes, ruined their plans by grinding Chuck Liddell into paste. The superfight was spoiled.

But a funny thing happened. With Chuck Liddell no longer in the picture, suddenly, Tito Ortiz was ready to come back. Randy Couture was easy pickings for him: Tito was a bigger, stronger, younger, faster wrestler, and more importantly, he was the real champion. Even with Couture's upset victory over Liddell, most of the world saw the title unification as a foregone conclusion for Tito.

In a wrestling clinic so one-sided it concluded with Randy literally spanking Tito--which cornerman Tiki Ghosn screamed to the referee was Randy tapping out to Tito's devastating leglock--Randy cemented himself as the true, undisputed champion. His comeback from his heavyweight fall was complete, he was the UFC's first-ever two-division champion, and nothing would stop him now.

His reign lasted forty-nine seconds.

Randy and Vitor Belfort had fought once before; a heavyweight title eliminator way back in 1997, before things like rounds existed. It took eight minutes, but Randy eventually ground-and-pounded Vitor out of the fight. At UFC 49, on August 21, 2004, the seven-years-in-the-making rematch took place. Officially, the fight records only one strike landed for each man. Vitor's single punch ended the fight--not because of a knockout, but because the seam on the back side of his glove sliced straight through Randy's eyelid. The title changed hands on a doctor stoppage and no one was happy.

But the UFC wasn't too fussed, either. Vitor Belfort was an OG of the sport who'd been fighting since 1996, an international star thanks to his victories in Japan and his status as one of Brazil's greatest fighters, and unlike Couture, he was a knockout artist so terrifying he'd gone toe to toe with Tank Abbott at a 60-pound weight disadvantage and punched him out in under a minute. And with his only loss in four years coming against Chuck Liddell, Vitor was perfectly positioned for the huge money match the UFC had wanted in the first place. But first, of course, there had to be a rematch so Vitor could cement his title win as a certainty rather than a fluke.

It turned out it was a fluke.

The rematch was even more one-sided than Randy's win against Tito. After three rounds Couture had doled out a 131-to-10 strike beating that left him covered in Belfort's blood, and the doctor had seen enough. Randy Couture won the fight, won their trilogy, and won back his championship.

Which was fortunate, because it left him at the center of the sport loving exploding.

The Ultimate Fighter didn't save the UFC--it had already done well enough that Spike TV, the television network for people who like rolling coal and gas station beef jerky, had committed to airing more cards--but the appeal of its in retrospect bizarrely hodgepodge reality television approach, and the massively popular finale fight between Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin, made public interest explode overnight. UFC 51, the last pay-per-view to air before TUF, did 105,000 buys: UFC 52 did 280,000, the UFC's biggest number ever. And no one benefitted from this more than Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. The two had been set up as coaches for the season, with the show pitting them against each other as both instructors and fighters; UFC 52 would be headlined by their long-awaited, long-belated title rematch.

Randy Couture's first Light Heavyweight title reign lasted forty-nine seconds. His second was a vast improvement: He almost tripled it, at one-hundred and twenty-six. After stinging Liddell on the feet he waded recklessly in looking for a followup and got flattened with a right hand.

Finally, everything had fallen into place for the UFC. Even though they'd wanted Liddell belted up years ago, his coronation coming at the moment of the UFC's ascension into the mainstream, at the most successful show in company history, made Liddell the company's first megastar.

In hindsight, it's not hard to see why.

It was crucial for the UFC to promote MMA as the thinking man's combat sport. They constantly hammered home how versatile and well-trained and disciplined and Hey, Did You Know Rich Franklin Was A Math Teacher their roster was, because every time they did it, they pushed themselves farther away from their almost-banned human-cockfighting origins. But in 2005, Chuck Liddell was the living embodiment of what people wanted mixed martial arts to actually be. Sure, he was disciplined and well-trained and one of the sport's best counterstrikers, but he was also a mohawked brawler with a slight beer gut who tried as hard as he could to never take people to the ground. He got into bar fights in Santa Barbara, he partied in clubs all night, at one point he almost fell asleep in the middle of a live interview on Good Morning Texas because he was hung over and hosed up on Ambien. Even during his fights he tended to move like a genie had granted a hopeful duck's wish to be a kickboxer.

And he killed everybody.

Tito Ortiz had finally taken the Chuck Liddell fight after his loss to Randy. At that point in his career, Tito had never truly been knocked out. He'd been stopped on strikes by Frank Shamrock, but that was after 20 minutes of complete exhaustion rather than damage. Chuck Liddell had earned his shot at Randy by doing this to Tito.

You could not have picked a man who more embodied the moment.

Liddell would become the only man to successfully defend the belt since Tito lost it back in 2002. And his reign was one of revenge.

Jeremy Horn was a road warrior and a legend of the sport; he also hadn't appeared in the UFC since UFC 30 all the way back in February of 2001. But farther back than that at UFC 19 in 1999, he'd become the first man to beat Chuck Liddell, and Chuck wanted his win back. He punched Horn until he quit midway through the fourth round because he could no longer see straight. Having split two fights, a trilogy bout with Randy Couture was inevitable: At UFC 57 in February 2006 they got it, breaking their own gate and PPV buyrate records in the process. This time, it took two rounds for Liddell to knock Randy flat. Renato "Babalu" Sobral had been knocked out of both consciousness and the UFC by Liddell in 2002, but by August of 2006 Babalu was on a ten-fight winning streak and the clear #1 contender, and he wanted revenge on Chuck. He got knocked out in half the time their first fight had taken.

Tito Ortiz had been busy since Chuck knocked him dead. He was 5-0 since the fight, a streak that included finally fighting and beating Vitor Belfort, scraping a split decision off TUF 1 champion Forrest Griffin, and winning two incredibly lopsided fights with Ken Shamrock for MMA's least necessary trilogy. But he was still one of the sport's biggest stars, and he had long held that their first fight was bullshit, complaining Chuck had poked him in the eye just before the knockout loss.

Tito still complained, of course--early stoppage, I was winning, all the usual things you say after someone punches your face in and you don't want to admit it. Chuck Liddell was on top of the world. He had the second-most title defenses in the division's history, and he'd beaten the poo poo out of the only man with more. He not only hadn't lost in seven straight fights, he'd knocked out everyone in front of him. He was one of the biggest stars in combat sports, he was widely considered the greatest 205-pound fighter in the world, and he'd avenged all of his losses.

Well.

All of his losses in the UFC.

The UFC makes a policy out of mocking the desperately flailing MMA companies that call them out for cross-promotional bouts for their own benefit, but in the early 2000s, when the UFC was the desperately flailing MMA company, they'd sent Chuck over to compete in Japan's Pride Fighting Championships in the hopes of getting some much-needed attention. He'd made his first appearance all the way back in May of 2001, where he smashed Tito's old nemesis Guy Mezger, and he came back in 2003 to compete in Pride's 2003 Middleweight Grand Prix, a star-studded tournament including former UFC champ Murilo Bustamante, Judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida, living legend Kazushi Sakuraba, and Pride champion Wanderlei Silva. Dana White--Chuck's manager, at the time, in addition to running the UFC--was so confident in Chuck that he and Pride president Nobuyuki Sakakibara shook hands on a $250,000 bet over Chuck winning the tournament and beating Wanderlei.

Dana did not get his money. Chuck made a great accounting for himself in the first round, knocking out future multi-sport champion Alistair Overeem, but the second round saw him outwrestled, outpunched and forced into a corner stoppage by a younger fighter named Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. Chuck went back to the UFC, but he never forgot the defeat, and in 2006 Jackson had returned to America as part of the first real attempt to compete with the booming UFC, a revival of the little-known World Fighting Alliance. Venture-capitalist attorneys poured millions into building and marketing WFA: KING OF THE STREETS, a massive pay-per-view with an all-star roster including young prospect Martin Kampmann, undefeated wonder Lyoto Machida, charismatic weirdo Jason "Mayhem" Miller, outright legend of the sport Bas Rutten, and, in the main event, Quinton Jackson vs former UFC champion Matt "The Law" Lindland.

It was a huge event! It was also an enormous financial failure. The WFA went under more or less instantaneously and all its rights and contracts were bought out by the UFC. Rampage made his debut a few months later and knocked out Marvin Eastman in what was generally agreed to be a foregone conclusion, and on May 26, 2007, at UFC 71, Chuck finally got the chance to avenge the last remaining loss of his career.

Chuck threw a lunging shot to the body, Rampage countered with a hook right on the jaw, and that was that. Two years as MMA's biggest star ended in two minutes. Chuck had seen MMA to its greatest successes, and now, it had officially outgrown him.

His story was over. His era of MMA was over. And a new star was born in his wake.

And make no mistake, while he's forgotten in the modern annals of MMA, Rampage was a star. He hit harder than Liddell, he wrestled better than Tito, and when better grapplers would tie him up and threaten him with submissions, he would just drop them on their god damned heads.

Rampage is even a part of history. He scored one title defense, but it was one of the most important defenses in the annals of the sport, as he successfully unified the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship and the Pride Middleweight Championship when he defeated Dan Henderson at UFC 75 on September 8, 2007. For the first time, there was one single, undisputed, #1 205-pound fighter in the world, and it was Quinton Rampage Goddamn Jackson.

But I can hear some level of confusion in the audience. After all, I introduced this whole essay as an examination of a terrible, cursed division, a thing of chaos and horror, and I have thus far instead been telling you the tales of the premiere weight class in mixed martial arts. Sure, Frank Shamrock left the sport for no reason, and sure, Tito Ortiz had homophobic t-shirts, and sure, Randy Couture almost lost an eyeball, and sure, Chuck Liddell got the comedown nods on live television, but this all sounds pretty great so far.

Don't worry, my friends.

The chaos is beginning.

Rampage's success towards the end of Pride and thereafter had been largely credited to his departure from Colin Oyama's camp in favor of boxing trainer Juanito Ibarra. Ibarra was a regular fixture on The Ultimate Fighter 7, which, in its ongoing tradition of advertising a future fight, had Rampage coaching opposite TUF 1 champ Forrest Griffin. But Rampage's success had turned his relationship with Ibarra acrimonious. He would repeatedly accuse Ibarra of stealing from him, throttling his acting career and providing subpar training, accusations he eventually recanted after Ibarra sued him and told him to prove it in court--and TUF showed an immature, disconnected Rampage getting his whole team destroyed by Forrest's.

But Rampage didn't care. He wasn't a coach, he was a fighter, and he was supremely confident. He was one of MMA's hardest punchers, he was a better wrestler, and just three fights prior, Forrest had been knocked out by "The Dean of Mean" Keith Jardine in one round. The odds were heavily in Rampage's favor, and most of the world had already looked past the fight.

But the MMA world had always looked past Forrest, and he was very, very used to it. On July 5, 2008, he stunned an underprepared Jackson by standing up to his punches, outstriking him in four out of five rounds and at one point buckling him and almost stopping the fight on leg kicks alone. It was a close decision, but ultimately, it went to Forrest.

It was a huge victory for the UFC. He wasn't the first TUF fighter to become a world champion--Matt Serra had shocked the world by defeating Georges St-Pierre a year earlier--but he was the first TUF original, the first fighter built entirely by the UFC's modern marketing machine, to capture gold.

Rampage fell apart more or less overnight. He fired and threatened to sue Ibarra, he accused the judges of rigging the fight and the UFC of punishing him for beating Chuck Liddell, he reportedly spent half a week not sleeping, eating or consuming anything other than energy drinks, and ten days after his title loss he was arrested for reckless driving.

After hitting multiple cars and leading police on a high-speed chase.

In a truck with only three functional tires.

That had his face on it.

He got away with community service.

But, hey: The UFC had its champion. He was a good fighter, he'd beaten the #1 guy, he was funny and charismatic and popular. They couldn't have been happier, and they had big plans for Forrest: The first-ever TUF Coach vs Student fight. Chuck Liddell was back, he'd just beaten Wanderlei Silva, he had that look in his eye, and the only thing standing between him and a title match was TUF 2 champion Rashad Evans--an underwhelming wrestler coming off a draw with Tito Ortiz that he would've lost had Tito not lost a point and a split decision victory over TUF 3 champion Michael Bisping who, himself, was not exactly setting the world on fire. It wasn't an easy fight, but the world was confident enough to make Chuck a heavy favorite, the UFC was already setting up marketing for his return to title contention, and when Liddell easily won the first round, everything seemed to be falling into place.

And then the second round started.

Every once in awhile, you get a single punch that sends shockwaves through the entire sport. Chuck Liddell's ended on the spot, even if he didn't realize it yet. He would only fight in the UFC two more times--both of them first-round knockout losses against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Rich Franklin--before Dana begged him to retire in 2010. And he did! Until he came out of retirement in 2018 for a rematch with Tito Ortiz that saws a barely-mobile, visibly out of shape, 47 year-old Liddell getting trucked by a fully roided-out Tito in one round. (We try not to talk about that fight.)

Plans were dashed. But this was the can't-lose era of the UFC, and like any good veteran, Chuck had put Rashad over on his way out of the territory. Griffin vs Evans was another can't-miss prospect: TUF 1 champ vs TUF 2 champ, the man who choked out Shogun and nearly knocked out Rampage vs the man who killed Chuck Liddell. The two were booked for the UFC's huge end-of-the-year card, UFC 92, on December 27, 2008. It was sure to be a massive, competitive fight.

And it was, for two rounds!

And then it very abruptly wasn't.

People thought Griffin was trying to submit to strikes. He would later clarify he wasn't; he was just getting beaten so badly he had no conscious control of his arms.

Forrest's reign ended after just 175 days and a single fight. He would never get near a title shot again, he was destroyed by Anderson Silva the following year in a fight that also saw him fail a pre-fight drug test--for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax--and less than three years later he would retire for good.

But, hey! Rashad Evans! Once again, the UFC still came out of things with a star. He killed Chuck, he killed Forrest, he was fast and powerful and well-rounded, and thanks to that draw with Tito, he was undefeated.

Unfortunately: He wasn't the only undefeated Light Heavyweight in the rankings.

Lyoto Machida was the internet's favorite fighter. He'd had the kind of life the internet considered a mystical martial arts dream--half-Japanese, half-Brazilian, trained by his karate grandmaster father since infancy, a black belt by adolescence and a champion in jiu-jitsu, boxing and sumo soon after, scouted by no less than Japanese combat sports progenitor Antonio Inoki himself--and he'd spent his early career fighting a profoundly weird succession of opponents in Japan that included wild poo poo like lightweight kingpin BJ Penn in a heavyweight bout and kickboxers Michael McDonald and Sam Greco in MMA contests, but also knocking out TUF 1 runner-up Stephan Bonnar and future UFC superstar Rich Franklin in just Machida's second and third fights.

The UFC had picked him up in the same 2006 WFA buy-out that got them Rampage, and by the dawn of 2009 Machida was 6-0 in the UFC, 14-0 overall, and had already had the obligatory Tito Ortiz fight ever star was forced to suffer. (Hilariously, Tito came just inches away from tapping him out at one point.)

He knocked out Thiago Silva. He threw karate kicks in real fights. He became an internet meme for his family's insistence that drinking your own urine every single day would keep you extra healthy.

They had to fight. They were scheduled for UFC 98 on May 23, 2009. A great, close, back-and-forth war seemed inevitable.

It was not.

It exceptionally was not.

Rashad Evans, by his own admission, was in the middle of yelling "you hit like a bitch" when Machida knocked him out cold in the second round. Despite how badly he'd schooled Forrest, Rashad's reign lasted an even shorter 147 days.

Lyoto, though, was a star. He was a strange karate man with unorthodox striking and an eclectic mixture of grappling disciplines and an unquenchable lust for piss and he had just routed the #1 Light Heavyweight on the planet with ease. Joe Rogan dubbed his victory "the beginning of the Machida era" as he hoisted the belt, and it didn't feel like hyperbole. He wasn't just undefeated, he seemed outright untouchable. People had doubts about Forrest, and people were wary about Rashad, but just like his training partner Anderson Silva, the world saw Lyoto defending the belt and having a very, very long reign.

And, well.

They were, technically, half right.

Mauricio "Shogun" Rua had been Pride's uncrowned middleweight king. In four years and thirteen fights with the company he'd lost only once, and it was an injury stoppage after dislocating his arm defending a Mark Coleman takedown. His UFC debut against Forrest Griffin was widely considered a terrible mismatch--right up until Forrest choked him out. But a revenge knockout over Coleman and a victory over the corpse of Chuck Liddell had made Shogun at least relevant enough for the company to offer him up as a warm body for Lyoto Machida's first title defense. Shogun was creaky and shopworn, Machida was undefeated and unstoppable. Their fight at UFC 104 on October 25, 2009 was largely considered a foregone conclusion.

It wound up being the most controversial judging decision of the year. Numerically, Shogun outstruck Lyoto in every round, but the majority of his strikes were leg kicks, which judges notoriously underrated. Every media outlet scored the fight for Shogun, but the judges went unanimously for Machida. For the first time in three title reigns, a Light Heavyweight champion had defended the title, and all it took was a fight he should have lost.

The world demanded a rematch, and the UFC obliged. The controversy, as so often is the case, proved to be the best possible advertisement for the second go. Shogun had proven he was much more than a warm body. What he had to worry about was proving it to the judges.

Or, alternately, just knocking Lyoto cold in three and a half minutes.

At UFC 113 on May 8, 2010, despite Lyoto's untouchable status, despite his undefeated career, Joe Rogan's Machida Era ended in a heartbeat. At 350 days, it didn't even last a year.

But for a large part of the MMA fandom, this was destiny righting itself. Shogun had been arguably Pride's best 205-pounder. He stormed the 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix, he owned victories over a half-dozen champions and he had taken on tough fighters like Rampage and Alistair Overeem and absolutely destroyed them. But thanks to his training partner and coach Wanderlei Silva holding Pride's Middleweight Championship, he'd never gotten to be a champion himself.

He had stumbled against Forrest, but the Shogun who showed up against Machida was the Shogun of old: A fast, vicious, multifaceted killer. With what he'd done to Machida--with what Machida had done to Rashad--Shogun seemed like a surefire standardbearer for a division that, after going through six champions in three years, was overdue for some stability.

Shogun was slated to have his first title defense against Rashad Evans. In the year since his title loss Evans had gathered himself, bested Thiago Silva and started a feud with Quinton Jackson that resulted in Rampage's second season as a TUF coach. It went even worse--only one of Rampage's eight fighters made it out of the first round, Rampage and corporate favorite Kimbo Slice had been beaten in his first fight by eventual winner Roy Nelson, and when they did finally fight, Rashad dropped Rampage and beat him to a unanimous decision. But an incredibly poorly-timed knee injury for Rashad meant, just one month before his title defense, Shogun was suddenly in need of an opponent.

But Rashad happened to have a training partner who just happened to be hovering just around contendership.

Jon "Bones" Jones wasn't supposed to be a fighter. His two brothers had been football players, but his father wanted Jon to be a pastor, just like him. He told him fighting would be bad for his soul.

He had no idea how right he was.

One of the MMA world's favorite bits of theorycrafting was what the mythical Next Generation of Fighters would be like. It's important to remember that in 2010, mixed martial arts as a whole was still a very young concept. Most people hadn't heard about the sport at all until just five years prior, and most modern practitioners were from still-nascent schools that had been around, at best, for barely a decade, and most fighters were still coming from single martial backgrounds; grapplers, wrestlers, kickboxers. Multiple UFC fighters--successful, prominent, main-event fighters--openly dismissed things like "throwing jabs" as pointless wastes of time and energy. The world was only one title change past the champion who thought drinking urine made him superhuman. Few were great athletes; fewer still were world-class.

Jon Jones was the next generation. A world-class athlete with a world-class background who knew, from day one, that he was going to be an MMA champion. He dropped out of college to train with the best. And he was a 6'4" Light Heavyweight with an 84.5" reach.

He outwrestled Olympic champions, he kept championship kickboxers at the tips of his toes, he choked out Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts and he regularly hurt people with poo poo he'd learned by just watching it on Youtube.

The sport wasn't ready for him. No one was ready for him.

Jon Jones killed everyone. By 2011 he was 12-1 and he'd given three different opponents skull fractures. He had never once been in danger in his career, and his one and only loss came from a 2009 match against TUF 3 runner-up Matt Hamill, and it wasn't because Hamill had beat him--he, in fact, outstruck Hamill 55 to 7--but he had beaten Hamill so badly, and referee Steve Mazzagatti had been so reluctant to call an extremely obvious stoppage, that Jones had started throwing illegal 12-6 elbows, for which he was disqualified.

It was an aggressively silly loss. But it was an aggressively silly failure of impulse control. Which, in hindsight, is loving hilariously obvious.

The title fight was slated for UFC 128 on March 19, 2011. Jon Jones was a betting favorite, because even then people were pretty sure he was something special, but the lines were modest. Shogun was a world-class fighter who'd beaten the most untouchable man in the sport twice and outright destroyed him the second time around, and Jones not only had just a month to prepare, but one month following a full training camp and a two-round fight with Ryan Bader.

No one had ever had an easy fight against Shogun. The world anticipated a war.

Jones concussed Shogun with a flying knee twelve seconds into the fight. He outstruck him 102-11. He left the best Light Heavyweight in the world collapsing facedown on the mat, saved by the referee just as Shogun was beginning to tap out just to keep Jones from hitting him again. It was as clean a passing of the torch as the sport had ever seen.

Jon Jones hadn't even been fighting for three years. At 23, he was the youngest UFC champion of all time. He was the avatar of the generational sea change the sport had been both hotly anticipating and quietly dreading. Like so many times before, the fans felt confident he was going to hold the belt for a very long time.

For once, they were right.

And it cursed the division forever.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 04:48

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# ? May 3, 2024 08:42

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

There is an unavoidable duality to talking about Jon Jones.

Jon Jones is, unquestionably, the greatest Light Heavyweight of all time. Only three of the UFC's eleven 205-pound champions had managed multiple title defenses, and they included people like John Lober and Elvis Sinosic and Jeremy Horn.

Jon's reign, by contrast, started with victories over five of those eleven champions.

After beating Shogun he fought Quinton Jackson in his first defense and it wasn't even close. He outwrestled him, he outstruck him, and he controlled him for every second of their bout. Rampage didn't make it to double-digit strikes in a single round. Rampage was one of the toughest fighters in the sport. He had only submitted once in 41 professional fights, and it was against Kazushi Sakuraba, one of MMA's greatest grappling legends.

Jon Jones choked him out in four rounds.

After losing the title and suffering a widely-derided decision loss to Rampage, Lyoto Machida had rebounded by knocking Randy Couture's teeth out with a Karate Kid crane kick. He was still a top contender, he was still an intensely scary fighter, and his only unequivocal, uncontroversial career loss was a knockout against one of the most dangerous strikers in the history of the sport.

Jon Jones choked him out in two rounds.

Rashad Evans was a big fan favorite. He'd been one of the UFC's bigger stars since his TUF 2 win, as the show was still red-hot at the time. He talked trash, he hit hard, he wrestled fast, and after seven years and fourteen fights in the UFC he'd only lost against Machida. He was 4-0 since then, having beaten Thiago Silva, won his grudge match with Rampage, gotten revenge by completely destroying a somehow-still-relevant Tito Ortiz, and won a minor upset in a title eliminator against the undefeated Phil Davis, a man many fans saw as the next Jon Jones.

Moreover, the two had legitimate bad blood. Rashad had trained at the legendary Greg Jackson camp, the same that had taken Georges St-Pierre to his championship victories, but when Jon came to the camp in 2009 it caused a fracture in the academy. Rashad felt his own coaches were paying more attention to Jon Jones than him, the literal world champion at the time. Jones, of course, felt Rashad was being overdramatic, except he was also quite clear that he'd be more than happy to fight him for his belt if he had a problem, which somewhat undercut the accusation.

Rashad ultimately left Greg Jackson's and went on his tear to contendership. He was seen as Jon's biggest threat in the UFC: A faster puncher, a harder hitter, and maybe the only match for him as a wrestler.

He was not. He was outstruck in every round, he whiffed on every takedown, and he lost a wide decision.

Jones' next defense was a giant loving mess. Jones was initially slated to defend his title against hall of famer Dan Henderson, who had just knocked out Fedor Emelianenko in Strikeforce and defeated Shogun Rua in a fight-of-the-year candidate, but just twelve days before their fight, Hendo announced he'd torn his MCL. The UFC wanted Jones to defend the world championship against Chael Sonnen as a last-minute replacement, and in the first of what would become a long history of struggles with the company, Jones and Greg Jackson told them to go gently caress themselves. Unable to replace the main event, for the first time in promotional history, the UFC simply cancelled a card.

Blame flew. The company made a big point out of specifically cancelling, rather than postponing, the event. UFC 151 wouldn't happen the following month, the UFC simply skipped it and moved on to 152. Dana White held press conferences excoriating Jones and Jackson for being cowards who were impossible to work with. Jones pointed out the ludicrousness of changing world title-level opponents with barely a week's notice. Henderson caught hell when it arose he'd been injured for an entire month and kept it from the UFC in hopes of fighting through it. The UFC, the media rightly pointed out, deserved scorn for running a card so thin that they had no choice but to cancel, as without the main event, the next-biggest fight on offer was Jake Ellenberger vs Jay Hieron.

The fires burned, the smoke cleared, and a month later it turned out Lyoto Machida had been approached to rematch Jones the following month, only for Machida to turn the fight down thanks to inadequate preparation time. So Jones wound up fighting, of all people, Vitor loving Belfort, the man who'd won the belt from Randy Couture nearly a decade ago, and debuted in the sport nearly a decade before that. Vitor was having a mid-thirties career resurgence, thanks in part to his still-terrifying punching power, in part to his new array of extremely powerful kicking attacks, and in part to the absolutely preposterous amount of steroids he was on. Testosterone Replacement Therapy was the new meta in the sport, drug testing had not yet caught up to it, and Vitor Belfort, who had been flagging and aging just a few years earlier, was suddenly impossibly shredded, ridiculously fast, and on the best winning streak of his life.

And, hilariously, he almost ended the Jon Jones legacy before it could really begin. Despite having not fought at 205 pounds since 2007, despite taking the fight on a month's notice, despite being a +600 underdog, Vitor actually snatched an armbar in the first round that nearly snapped Jon's elbow.

But, of course, it didn't.

And Jones spent three and a half rounds making Vitor pay for it by smashing his face with elbows before finally tearing his arm apart with a keylock.

Further putting the whole UFC 151 episode into a higher tier of comedy, like so many Light Heavyweight champions before them, Jones and Sonnen wound up coaching The Ultimate Fighter 17 against each other to hype their fight. Sonnen had, as he does, made as much hay as possible from the event, claiming Jones turned down the fight because he was afraid of getting outwrestled and embarrassed. One particularly silly season that gifted the UFC with Kelvin Gastelum and Uriah Hall later, the long-awaited, long-belated and aggressively unnecessary Jones vs Sonnen finally happened at UFC 159 on April 27, 2013. Surprising no one, Jones effortlessly destroyed him with just thirty seconds left in the first round.

Which was extremely fortunate for him, because while wrestling with Sonnen Jones had managed to snap off the front half of his big toe. If Sonnen had lasted thirty more seconds he would have won the championship because Jones was missing an entire body part. In the neverending hilarity that is mixed martial arts, rather than immediately rushing him to a hospital, the UFC still made Jones do his post-fight interview while sitting in mid-cage and visibly going into shock.

It was another brief moment of vulnerability for an otherwise untouchable fighter. Which wound up being oddly prophetic.

No one disputed Jon Jones was the best 205-pound fighter in history. The new argument wasn't his quality, but rather, the quality of his opposition. The Sonnen fight was a joke. Vitor was a juiced-up relic from the mid-90s. Rampage and Shogun were roadworn as hell. Rashad and Machida were great, but were also small enough that they could--and, eventually, would--compete at middleweight. Jon Jones was the new generation of huge, young, athletically gifted fighters, but there just wasn't anyone else in that category to fight.

Well.

There was one guy.

Alexander Gustafsson was the best fighter Sweden had to offer. Just like Jones, he'd started training specifically in mixed martial arts as a teenager during the UFC's TUF boom years, just like Jones he was a wrecking machine who would piece people up with long punches and kicks, and just like Jones he was a physical outlier, a 6'5", 79" boxer with range over everyone in the division other than Jones himself. He was 15-1, he had just battered Shogun Rua to justify a shot at the top, and he was unusually confident in his chances against the king.

The audience was less convinced. People liked Gus, but not only was Jon Jones Jon loving Jones, Gus's one loss had come against the wrestling and grappling of Phil Davis just three years prior. He had a demonstrated weakness against wrestlers and his path to the title had come through previously-beaten fighters. When UFC 165 rolled around on September 21, 2013, Gus was a +600 underdog and Jones was an absolutely prohibitive -900 favorite.

Instead, Jon Jones got the fight of his life.

It was absurdly close. Gus stuffed 10 of Jones' 11 takedown attempts, he shocked Jones with a double-leg of his own, and the striking was dead even for most of the fight. For the first two rounds Gustafsson looked poised to shock the world and unseat the champion, but Jones made the necessary adjustments to win the back half of the fight. The decision was incredibly close and split across numerous scorecards, but on the only one that counts, Jones walked away with a unanimous call.

But Jon Jones had almost lost a fight, and not in the single-moment-of-glory Vitor Belfort armbar way. Alexander Gustafsson looked every bit like a match for Jones, and in the eyes of many, should have been the new champion. The world clamored for a rematch.

The rematch did not come. In the first rumblings of difficult the UFC was starting to have with Jones, he was booked into a match #2 contender Glover Teixeira instead--which was perfectly fine, Teixeira was a top guy who hadn't lost a fight since loving 2005--but for reasons never publicly disclosed, the fight had to be rescheduled four times. By the time it finally happened, it was UFC 172 on April 26, 2014, a full seven months later.

It also wasn't much of a fight.

After nine undefeated years, Glover lost his winning streak when Jones simply walked through him. He cranked Glover's shoulder into disrepair in the first round and spend the rest of the fight bullying him in the clinch, where Glover was expected to have his best chances. The Glover championship dreams were crushed. But the ease with which Jon had won fired up a new desire for the Gus rematch, and this time, Jon acquiesced and the two were scheduled for September.

And then Gus tore his meniscus and was gone for most of a year. So the UFC needed someone else.

By the time he entered the UFC in 2013 Daniel Cormier was already considered one of the world's best fighters. He'd come just shy of an Olympic medal for wrestling in 2004, he'd won a half-dozen national championships and two international championships, and since turning to MMA in 2009 he'd gone an undefeated 15-0, including the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix. He'd dropped to 205 not because he was better suited to it, but because his training partner and good friend Cain Velasquez was the UFC's Heavyweight champion, so he needed to go elsewhere.

There's a secret to fight promotion: Most bad blood is fake. Most trash talk is exaggerated for the cameras.

Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier very legitimately hated each other. And, oddly enough, this was an actual problem.

Earlier, I said addressing Jon Jones required addressing the duality of his impact on the sport. The first side was his greatness.

The second was the curse of being an enormous rear end in a top hat.

Jon Jones cared deeply about maintaining his public image as a good, kind, Christian man. The Philippians 4:13 tattoo, the outspoken dedication to his fianc�e and family, always being a good sportsman, always being publicly respectful, and, most importantly, expressing his righteous disappointment with anyone who wasn't.

But the more success Jones had, the more the mask had begun to slip. At first it was small things: Sniping at Rashad Evans for 'ruining my special night,' dropping an unconscious Lyoto Machida on his head. Then it was releasing videos mocking fans for being upset about his tendency to poke opponents in the eye and hurtling homophobic slurs around the internet. And then things got blatant. In 2012, Jones got arrested for driving under the influence after wrapping his Bentley around a light pole. In 2014, Jones was busted sending videos of his dick to women. During an interview with Deadspin's Greg Howard, in the middle of talking about how much he loved his fianc�e and how strong their relationship was, Jon Jones gave a waitress his phone number in front of him before returning to discussing how much he loved his fianc�e and how people disliked him because they were mad he loved Christ so much.

Cormier called Jones out for his hypocrisy in public, and their fight promotion became an absolute circus. They nearly came to blows and injured people during press conferences. They dueled during interviews.

And then, most infamously, during what Jon Jones thought was a recording break during a media day, he told Cormier he was a pussy and that he was going to literally kill him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynIv7q6nQII

The public image broke overnight. The combination of Cormier being an affable personality and Jones being a philandering sociopath turned one of the sport's biggest stars into one of its biggest heels.

Going into UFC 182 on January 3rd, 2015, the world had never clamored harder for Jon Jones to fail. Cormier was a powerful undefeated heavyweight-champion wrestling threat, and people were ready to see Jones finally eat poo poo.

But that's just not how things work.

Jon Jones was still Jon Jones. He outfought Cormier. He outwrestled Cormier. He took a wide, clear, unanimous decision, and he took great pleasure in being very smug about both his defeat of Cormier, and how, by defeating Cormier, he had clearly refuted all of the attacks on his character.

The world would have to wait for Jon Jones to eat poo poo.

But, boy, they wouldn't have to wait very long.

Three days after the fight, it was announced Jon Jones had tested positive for cocaine.

The reaction was the lightest slap on the wrist imaginable. Jon Jones was fined $25,000 for violating the UFC's code of conduct, he spent one single day in rehab, and he gave an interview about how he definitely didn't use cocaine habitually and most certainly wasn't addicted, this was all fine, and he loved his family very, very much.

Stripping him, the UFC noted, was, of course, out of the question. Cocaine isn't a performance-enhancing drug, and it was an out-of-competition test, so he wasn't on cocaine during the fight. Drug testers raised concerns that according to the publicly released test results his testosterone:epitestosterone levels were incredibly low, as happens when you, say, abuse steroids, but the Nevada State Athletic Commission assured everyone there was nothing to worry about and Jon Jones was definitely not abusing any drugs aside from cocaine.

Which was fine. The UFC went ahead and scheduled his May title defense against Anthony "Rumble" Johnson, because it was fine.

Everything was fine.

Everything was not fine.

On April 27, Jon Jones ran a red light, crashed his rental car into two other cars, one of which contained a pregnant woman, got out of the car, ran away from the scene of the crime, stopped, ran back to the scene of the crime, took a brick of cash out of the car, and then ran away from the scene of the crime again. As a bonus, police found Jon's packed weed bowl inside the crashed car, which, in hindsight, would probably have been a better thing to run away with.

Jones, of course, got away with it, legally-speaking. He surrendered, posted bail and left, and ultimately got off with probation and charity appearances.

But the UFC had finally had enough.

After the best, longest reign in the history of the Light Heavyweight division, after eight title defenses across 1,501 days of dominance, Jon Jones was stripped of his title and suspended from the UFC.

You'd think people would be gutted, and some were, but for a big part of the MMA community there was almost a sense of relief. For one, we could have a non-Jon Jones champion for the first time in years, and for two, Jon and his downfall had been one of the most inevitably obvious metaphorical and literal car crashes. Having it finally, actually happen gave people some sense of closure.

He could get better, we could move on, and the Jon Jones story could finally end.

The world was not aware this would be considered the point at which the 205-pound division began to completely, irrevocably break down.

Daniel Cormier was supposed to fight Ryan Bader the following month, but with Jones unavailable, he gladly stepped up to the plate. He choked out Anthony "Rumble" Johnson after a back-and-forth fight, and he would go on to have an underrated classic with Alexander Gustafsson in October that was, once again, heartbreakingly close for Gus but just not close enough.

But he didn't care about them. He'd made his intentions for his title reign clear when, after beating Rumble, he'd used his post-fight interview to tell Jon Jones to get his poo poo together, because he was waiting for him.

And Jon Jones did, in fact, get his poo poo together. After six months of good behavior his suspension was lifted and he was officially reinstated, and, immediately, placed in a title fight with Cormier scheduled for April 23, 2016. It didn't happen, but for once, it wasn't Jon's fault. DC hosed up his foot in training and pulled out of the fight on April 1, which is, of course, the best possible day of the year to announce the most-hyped rematch in the company is no longer happening. Jon was instead given an interim championship fight against Ovince Saint Preux, who was by no means a bad fighter, but he was also on a one-fight winning streak and people expected very, very little of him.

The people were right. The most notable thing about the fight was, in fact, how absolutely unnotable it was. Saint Preux accomplished virtually nothing, and while Jones clearly won, nothing he did wowed anyone watching the fight. But it was, after all, a short-notice replacement against a tough competitor, and allowances could be made, and all anyone cared about was Cormier/Jones 2 anyway. Jon Jones was the (interim) champion again and the rematch was scheduled for July 9 as the main event of UFC 200, the company's biggest card ever. Everything was right back on track.

On July 6, Jon Jones failed a pre-fight drug test. This time it was definitively a performance-enhancing drug, but he, his management and the UFC declined to reveal exactly which one it was. It didn't matter. The fight was off. Jon Jones was suspended for a year and stripped of the interim title, making him the first fighter in UFC history to ever be stripped of a belt twice. (There's been one more since, for the record: Conor McGregor.) Daniel Cormier fought a non-title fight against Anderson Silva on a day and a half's notice and Jon Jones went away for another entire year.

Because he could not, in fact, get his poo poo together.

Unfortunately, neither could Cormier.

Daniel Cormier is an incredible wrestler and an incredible fighter, but by 2017 he was also closing in on 40 and running on almost thirty straight years of martial competition. He was constantly injured and his weight cuts were only getting harder. He was supposed to rematch Anthony Johnson at the end of the year, but another injury pushed it back to April 8, 2017, and Cormier blew his weight cut by 1.2 pounds. He would have beaten Charles Oliveira by six years and become the first UFC champion to ever lose a belt on the scale--had he not used one of the oldest wrestling tricks in the book and braced himself with his towel and his corner to remove some of his weight.

He wasn't even sneaky about it. He did it on camera and right in front of the New York State Athletic Commission. And it worked, because the world is aggressively silly. He registered at 205 pounds, the fight was on, and once again, he choked Rumble out. He was the still the champion.

But his injuries meant it was already about to be Summer again.

And that meant Jon Jones was a free man.

The rancor around the entirely inevitable rematch was volcanic. Jones, no longer having even the illusion of goodness he once cherished, embraced his role as a villain--without actually letting go of his holier-than-thou attitude, despite his failures, which made him even more hated. Cormier, having been dragged through hell by Jones and his bullshit on multiple occasions, had less patience with him than ever. But more than any of that, it was two years later, and Jon Jones was still the one blemish of his career. Daniel Cormier was 19 and Jon Jones. And he wanted that win back. He needed that win back.

But the world is not that just.

The first two rounds of the fight were intensely competitive. Having learned from their first encounter, Cormier put more pressure on Jones and kept him from finding his pace. By the third round, Cormier had Jones on his back foot and looked like the momentum was, finally, on his side.

And then Jon Jones kicked him in the head. And that was that. Cormier tried to hold on but he couldn't stay on his feet, and Jones pounded him into outright unconsciousness.

No decision. No controversy. His rival unconscious on the floor and weeping on the microphone after the fight. After the cocaine, after the car crash, after the injuries and the drug busts and the suspensions, everything was right back where Jon Jones had always insisted it belonged. He was the best light-heavyweight in the world. He was the champion of the world. It was July 29, 2017, UFC 214 was over, and Jon Jones was back on top.

One month later, on August 22, 2017, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced Jon Jones had failed a pre-fight drug test for the steroid Turinabol. One month after that, his second sample confirmed the results. For the third time in two years, Jon Jones was stripped of the UFC Light Heavyweight World Championship. Jones and his team complained about tainted supplements, but no one was buying, and this being a recurring offense, Jones was facing a potential four-year suspension. Instead, he did what all good villains do: Snitch. Jones turned snitch for USADA, ratting out other fighters and their steroid providers, and in exchange his four-year suspension was reduced to just eighteen months, and USADA released a statement absolving Jones of intentional cheating.

But that meant Jones had cheated, and that meant he was gone until the very end of 2018, and that meant the UFC still needed a champion. The UFC 214 fight was scratched from the records and Daniel Cormier became the first and only fighter in UFC history to ever be retroactively reinstated as champion.

Which was unfortunate, because to be honest, Cormier didn't really want it anymore.

DC was more or less done with Light Heavyweight. The weight cuts were killing him, the age was catching up with him, there weren't any money fights left in the division for him, and honestly, he had been so motivated by his need to beat Jon Jones that after not just losing to him again but getting hosed over by him again, his heart wasn't in it anymore. He put in one last title defense, scoring a TKO against Volkan Oezdemir on January 20, 2018, but what he wanted was an accomplishment that would overwrite his losses to Jones. He went up to heavyweight, he took that belt from Stipe Miocic, and he beat Derrick Lewis all in 2018, making him, technically, the first and thus far only person in UFC history to hold and defend two belts simultaneously.

But it was a ruse, because he wasn't ever coming back. And when the UFC decided they knew the man they wanted to fight for the empty throne, Cormier finally, officially, gave up the 205-pound belt. It was one of the weirdest title reigns in UFC history--between the interim belts and the injuries and non-title fights and the No Contest with Jones, technically, Cormier's reign was the second-longest of all time at 1,315 days, but it included only three actual, legitimate title defenses.

But that was fine. He was back to being a heavyweight. He was happy.

And the UFC knew exactly how to get back to normal. Because it was the end of 2018.

Which meant Jon Jones was back.

The UFC knew Jones needed some good press and a good fight to wash all the bad news off his name, so they finally rebooked the Alexander Gustafsson rematch everyone had been clamoring for. Which was great! Up until it almost didn't happen.

Jon Jones was testing positive for Turinabol again, and Las Vegas, the UFC's home, refused to license him without a clean test, which he was seemingly incapable of giving. The UFC actually moved the card out of Vegas and into Los Angeles just so Jones could fight, and USADA, in partnership with the UFC, held a press conference to explain that actually, Turinabol metabolites had a long-term 'pulse' that could repeatedly come up for years and years after consumption even if the fighter were clean.

In other words: If Jon Jones tests positive for Turinabol, it's fine.

Trust us.

The rematch didn't live up to the hype. Gus was older and slower and no longer as confident as he used to be, and Jones was, shockingly, in perfect shape. On December 29, 2018, Jones obliterated Gustfasson in three rounds and finally, officially, regained his championship.

Which was unfortunate, because there was no one left for him to fight.

With Jones' own troubles, Cormier's departure and fighters like Ryan Bader and Phil Davis leaving the UFC for Bellator, the best Light Heavyweights left behind were, well, Middleweights. Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos had both been moderately successful 185-pound fighters in the UFC before heading up to 205, and both wound up being the last men standing to fight Jon Jones. And both fights were profoundly weird. Jones almost lost his title by DQ at UFC 234 on March 2, 2019 after blasting Smith in the head with a blatantly illegal knee, but Smith, ever the company man, refused to take the foul and lost so badly that despite Jones getting docked two points for the knee he still won an obviously clear decision. Thiago Santos was not only barely a Light Heavyweight, he managed to basically get a train crash's worth of injuries during the opening rounds of the Jones fight, ultimately tearing his ACL, PCL, MCL and meniscus--and Jones still only won a split decision at their July 6, UFC 239 showdown.

It was rough. And it was only getting rougher behind the scenes. A week and a half after the Santos fight, Jones was arrested again. This time he had allegedly sexually harassed, slapped and forcibly kissed a waitress at a strip club. Jones put in a No Contest plea, which presumably made Daniel Cormier experience a sudden wave of psychic rage somewhere, and, unsurprisingly, got off with probation again.

Which was the drama Jones carried into the hardest fight of his career.

Like Gustafsson all those years back, Dominick Reyes was a rare physical equal for Jon Jones. He was young, he was a trained, professional athlete who only narrowly missed a shot at the National Football League, he was 6'4" with enormous reach, and as 2020 dawned, he was an undefeated 12-0. Some of those wins weren't great--a split decision over Volkan Oezdemir and a knockout of struggling former middleweight champion Chris Weidman do not a contender make--but he was there, and the UFC needed him.

And he beat Jon Jones.

By any ruleset, Dominick Reyes won the first three rounds of the fight. Most media scorecards had Reyes scoring the upset and winning 3 rounds to 2; a minority of cards had Jones taking an extremely narrow 3-2 the other way.

None of the judges scored the fight for Reyes. One of the judges scored it for Jones 4 to 1. It was bullshit, but it didn't matter. The decision was made. As in life, Jon Jones wins. Once again, the MMA world screamed for a rematch, but this time, Jones wasn't listening.

In fact, he was never going to fight at Light Heavyweight again. And he was about to gently caress up worse than had ever had before.

A month after the Reyes fight, Jon Jones was arrested again. This time, he was arrested for driving his jeep around the streets of Albuquerque while drunk and randomly shooting a gun in the air. Jones tested at over twice the legal limit for alcohol and his car had both empty bottles and an unsecured, recently-fired handgun clumsily stuffed under his seat.

It may shock you to hear that he got off with probation. The UFC didn't even bother stripping him anymore. At this point he could knee a grounded opponent's head off, test positive for steroids and drive drunk while shooting guns in city streets without suffering personal or professional consequences.

And that meant he was bored.

Five months later, Jon Jones announced through Twitter that he was giving up his belt. He had nothing left to prove at 205 pounds, he had beaten everyone, and what he really wanted was a shot at Francis Ngannou followed by a Heavyweight championship match, but he and the UFC couldn't come to terms.

So he was done. Just like that. After multiple suspensions, after numerous drug busts, after repeated DUIs and an assault, after screwing multiple fighters and just getting away with a robbery over Dominick Reyes to keep his fighting reputation intact, the answer to who would finally unseat Jon Jones was, of course: Nobody. He'd come close and he wouldn't allow it.

Jon Jones ended his second title reign on August 17, 2020 after three successful defenses. It lasted 597 days.

A little over a year later, on September 24, 2021, the day after he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in a big, glitzy, celebratory ceremony, he was arrested after his eight year-old daughter ran to hotel security crying because her dad was beating up her mom. Jones ran from the cops, got caught, threatened to break his handcuffs and beat them up, and, they said, violently headbutted the hood of their car. This was widely agreed to be the usual bullshit of police making up an excuse for roughing up a suspect--until they released bodycam footage showing Jon Jones had, in fact, just loving headbutted the hood of their loving car.

Don't worry: His fianc�e insisted it was all just a misunderstanding and she didn't want to press charges. He didn't even get probation this time. He paid $750 for the hood of the cop car and was ordered to take anger management classes.

But there wasn't a title to strip him of anymore. There wasn't even a mixed martial arts career to penalize.

And Light Heavyweight was on to brand new problems.

CarlCX fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Nov 8, 2023

# ? Nov 8, 2023 04:49

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

By September of 2020, the UFC's Light Heavyweight division was in shambles. In its first sixteen years of existence, the only speedbump the title had ever hit was Frank Shamrock walking away from it. Over the following five years, it had been stripped three times and vacated twice, and both of those vacancies came not from retirement or injury or even pay disputes, but from the champions saying, in public, that they were simply done with Light Heavyweight and wanted to have more interesting fights and make more money at 265 pounds.

In fairness to them, though: They weren't wrong.

The UFC's 205-pound division had a star problem. Every other division, even the historically weaker ones, had at least a couple stars. Women's Bantamweight might be thin, but it still had Amanda Nunes and Holly Holm. Middleweight had Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker. Even the historically poo poo-upon Flyweight division had a lot of marketing behind Deiveson Figueiredo and somehow, in mid-2020, Joseph Benavidez was still a thing.

Light Heavyweight didn't have this. No one had attached themselves to Thiago Santos or Anthony Smith. No one was chomping at the bit for tickets to see Aleksandar Rakić or Volkan Oezdemir. Our old friend Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, despite entering his forties as a visibly worn man with a very limited amount of time left, was, somehow, still a top fifteen fighter. Johnny Walker had gotten a lot of hype as a fun knockout machine, but Corey Anderson stopped him dead in his tracks--and then the UFC decided to release Anderson and let him walk off to Bellator rather than even entertain the concept of paying him more money.

(Bellator's offer, for the record, was $250,000 per fight. The UFC didn't want to pay an Ultimate Fighter winner, multiple-time main eventer, six-year veteran and top five Light Heavyweight $250,000.)

There's a silver lining to that kind of wreckage, though. When your division is a mess, anyone can step up and take control of it.

But people still have their favorites.

The fans and the UFC were both pretty confident Dominick Reyes would slot in effortlessly as the new kingpin. He was still a viciously powerful boxer with size and reach over most of the division, he was still one of its best athletes, and he, you know, had essentially beaten Jon loving Jones, maybe the greatest fighter of all time. With Jones gone, there was little doubt Reyes would step up and take the vacant belt.

There was, in fact, so little doubt and so much confidence that the UFC had no problem booking Reyes into a fight against Jan Błachowicz for the vacant title on five weeks' notice. They knew the lines would be slanted towards Reyes, because, objectively, the fight was, too. Reyes was undefeated and had all but legally slain the king of the sport. Two fights ago, Jan had only barely survived a coinflip of a split decision against lifelong middleweight Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza. The assumption was easy to make.

The assumption was wrong.

Jan had come to international attention as the Light Heavyweight champion of his native Poland's premiere MMA promotion Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki. KSW had one of the world's better international fight scenes, and Jan was one of the best fighters it had to offer: A three-time tournament champion, a world champion with two defenses, and a deceptively solid grappler and striker alike. He joined the UFC as a 17-3 prospect whose only loss in seven years had come from a mid-match leg injury.

Three years later, he was 2-4 in the UFC and getting beaten by such luminaries of the sport as Patrick "Durkin" Cummins, the Starbucks barista who had gotten into the UFC because he took Daniel Cormier down during wrestling practice a decade ago. When Jan finally put together a winning streak, earned his first UFC main event and was promptly knocked out by Thiago Santos, the MMA world gave up on him. His road to the title hadn't given people much hope, either: Even before the aforementioned Jacare fight he'd only snapped his winning streak by defeating Luke Rockhold--also a middleweight. He'd earned the shot by knocking out Corey Anderson, which was a legitimately great win that tarnished slightly when the UFC immediately released Anderson after the fight and said he wasn't important enough to be worth keeping on the roster.

But Jan Błachowicz was good. He attributed his career resurgence to making a bracelet out of a suicide noose he'd found in the forest. He couldn't lose. Death was his friend.

On September 27, 2020, at UFC 253, Jan Błachowicz scored the +300 upset and knocked Dominick Reyes out in two rounds. He'd punished him with kicks to the body, he'd countered Reyes' blitzing combinations and he'd ultimately dropped him with a left hook counter that took away his equilibrium and let Jan shove him over and pound away for the stoppage. Reyes protested, but he had also just fallen over and his nose was pointing in three different directions, so no one particularly cared.

The world was surprised, but it was also thrilled. For the first time in just shy of a decade, Light Heavyweight had a champion that wasn't Jon Jones or Daniel Cormier. The division may have been diminished, but that allowed new blood to flow, and with it, brand new matchups to be held. Sure, they still weren't great--Jan Błachowicz vs Anthony Smith wasn't setting the world on fire--but they existed.

New title defenses, new feuds, and fighters who actually came from the weight class. Light Heavyweight could finally have new Light Heavyweight contenders at Light Heavyweight.

Or, you know, not.

The UFC did not care about rebuilding the Light Heavyweight division, they cared about pushing their new star. Israel Adesanya had taken the Middleweight division by storm, going from UFC debutant to UFC champion in a year and a half. He was their new Anderson Silva, only better: Less worn, more charismatic, less difficult to work with, much more marketable. By 2021 he was 20-0, he'd defended the Middleweight title twice and felt he'd cleaned out the division, and he was ready to surpass Anderson by achieving what he never had: Becoming a two-division champion.

The UFC was all for it. They'd strapped the jetpack to Adesanya the moment they saw him and he was flying as high as he possibly could. They wanted double champion Adesanya. Ever since Conor McGregor realized he was too good to keep getting 5% of what he earned for the UFC back in pay they'd been trying to recreate him in various cloning experiments, and Adesanya's was the latest. They threw everything at UFC 259 to get eyes on it. Dominick Cruz and Joseph Benavidez in contendership matches on the prelims. A who's-got-next fight between Aleksandar Rakić and Thiago Santos and the ranking coronation of rising star Islam Makhachev on the main card. Three title fights in a single night, with Petr Yan defending the Bantamweight title against top contender Aljamain Sterling and Amanda Nunes bringing back the Women's Featherweight Championship to face the #2 Women's 145er in the company, Megan Anderson.

And then the Benavidez and Rakić fights were tepid and left the crowd booing. And then Dominick Cruz only barely managed a split decision. And then Petr Yan pulled a Jon Jones and illegally kneed Aljamain Sterling in the face, resulting in the first-ever Disqualification championship victory in UFC history. And then Amanda Nunes walked through Megan Anderson in two minutes.

And then Jan Błachowicz beat Israel Adesanya.

Naysayers had booed the fight. It was too early for Adesanya to challenge a second division, he hadn't taken the time to adjust his training and diet to fill out for the 20-pound jump, he and the UFC were both underestimating just how good Jan was. They were right. Adesanya made a good accounting for himself and was widely agreed to have won one round, and the commentary tried very, very hard to talk up how Izzy was somehow winning the fight with his feints, which is a genuinely intriguing existential debate about just how necessary hitting people is to succeeding in combat sports, but he also faded enough to eat a 10-8 in the fifth and lost a wide, unanimous decision. He hadn't gotten caught, he hadn't fallen victim to a fluke: He was simply, plainly outfought.

Which made the UFC profoundly unhappy. They'd wasted their big star's undefeated streak on a cross-divisional fight and they hadn't even gotten a highlight-reel moment out of it. Jan was just bigger and better. All they could do was send Adesanya back down to 185 and try to pull some level of hype out of their own wreckage.

Because, hey! Did you hear? Jan Błachowicz beat the best fighter in the world! Light Heavyweight is back, baby! gently caress it, we spent all this money hoping he'd lose and he won, so let's roll with it! Polish power! Did you hear that thing about the suicide rope? What a wild, crazy guy! We're gonna go back to Poland and we're gonna run an event with you on it and we're gonna make you a star!

You've just gotta beat this 41 year-old guy first.

That's right: Seven years after his fight with Jon Jones, Glover Teixeira was the number one contender. Again.

Glover had long been looked at as a future world champion. The UFC had actually scouted him all the way back in 2008, thanks to his wins in the WEC, his defeat of Pride's late-period killer Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, and his status as Chuck Liddell's training partner, but the attempt to sign him fell through when Glover turned out to be in America illegally. He went back to Brazil to escape formal deportation and spent four years of his prime fighting for grocery vouchers in Rio. By the time he joined the UFC he was already in his mid-thirties. By 2021, he was in his forties. He only had a few fights left in him, and he knew it, and acknowledged it.

But he was also on the best streak of his career. Teixeira had floundered after his loss to Jones, trading wins and losses back and forth and getting knocked cold by Alexander Gustafsson and Anthony Johnson, but in 2019 he turned a corner and went on one last, big run. He choked out Karl Roberson, he choked out Ion Cuțelaba, he outworked Nikita Krylov, he punched out so many of Anthony Smith's teeth that Smith had to hand them to the referee and ask him to hold onto them until the fight was over.

Glover got his title eliminator against Thiago Santos and he made it count, grounding Santos, dominating him and strangling him in three rounds. Seven years later, he had another chance.

A decade and a half ago, Chuck Liddell had promised the world his training partner Glover Teixeira was going to be a world champion.

He was right.

Despite coming into the fight was a sizable underdog, Glover manhandled Jan. He wobbled him, he grappled him, and after two rounds, he submitted him. Jan Błachowicz's title reign ended at 398 days, with one defense.

It was the first time the title had successfully changed hands through someone simply beating the champion since Jon Jones had defeated Shogun Rua on March 19, 2011, more than a decade ago.

On October 30, 2021, after twenty years in the sport, just one year before he planned to retire, Glover Teixeira was the Light Heavyweight Champion of the World.

And his first task as champion was fighting this loving weirdo.

Jiř� Proch�zka was widely considered one of the best Light Heavyweights outside of the UFC. He was already a 14-2-1 champion in his native Czech Republic by the time he came to international attention as part of the then-nascent Rizin Fighting Federation, Japan's most successful, longest-lived attempt at a Pride Fighting Championships revival. He'd lost, unfortunately--after three fights in just two days as part of Rizin's inaugural World Grand Prix he was knocked out by Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal, himself a legend of the Japanese fight scene, in the finals. But over the following three years he'd gone on an absolute tear, winning ten straight fights with nine knockouts. His crowning achievement was knocking out King Mo in a grudge match for the Rizin Light Heavyweight Championship. He had two more fights with the company, but the UFC needed him, and Rizin just didn't have the fights to keep him.

Jiř� made his UFC debut in 2020. The reasons for his international popularity were immediately apparent.

He was fast. He was powerful. He was creative. And more than anything, he was fearless. He would wade through fire to land a punch, or a headkick, or to do something silly like chain an elbow into a reverse spinning elbow, and because he committed those deeply silly things would, somehow, work.

He was a self-styled samurai who preached the values of Bushido while talking about his fighting inspirations coming from Mortal Kombat and Tekken. He was a highly-trained Muay Thai kickboxer who would eschew technique for brute force whenever he saw an opening. He threw more spinning attacks than takedowns.

The UFC wasn't wasting a second. After two fights and two knockouts, on June 12, 2022, Jiř� Proch�zka was getting his title shot.

It was an absolute war.

Glover and Jiř� had the kind of fight that takes years off of your life. Jiř� would hurt Glover, Glover would hurt Jiř�. Jiř� would almost stop Glover with kicks to the body until Glover would catch one, throw Jiř� to the canvas and break his face open with elbows. By the final round the fight was neck-and-neck to the extent that the final strike count came in at 159 to 157. Glover almost knocked Jiř� out twice in the final round, but he was tired and running on his instincts as a grappler, and rather than stepping back and risking a counter by trying to finish the job he repeatedly tried to submit him. Instead--in what was, by far, the least likely outcome to the fight possible--with just thirty seconds before he almost certainly would have lost a decision, Jiř� reversed Glover on the ground, took his back, and put a rear naked choke on the one-time ADCC grappling champion.

But that was thirteen years ago. Now he was 42, and 24 1/2 minutes into the hardest fight of his life, and he simply didn't have anything left.

Glover Teixeira submitted and turned over the belt, ending his reign at 225 days with no defenses.

It couldn't have gone better if they'd scripted it.

Jiř� Proch�zka was the Light Heavyweight Champion just three fights into his career. He'd just put on inarguably the best championship fight in the division's 25-year history. There are things you can fake as a fight promoter, but genuine fan enthusiasm just isn't one of them. People were excited about a fun, rampaging weirdo like Jiř� holding the belt. People were excited about how good that fight had been. And people were especially excited for the rematch, which the UFC agreed was absolutely necessary.

They were pencilled in to end the UFC's year against each other. Six months to repair, recover and regroup, and then, in December, Proch�zka vs Teixeira 2 would either open up a new, exciting trilogy bout or cement a new, exciting champion as the best 205-pound fighter on the planet. Nothing could go wrong.

Jiř� Proch�zka, of course, promptly got injured.

A training partner suplexed him and separated his shoulder, and when they attempted to pop it back in, they tore the surrounding muscles. Jiř� was going to be out for anywhere from eight months to a year.

Jiř� Proch�zka officially vacated the belt on November 23, 2022 after 164 days as champion. He had no title defenses. He didn't even have the chance.

The UFC was left scrambling not just to fill their vacant championship but to find a main event for the pay-per-view two weeks away that had suddenly lost its champion. The card had a co-main event featuring Jan Błachowicz vs #2 contender Magomed Ankalaev, which, had Jiř� won, would have crowned his next contender. The UFC had asked Glover to take one of them on for a replacement title fight, and Glover was more than willing to have a rematch with Jan Błachowicz on two weeks' notice. He already knew him, he was already prepared for him, and Jan was the higher-ranked contender and, seemingly, the obvious choice.

The UFC said no.

According to Glover, the UFC did not want Glover/Jan 2. They'd already fought, we already knew what would happen, there was no point in re-running the fight and Jan was too old anyway, which is an aggressively weird thing to say not just about a guy you have fighting for #1 contendership, but to say to the guy fighting for your title, who is four years his elder.

The UFC said it was Glover vs Ankalaev or nothing. Glover, already rather put off by this whole thing, chose nothing. While desperately trying not to show just how angry and hung over he was, Dana White announced that, on two weeks' notice, Jan and Magomed were now fighting for the vacant, undisputed championship.

Magomed Ankalaev had long been considered a future champion. He was yet another in the legion of Dagestani wrecking machines who'd poured through the gate Khabib Nurmagomedov had kicked open: A Combat Sambo champion, a multiple-time amateur MMA champion, and a 17-1 wrecking machine whose only loss came in his 2018 UFC debut after getting hypnotized by Paul Craig and tapping out one single second before he would have won a lopsided decision.

But now he was on a nine-fight winning streak, he'd just knocked out Anthony Smith, and the UFC, clearly, wanted him to get the belt.

He did not get the belt.

No one got the belt.

Jan almost kicked Magomed's legs apart, and Magomed almost ground Jan into paste, and 90% of media scores had Ankalaev winning the fight, and none of it mattered. The judges scored it 48-47 Jan, 48-46 Ankalaev, and 47-47.

A split draw.

The UFC's scramble had failed and 2022 would end with a vacant throne.

But they wouldn't let it be vacant for long.

The UFC cited The Ultimate Fighter as the thing that saved it back in 2005 when it was still struggling to stay afloat, but The Ultimate Fighter came precipitously close to not happening. Dana White's original pitch hadn't been a reality series about the life of the fighters--it had been about the life of Dana White. He wanted to hinge the UFC's mainstream breakout on his own star power in a show where he would travel to events, watch people fight, and unilaterally decide who was and was not UFC material. In 2005 this was politely laughed out of the room, and with the help of one of the producers of the hit reality show Survivor TUF saved the company.

But TUF wasn't what it used to be. By 2018, TUF was going on its thirtieth straight season, and, respectfully, no one cared anymore. Least of all the UFC. There had been one last attempt to make the show relevant by having The Ultimate Fighter 26 (jesus christ) focus on the Women's Flyweight division, but after it crowned Nicco Monta�o, the canonical answer to the "who was the worst UFC champion of all time" trivia question, they'd really, aggressively stopped giving a poo poo about the show. It was shunted to the ESPN+ livestreaming platform, it was barely marketed, and most of its winners were booked on the prelims and quietly ignored.

But there was a reason for this: TUF had been usurped as the UFC's best source of talent.

Because, twelve years later, Dana had finally gotten what he wanted.

In 2017, the UFC launched Dana White's Contender Series. It was a show where fighters from around the world had to fight in front of Dana White, and whether they received a contract to join the UFC hinged not on their victory, but on how much Dana White decided he enjoyed them. And yes, you had to say Dana White's Contender Series every time you talked about it.

The show was, of course, immediately called out for being a terrible, unethical contract farm where desperate fighters with no leverage were pressured into fighting against their own strengths to entertain a bloodthirsty megalomaniac who would, if they were lucky, sign them to the cheapest possible contract the UFC had to offer.

Which, of course, it was.

And the UFC tried to make up for it by picking a few of their favorite Contender Series winners and pushing them to the loving moon.

Like Jamahal Hill.

Hill was another of those prospects. He had a scholarship to play college basketball, but passed on it to be a mixed martial artist. He was a 6'4" monster with size and reach over most of the division, and used it to land long punches and kicks as opponents tried to close range. He was an undefeated 6-0. He was the UFC's chance at a younger, easier-to-deal-with, easier-to-underpay Jon Jones, and they weren't going to pass it up. He got a knockout on the Contender Series, he got his contract, and Dana White adopted him as one of his favored prospects.

Which went well right up until he had his second UFC fight scratched after failing a pre-fight drug test for marijuana and lost his fourth UFC fight when Paul Craig broke his loving arm.

But Hill recovered. Regardless of the circumstances of his arrival, he was a very, very good fighter for the division. He hit like a truck, he was very accurate, and for a 6'4" powerhouse of a fighter, he could move very, very fast. By the dawn of 2023 he was on a three-fight knockout streak, had earned his top ten ranking, and was booked for a fight with the higher-ranked Anthony Smith that could, especially in the current state of Light Heavyweight, have contendership implications.

And then the draw happened, and the UFC needed a champion, and by god, they weren't going to miss their opportunity.

As they so often do, the UFC ignored their rankings. Smith got kicked to the side--who cared, the UFC once again said, we already know how that fight would go--and Glover Teixeira vs Jamahal Hill was on for UFC 283 on January 21, 2023. It was the UFC's first trip back to Brazil in three years, and while they wanted Hill to win, they were really hoping for one more hit of the Fight of the Year magic he'd generated against Jiř� Proch�zka.

They didn't get it. The fight was, ultimately, a one-sided drubbing in favor of Jamahal Hill. Glover made it to the final bell, but he was bleeding heavily, visibly wobbly, and had been beaten on significant strikes 232 to 75. After enjoying one of the least likely late-career resurgences in MMA history, Glover Teixeira knew it was over. He set his gloves down, called it a day, and retired in front of his countrymen.

But the UFC still got what they really wanted.

Jamahal Hill was their answer to all criticism of the Contender Series. He'd beaten Glover Teixeira and he'd done it easier than any of the 'real' contenders or champions in the division over the last few years. He was the real deal. He was the Light Heavyweight Champion. He was proof positive that Dana White's way was correct, and if you didn't like it, you needed to buckle the gently caress up, because this was how it was going to be from here on out. The Contender Series was here, this was its first proof positive, and Jamahal Hill was going to be around for a very long time.

Less than six months later, Jamahal Hill announced he'd busted his Achilles tendon playing in Daniel Cormier's annual charity basketball game. He was going to be out for most of the next year.

Jamahal Hill officially vacated the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World on July 14, 2023. His reign lasted 174 days and had zero defenses. The UFC still recognizes him as the champion on their website.

The company explored numerous ways to fill the void. At one point they wanted Ankalaev fighting for the belt again, but they couldn't make it work. They considered coaxing the recently-returned-to-heavyweight Jon Jones back down to 205 with the promise of holding two belts at once, but he laughed them out of the building.

In the end, they settled on Alex Pereira. "Poatan" had joined the UFC as a 3-1 rookie not for his secret MMA skills, but for his history of defeating Israel Adesanya twice in kickboxing. Pereira got fast-tracked through the Middleweight ranks in just three fights, and in his fourth UFC bout, he fought and beat Adesanya and became the Middleweight Champion. One fight later, he lost it right back. But he was way, way too big for the weight cut, and he was more than ready to move on. He fought Jan Błachowicz in July--in a fight that was, itself, briefly considered to fill the just-vacated throne, until the UFC decide they wanted more time to figure out what they really wanted to do. It was a close, tentative battle, but Pereira won a split decision and, with it, the #3 spot in the division.

And then, eventually, it didn't matter anymore.

It had been a year.

The real champion was healthy again.

This weekend, November 11, 2023, Jiř� Proch�zka and Alex Pereira will fight for the vacant UFC Light Heavyweight Championship.

Whoever wins will, officially, be the 19th undisputed, non-interim champion in the twenty-six years of the division's history. More than a quarter of those champions will have come in just the last five years. Only eight people have ever recorded a Light Heavyweight title defense; only five of those eight did it multiple times.

Jon Jones accounts for 37% of all 30 title defenses in divisional history, 20% of its 5 vacations, and 100% of the 3 times it has been forcibly stripped from a competitor.

Environmental analysts estimate it will take another ten years to fully cleanse the earth of the Snowball King's curse.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 04:49

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

So what about the rest of the world? Surely, there must be some land in which Light Heavyweight is not cursed to fight in fallow fields.

If there is, Pride FC was decidedly not it. The second-most successful MMA company of all time had the glitz, the glamour, the ruleset and the roster. In fact, a consistent point of debate during the Pride vs UFC wars hinged on which company had the better 205-pound division. Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture were all well and good, but could they stand up to Mauricio Rua, Ricardo Arona or Kazuhiro Nakamura?

Or, more commonly: Could any of them, on either side, beat Wanderlei Silva?

There was no debate more common than if Wanderlei Silva was the best 205-pounder on the planet, but there was no debate whatsoever that he was, easily, the scariest. He'd gotten his start in the bareknuckle Vale Tudo scene of the mid-90s, he was an International Vale Tudo Champion, he'd come close to winning the UFC's Light Heavyweight Championship, and between the years 2000 and 2004 he went 18 fights without a loss. He was a Muay Thai wrecking machine, he was roided to the absolute gills, and when he beat some of the world's toughest fighters, he made it look like this.

So he was terrifying, he was a hyper-aggressive wrecking ball, and he very rarely lost. Why was there any debate about his place atop the mountain?

Here's the thing: Pride was allergic to title matches.

The first Pride champions were crowned at Pride 17 on November 3, 2001. Contrary to their typical tournament-based format, Pride just arbitrarily picked people to fight for the belts they thought were appropriate. Wanderlei Silva won the Middleweight title by brutally destroying Japanese star Kazushi Sakuraba. He would hold the belt right up until the company's penultimate event, Pride 33, on February 24, 2007. That's a mind-boggling 1,939 days.

Across those 1,939 days, Wanderlei Silva fought 19 times.

Exactly four of them were successful title defenses.

And of those four, while two were great--Quinton Jackson and Ricardo Arona, both, indubitably, bad motherfuckers--the other two were professional wrestlers Kiyoshi Tamura, who hadn't won a real fight in years, and Hiromitsu Kanehara, who had never fought outside of Fighting Network RINGS and who would, over the next eleven years, go 4-18-4 as a mixed martial artist.

This was the patch on Pride. Fedor's great! He never defends the title. Takanori Gomi's the best lightweight on the planet! Sure, he lost a couple times, but they were non-title fights so they don't count.

If you count the day he lost the belt, Wanderlei Silva averaged one title defense per every 388 days.

When Dan Henderson finally knocked him out at Pride 33, it was part of Pride's attempt to break into the American market and make enough money to stay afloat. A big American champion unseating the scariest fighter on the planet was the best thing they could have hoped for.

Pride closed its doors just two months and one event later. They were bought out by the UFC, and in October of 2007, he lost a unification match to UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson, officially melting the Pride title down and adding it to their legacy of shame.

Woof. Okay, how about Strikeforce, Scott Coker's big swing at an American MMA competitor to the UFC?

Here's the quickest possible shorthand to explain just how ultimately ignored Strikeforce's Light Heavyweight division was:

The inaugural champion, longest-reigning champion, and only champion to ever successfully defend the title was The Ultimate Fighter 1 contestant Bobby Southworth. He is remembered for exactly none of these contributions to the sport, and instead, for that time on TUF 1 that he got beat up by Stephan Bonnar and called a drunk Chris Leben a "fatherless bastard."

Which is disgrace, because what he should really be remembered for is his Strikeforce debut, which ended in a seventeen-second No Contest after he threw James Irvin through the unlocked cage door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3dOmKK0Yo

But he did successfully defend the title against no less than Anthony "El Toro" Ruiz, a road warrior who retired just a few years ago at a truly incredible 36-25. It was a rematch of a fight from the previous year, which Ruiz had won by doctor's stoppage after tearing Southworth's eyebrow open, so the decision victory was justice.

And then, five months later, people were finally kind of paying attention to Strikeforce and that meant his time was up.

Renato "Babalu" Sobral had been a notable fighter in the UFC for two reasons, and neither was flattering. For one, he'd gotten two cracks at Chuck Liddell and been viciously knocked out both times. For two, after half a decade on and off with the UFC, he was cut in 2007 after hanging onto an anaconda choke on David Heath for several seconds after the referee had stopped the fight, having felt disrespected by Heath cursing him out. This was deemed unacceptable, horrible behavior by Dana White, and Babalu was banned from the company.

Remember that? Remember when the UFC cut fighters for assaulting people and acting like jerks? Doesn't that just feel quaint now?

The fight only lasted one round, and that round was actually very close and contentious, but it didn't matter: Seconds before it ended Babalu hit Southworth with an elbow that split his eyebrow open again and doctors refused to let him come out for the second. Southworth may have won the fight against Anthony Ruiz, but El Toro won the war. Southworth would never appear in Strikeforce again, and retired just one fight later.

But this was perfect for Sobral. He'd spent years struggling in the UFC, but now he was a champion, and what's more, a champion right as Strikeforce was about to hit it big. Finally, after twelve years in the sport, Babalu would finally get what he des-

Gegard Mousasi knocked him out in sixty seconds in his first title defense.

But, hey: Fair enough. Gegard Mousasi was a wunderkind of the sport. When he beat Babalu that night, despite being just 24 and having fought for only six years, he was already 26-2-1. Mousasi was co-contracted to both Strikeforce and Japan's Dream MMA, so sure, scheduling was difficult and he had to have non-title fights here and there, but hey: Mousasi was undeniably one of the sport's youngest, most promising, most well-rounded stars, and now Strikeforce was on network television. You couldn't have asked for a better person to carry Strikeforce's banner into the mainstream as a reliable, top-level television s-

Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal ground Mousasi into paste for a decision victory in his first title defense.

You know what? That's fine. It's fine. King Mo was, himself, a pretty big deal. After just two years in the sport he was already a star in Japan, he had victories across multiple weight classes, he was an undefeated 7-0, and he'd just beaten one of the best fighters outside of the UFC for a legitimate world championship. Honestly, he was probably a better television star. Mousasi was an excellent fighter, but he was taciturn and awkward and aloof. King Mo was a loud, flashy, charismatic self-marketing machine.

He hadn't lost yet and he showed no signs of slowing down and he'd just won a championship on one of the most-watched television networks in the world. Strikeforce's fortunes were secure and King Mo's future was br-

Rafael "Feij�o" Cavalcante knocked Mo out in three rounds in his first title defense.

I mean, gently caress. Like. Okay! Fine! It's not great, Feij�o isn't really much of a star, but he IS a knockout machine who's never gone to a decision, and he DID wreck Lawal's poo poo. So we can still work with this. There's plenty of room to market a big, scary knockout artist, and I'm sure he's going to keep perf-

Dan Henderson avenged Mo and knocked Cavalcante out in three rounds his first title defense.

But he did that to everyone, and honestly, at this point, everyone knew it didn't loving matter.

Six days after the fight the UFC bought out Strikeforce. Dan Henderson only fought in Strikeforce one more time, and it was at heavyweight, where he knocked out Fedor Emelianenko. He vacated the belt on September 19, 2011 and was back in the UFC before the year was up, and while Strikeforce continued to promote events until January of 2013, they didn't even bother trying to fill the Light Heavyweight void.

They knew sometimes dead was better.

Strikeforce's Light Heavyweight championship lasted just shy of five years and had six champions in that time. Five of those six traded the belt over the course of just two years, three months, and six days.

Well, how about the other big American competition? Bellator could do it, right?

My friend.

Why would you believe in Bellator.

Bellator's inaugural Light Heavyweight tournament ran in its fourth season in 2011, featuring absolute stars like D.J. Linderman, Nick Fekete, and no less than Rich "The Ginger Farmer" Hale. But it was the French-Congolese warrior Christian "Tonton" M'Pumbu who stormed the bracket. After three TKO victories, M'Pumbu was the first man to proudly wear Bellator's 205-pound gold.

He followed it by losing a non-title fight to the YAMMA Pit Fighting champion Travis "Give Me A Room With A" Wiuff. It would be a year and a half before he fought again, and this time, the title was on the line. But it wasn't Wiuff, it was the man who'd beaten him.

It was Slovakia's Attila V�gh. He won Bellator's 2012 Light Heavyweight Tournament, which qualified him for a shot at the champion. Travis Wiuff, who had beaten the champion, had to enroll in the tournament to prove he deserved, uh, a shot at the champion. What can you do. Attila outworked M'Pumbu to a decision and took his title. M'Pumbu never won a fight in Bellator again.

V�gh was, at least, a real tough, well-rounded motherfucker, and his prospects were high, and he had been fighting 4-5 times a year for his entire career, so at least, if nothing else, he would be an active champion.

Attila V�gh promptly injured himself and couldn't make his own title defense.

Scott Coker had hired King Mo back in the hopes of getting another crack at making him a star. Instead, Mo had been knocked out by a little-known fighter named Emanuel "The Hardcore Kid" Newton. Mo was given another shot at Newton nine months later as they vied for an interim championship while Attila recovered, and it did go better in the sense that he made it to the bell, but he was simply beaten by decision this time around. The next year, on March 21, 2014, Newton beat V�gh and unified the belts.

V�gh never won a fight in Bellator again. Newton went on to have the best reign in Bellator Light Heavyweight history, notching successful title defenses against Joey Beltran and Linton Vassell in back-to-back months.

And, because Bellator is silly, it was also ultimately the second-shortest reign the company would ever see.

Newton lost the belt in 2015. He never won a fight in Bellator again.

Conor McGregor had started the real boom period for European talent in the UFC, and Bellator was just as invested in trying to capitalize on the gold rush. Liam McGeary was their man: An enormous, 6'6" Light Heavyweight out of Norfolk who had made it to his fifth year of professional competition without ever losing. He had a great clinch, he had solid kicks, and he would shock people with downside armbars and inverted triangle chokes. When he beat Newton and captured the belt in February of 2015, he was, clearly, the shock of new Bellator really needed. And that meant he needed a fresh, new opponent. And Bellator had just signed the hottest, freshest new star there was:

Tito Ortiz.

Fun fact: One of their many media appearances as Bellator tried to paper Tito's face everywhere they could to get eyes on their product was conducted by one of my oldest friends on the planet, who is an exceptionally kind human who rarely has a bad thing to say about anyone. When I asked him how getting coherent soundbites out of Tito went, he was quiet for a long moment, and then he replied, "Professionals like challenges."

McGeary choked Tito out in one round. Tito fought for Bellator just one more time before leaving the company completely. McGeary was the star, now. He was the big, powerful, undefeated champion, and nothing could take that away from him.

Nothing but Bellator hiring Phil Davis away from the UFC. Phil Davis had been one of the best wrestlers in the UFC's Light Heavyweight division, and Bellator was a smaller pond with Davis ground McGeary into paste. McGeary wound up spending two and a half years working his way to a rematch with Davis: He got his jaw broken, tapped to strikes, and never fought again.

For Phil Davis, Bellator was the dream. He'd simply been unable to rise to the top in the UFC. He could beat the vast majority of the division, even title contenders like Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira, but there was always someone there to stop him his fingers from scraping against the gold.

But now he was free. No Rashad Evans, no Anthony Johnson, no Ryan Bader. It was Phil's time to shine.

And then Bellator hired Ryan Bader.

They didn't even bother pretending to make Bader work for his title shot, and the audience knew the inevitable had come. On June 24, 2017, Bader beat Davis and became the new Bellator Light Heavyweight Champion. He, too, had been disrespected and lost in the shuffle over in the UFC, and he, too, wanted his moment in the spotlight. It was his story, and he was going to be a defending champion. He beat Emanuel Newton's old buddy Linton Vassell in November, and with it, became just the third man to defend Bellator's 205-pound title.

Which was great! Because it meant he could ignore it completely. Bader hosed off into the Bellator Heavyweight World Grand Prix in 2018, and with his departure, the entire Light Heavyweight division ground to a complete and total halt. Bader's victories at heavyweight won him his second title, but they also meant almost three god damned years passed before Bader finally defended his belt again.

Which turned out to have been a good call, because the moment he did, Vadim Nemkov knocked him dead with a headkick in two rounds. Bader tried to come back in the 2021 Light Heavyweight Grand Prix for revenge, but after Corey Anderson put his lights out in less than a minute, he agreed his time at 205 was over. On one hand, Ryan Bader had a title defense and, at 1,155 days, the longest reign Bellator had ever seen. On the other, 1022 days of that reign passed between his first and second attempts at defending his crown.

Vadim Nemkov, on the other hand, became undeniably Bellator's best Light Heavyweight of all time. He killed Bader, he entered the 2021 Light Heavyweight Grand Prix as the champion meaning he was defending his belt in every round, he beat Phil Davis, he avenged one of his only two losses (funny story, the other: Jiř� Proch�zka!) by defending his belt again in submitting Julius Anglickas and his glorious hair, and then, as into every reign some bullshit must fall, he promptly pulled a Bellator and ruined the tournament final by losing two and a half rounds to Corey Anderson before an unintentional headbutt busted open his eyebrow at 4:55 in the third round. If it had come just five seconds later, the third round would have ended, the fight would have been more than half over, a technical decision would have been made, and Corey Anderson would have beaten Nemkov, taken his the title and won the $1 million tournament.

But he didn't. Seven months later they had a rematch, and Nemkov won a deeply uneventful bout. Seven months after that, Nemkov fought the newly-signed Yoel Romero, who earned his shot by beating, uh, a 46 year-old on-his-third-retirement 32-16-1 (2) Melvin Manhoef, and they proceeded to, in true Yoel Romero style, have a fight full of incredible combative potential where almost nothing happened.

Nemkov won. That made him, easily, the best Bellator Light Heavyweight Champion of all time. He had four title defenses (technically five if you count the No Contest, which, well, you loving shouldn't), he'd been a persistent, active champion, and he'd broken Bader's record by holding the belt for almost 1200 days.

I say "almost 1200 days" because, uh, he gave it up. Sort of? He said he was done with Light Heavyweight and he was moving up to Heavyweight, but Bellator didn't actually take the belt away and he didn't actually vacate it, and then it turned out Showtime Sports was shutting Bellator down and it was being sold off to the Professional Fighters League at the end of 2023, so now no one knows in what fashion it will even continue to exist.

Which, honestly, is the perfect ending for the company.

There have been seven undisputed Light Heavyweight Champions in Bellator history. Only four champions had title defenses, only two champions had multiple title defenses, and only one fought Tito Ortiz. We wish them the best in their future endeavours as part of the Donn Davis Variety Hour.

Well, that was depressing. Let's try ONE Championship! They're one of the bigger companies in the world now AND they're disgusting belt fetishists, so, assuredly, they've got Light Heavyweight.

And you're right, they do. They may, in a way, be the worst of all.

When ONE came into existence it wanted to replicate a lot of the best aspects of Pride. Soccer kicks! Multi-sport fight cards! Bombastic production values! Blatant promotional favoritism!

But it also used their weight classes. It's important to note, for the record, that ONE had a chance to be safe. For the first three years of their corporate existence their only championships were contested at 170 pounds and below. But in 2014 they mortgaged away their innocence in exchange for a 205-pound title, and they called it the Middleweight World Championship, just to personally infuriate me.

ONE's first 205 pound champion was a Kazakhstani champion named Igor "Lionheart" Svirid. ONE picked a fight between him and Brazil's Leandro Ataides, a big hulking undefeated punching machine, and despite being the smaller, not-undefeated fighter, Svirid knocked Ataides out in just seventeen seconds in the main event of ONE: Battle of the Lions on November 7, 2014. You couldn't ask for a better performance or a bigger debut, and ONE wanted great things from his future.

He, of course, lost it in his next fight. Svirid would fight for ONE only once more, whereupon he was defeated by Lu�s "Sapo" Santos, who was best known for fighting in Bellator and the WEC at 170 pounds.

The first ONE champion most people remember was Vitaly Bigdash, the man who took Svirid down. Bigdash was much closer to the ideal ONE was looking for: Big Russian dude, intimidating appearance, never lost a fight, never been to a decision. It only took him five and a half minutes to knock out Svirid, but he needed all five rounds to record the division's first title defense against ONE's big Burmese star, Aung La Nsang. In a statement about both ONE's preference for Nsang and the level of depth at work in their higher weight classes, the company's response was to book an instant rematch.

ONE got what it wanted and Nsang won the 205 pound championship. But wait, I hear you say: He's clearly holding two belts. What else was he the champion of?

Well, that's easy.

He was the Light Heavyweight champion.

See, ONE Championship had this thing about championships: It wanted more of them. It was expanding its championship roster to include offerings heretofore unseen by the world of mixed martial arts. And it decided the new Light Heavyweight would be at 225 pounds. On May 6, 2016, they coaxed supergrappler, Strikeforce veteran and one-time UFC competitor Roger Gracie back out of retirement and he dutifully submitted Poland's Michał "Wampir" Pasternak in just two minutes. ONE's brand new division was out of the hangar and flying with the eagles.

But they'd made the mistake of naming it Light Heavyweight.

So Roger immediately retired and the belt was dormant for almost two straight years.

Aung La Nsang took the vacant belt, and for a good couple of years, he was ONE's star player. He fought people across three different weight classes! At once!

Which is a way of saying: ONE didn't loving have anyone in their upper weight classes.

Like, really. Look at this. That is the Middleweight champion, who is also the Light Heavyweight champion, fighting the Heavyweight champion. There are three belts involved in this fight and only one of them is actually at risk of changing hands. This was the one and only successful defense of ONE's Light Heavyweight championship, ever. By the time it took place Nsang had held the belt for 20 months without ever defending it, which paled in comparison to Vera, who had managed just two defenses of his heavyweight title in four years.

He knocked out Vera in two rounds. Vera would continue to be the heavyweight champion for almost two more years anyway. Nsang would defend his actual 205-pound Middleweight championship three times, but it was only against two people, and one of them--Japan's Ken Hasegawa--got an instant rematch despite being knocked out in both fights, and the other, Lebanaese champion Mohammad Karaki, was actually a 185 pound fighter, and after losing neither fought for ONE ever again and both retired shortly thereafter.

And somehow, impossibly, things actually got even more useless.

Reinier de Ridder was one of the new faces of ONE. He was a Dutch grappling ace with a 12-0 record, and, more importantly, he was one of the precious few 205-pound fighters who thought signing up with ONE was a good idea. And it worked out gangbusters for him: On October 30, 2020, de Ridder choked out Aung La Nsang and took his Middleweight championship.

But why stop there? ONE immediately booked them into another match, this time for the Light Heavyweight Championship, and sure enough, Reinier took that away, too. ONE cruised from one double champion straight into another, which was, well, inevitable.

I mean, what the gently caress else was there for them to do? It was a point of mockery that the UFC promoted the Women's Featherweight division for years without publishing rankings for them because doing so would make clear that they just didn't actually have enough talent for a top five, let alone a top fifteen. I'm writing this in 2023, and ONE still doesn't even bother publishing rankings for any division heavier than 170 pounds.

So who did ONE have Reinier fight?

Why, the 185-pound champion Kiamrian Abbasov, of course.

Because gently caress it, why not? Why not feed the gaping, slavering maw of 205 pounds with the blood of the smaller weight classes? It wasn't a remotely competitive fight, not that literally anyone thought it would be. de Ridder talked about possibly cutting to 185 to fight again and become a three-division champion, but ONE wanted Abbasov fighting their 170 pound champion instead, because gently caress all weight classes, at all times. So de Ridder fought...Vitaly Bigdash! The champion from almost eight years ago!

it was silly. The whole thing was silly.

And it concluded in the silliest way possible. You see, all of these fights had been down a class. But Reinier was big and undefeated and hyper-confident, and he still wanted that triple title, and, hey: Did you know that he was, in fact, as tall as their Heavyweight champion, Anatoly Malykhin? Why, he said, I bet if Anatoly would come cut down to 225 and fight me for the Light Heavyweight title I could carve him up and prove how much better I am, and then we can fight for his belt, and I'll take that one, too.

Malykhin delivered his prompt response in four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

And you know what Malykhin's had to say since then?

"I bet I can make 205."

ONE promotes two separate Light Heavyweight championships. They've collectively had seven successful title defenses, only four of which involved the weight classes they were actually designed for.

In November of 2014, ONE had six world championships. As of November 2023, they have twenty-nine.

Okay, but what about World Extreme Cagefighting? The WEC is the source of everything good in the sport; surely, if anyone could solve the Light Heavyweight Riddle, it's them.

Funnily enough, they started in exactly the same place.

That's right. Four years after his last UFC appearance and two and a half years after his last fight altogether, Frank Shamrock made his return to the sport to join the WEC. At WEC 6, on March 27, 2003, Shamrock courageously defeated one of the sport's hottest young prospects: Bryan "The Pain Inducer" Pardoe, a 5-3 heavyweight in his mid-thirties who'd been knocked out in one minute by Keith Jardine just three months prior.

But hey! Frank Shamrock! He's back! The WEC is the happening place to be and Frank Shamrock is going to show you just how great it is!

Frank Shamrock vacated the belt five months later. He never fought for the WEC again.

Two years later, the WEC tried again. It was Jason "The Punisher" Lambert's turn. He was a much better fit for the WEC, anyway: He was a road warrior, a King of the Cage and Gladiator Challenge veteran, he had already fought for the WEC before, and he didn't cost a million dollars to book. His opponent would be Richard Montoya, a brawler from Fresno who hadn't been defeated yet. Lambert knocked him out in three minutes. A champion! A real champion! Finally, the WEC's Light Heavyweight division could begin!

Jason Lambert vacated the belt nine months later. The UFC called, and who could give a poo poo about anything else.

The WEC didn't want to wait, this time. They went old-school and booked a one-night tournament to fill the void, and, inevitably, one of the tournament finalists couldn't continue. So Scott Smith beat the poo poo out of a severely overmatched tournament alternate, Tait Fletcher, to win the belt. Three months later, on January 13, 2006, he recorded the first-ever defense of the belt, knocking out the previously injured tournament participant Justin Levens just to make sure he didn't leave any unfinished business. A reigning champion! A DEFENDING champion! There was nowhere to go but up.

Up, of course, to the UFC. Smith vacated the belt four months later to join The Ultimate Fighter 4.

So the job fell to Lodune Sincaid. Sincaid was a TUF 1 veteran, but he hadn't made it in the UFC. He was knocked out of the reality show by Bobby Southworth and he was knocked out of the UFC by Nate Quarry, and after his one-and-done, he was relegated to the WEC. Where, oddly enough, he thrived. He beat future UFC prospect James Irvin, and at the company's next event--May 5, 2006's WEC 20: Cinco de Mayhem--he beat the overmatched, 4-2 Dan Molina to win the vacant belt. After his UFC losses, it was a great shot in the arm for his career.

It lasted three months. For the first time in WEC history, though, it wasn't by choice.

Sincaid was knocked out by Doug "The Rhino" Marshall, whose entire body is like one big tribute to the entire aesthetic of MMA's breakout years. Marshall became one of the WEC's signature stars. He was a huge, weird muscle goblin with some uncomfortable tattoos and an insatiable lust for chasing constant, violent, endless knockouts. He was a punching machine who would ultimately only reach a decision twice in a 26-fight career. He was the slanging-and-banging posterboy the WEC needed, and he was its first real, genuine Light Heavyweight champion. He held the belt for a full year and a half and he scored not one but two successful title defenses.

Sure, they were against people like Justin McElfresh and Ariel Gandulla, but gently caress it. It's the WEC, you take what you get. Even better: With Pride folding during his reign and Strikeforce not yet truly established, Doug Marshall could, legitimately, say that he was the best Light Heavyweight Champion in the world outside of the UFC.

And, then, as it does, the United States military ruined everything.

This may be hard to imagine if you weren't there at the time, but you're going to have to trust me: For a hot minute, Brian Stann was a big loving deal.

He grew up in a military family, he went to an expensive private school, and he rolled straight into the Marine Corps. He learned martial arts during his combat training, he fought in the Iraq war, and he got a medal for valor after his group successfully didn't die. He became a fixture of military recruiting. He got namedropped by George Bush. He was a well-spoken, charismatic superpatriot who worked under the nickname "The All-American" just in case the rest of his billing was too subtle.

And he was good. By March 26, 2008 he was 6-0, all knockouts, all in the first round, the latest of which saw him punch a wildly flurrying Doug Marshall flat in ninety seconds.

The WEC had a star. The WEC had one of the potentially biggest stars in the sport, quite frankly. All he had to do was win.

He was knocked out by Steve Cantwell in his very next fight.

Steve Cantwell would go on to accrue one of the UFC's worst losing streaks, quit the sport broke and injured at 25, and became one of Nevada's leading cannabis producers.

There were seven WEC Light Heavyweight Champions in just five years. Three of them vacated the belt and only two ever defended it.

But the WEC, unlike everyone else, became the only company to successfully solve the problem:

They took everyone they had at 185 pounds or heavier, sent them to the UFC, wiped their hands clean of the bad divisions, and spent the rest of their tragically short life putting on some of the best fights in the loving world.

Were that every company could be so wise.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 04:50

LobsterMobster: Oct 29, 2009; "I was being quiet and trying to be a good boy but he dialed the right combination to open the throw-down vault and it was on."

"Walter Foxx is ten times brighter than your bulb at the bottom of the tree merry xmas"

it's beautiful, carl

# ? Nov 8, 2023 05:51

Cavauro: Jan 9, 2008

carl's jr. heavyweight opus. thanks for the good read

# ? Nov 8, 2023 06:33

Joey McChrist: Aug 8, 2005

insane writeup carl. what a cursed life our snowball king has lead

# ? Nov 8, 2023 06:45

MassRafTer: May 26, 2001; BAEST MODE!!!

CarlCX posted:

Jon "Bones" Jones wasn't supposed to be a fighter. His two brothers had been football players, but his father wanted Jon to be a pastor, just like him. He told him fighting would be bad for his soul.

He had no idea how right he was.

This got me good.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 06:49

Unperson_47: Oct 14, 2007

loving magnificent set of posts, Carl.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 06:55

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

an hour's worth of words

# ? Nov 8, 2023 06:59

Marching Powder: Mar 8, 2008; stop the fucking fight, cornerman, your dude is fucking done and is about to be killed.

seeing a major aspect of my life laid out like this either makes me feel significant or insignificant very strongly. insane as usual man. incredible journalism.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 07:33

C. Everett Koop: Aug 18, 2008

What I've learned is that if you hit 200lbs on the scale, either start going the other way or keep going up, up, way up.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 08:32

BlindSite: Feb 8, 2009

Its really not hard to tell the pre-testing days when you see pics is it.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 09:23

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Thanks, y'all. Glad you liked it.

BlindSite posted:

Its really not hard to tell the pre-testing days when you see pics is it.

Watching MMA from 1997-2007 or so while researching this felt eerily similar to watching pro-wrestling from the 80s in terms of becoming aware of just how hilariously not real everyone looked.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 11:53

ilmucche: Mar 16, 2016

what a writeup

# ? Nov 8, 2023 11:59

LobsterMobster: Oct 29, 2009; "I was being quiet and trying to be a good boy but he dialed the right combination to open the throw-down vault and it was on."

"Walter Foxx is ten times brighter than your bulb at the bottom of the tree merry xmas"

steve cantfightwell

# ? Nov 8, 2023 16:50

Omnikin: May 29, 2007; Press 'E' for Medic

Man. I loved DC as a fighter. I hate reliving all of that JJ bullshit. Jones-Cormier 2 was on my 28th birthday and that headkick hosed me up. I remember screaming into the FB void about Jones being a piece of poo poo when he popped a month later.

Getting to see him live at UFC 220 is probably one of my favorite live sports memories, "Right Above It" will forever be a hype song for me, drat I love me some fat dad wrestling

Thanks for the incredible write-up; I'll have to come back and finish up the third post another time. Too nostalgic rn

# ? Nov 8, 2023 17:05

MassRafTer: May 26, 2001; BAEST MODE!!!

I'd forgotten two Jon Jones test failures and two arrests.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 17:55

Lurks With Wolves: Jan 14, 2013; At least I don't dance with them, right?

Threads like this are my only point of contact with MMA, and I love them so much. I did genuinely laugh out loud when Bellator brought Tito Ortiz back in.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 20:30

duckdealer: Feb 28, 2011

Just unbelievably incredible. I dream to one day write something this great.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 21:40

MassRafTer: May 26, 2001; BAEST MODE!!!

I got so much joy from Jon Jones ruining Daniel Cormier's life twice and then loving up in such grand fashion, and then doubling down on trying to be a completely evil person so I felt guilt for getting joy from him destroying Cormier's spirit.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 21:46

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

MassRafTer posted:

I got so much joy from Jon Jones ruining Daniel Cormier's life twice and then loving up in such grand fashion, and then doubling down on trying to be a completely evil person so I felt guilt for getting joy from him destroying Cormier's spirit.

It's terrible, but especially when you watch it all happen back to back in rapid succession there's this Wile E. Coyote vs Road Runner aspect to it. Like, just stop, DC. It's not going to work out for you. Just let it go.

# ? Nov 9, 2023 10:40

Marching Powder: Mar 8, 2008; stop the fucking fight, cornerman, your dude is fucking done and is about to be killed.

nooooooo onnneeeeee fights like jon jones runs red lights like jon jones comes back for the cash and the pipe like jon jones

# ? Nov 9, 2023 12:03

LobsterMobster: Oct 29, 2009; "I was being quiet and trying to be a good boy but he dialed the right combination to open the throw-down vault and it was on."

"Walter Foxx is ten times brighter than your bulb at the bottom of the tree merry xmas"

Marching Powder posted:

nooooooo onnneeeeee fights like jon jones runs red lights like jon jones comes back for the cash and the pipe like jon jones

let's not forget he left his "shitload of condoms" in the car

# ? Nov 9, 2023 13:57

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

God drat that was a long trip down Nostalgia Avenue. I had forgotten how utterly absurd the 205lbs division was. And I'd completely missed that "Jon Jones is accused of beating his fianc� by her daughter" scandal, good god that man is about as bad a human being as he is good a fighter.

I was definitely one of the ones who was convinced Machida was IT when he won the title, headed for a long reign. And I'd forgotten how completely red in the face with rage I got over the first Jones Gustafsson decision, but I definitely did.

Also completely passed me by that Randy never successfully defended the LHW belt.

I'm starting to think it's not just the weight classes that are cursed but the entire sport of MMA is cursed to be a circus sideshow. Which honestly is when MMA is at its most enjoyable for me at this point.

# ? Nov 9, 2023 17:23

Big Coffin Hunter: Aug 13, 2005

Amazing read, thanks for this

# ? Nov 10, 2023 00:21

apophenium: Apr 14, 2009

Loved this, despite only ever watching KO compilations in lieu of watching a full fight. Might have to see the weird samurai guy fight tomorrow. Could be fun?

# ? Nov 10, 2023 23:07

Marching Powder: Mar 8, 2008; stop the fucking fight, cornerman, your dude is fucking done and is about to be killed.

apophenium posted:

Loved this, despite only ever watching KO compilations in lieu of watching a full fight. Might have to see the weird samurai guy fight tomorrow. Could be fun?

could be a decades long hobby. strongly suggest live posting with goons if possible.

# ? Nov 10, 2023 23:11

BlindSite: Feb 8, 2009

apophenium posted:

Loved this, despite only ever watching KO compilations in lieu of watching a full fight. Might have to see the weird samurai guy fight tomorrow. Could be fun?

This is actually a decent card to cut your teeth on. Its a card that should have been an all timer but it's been cobbled together to the OK-est possible because of injury. There's two titles on the line that are extremely important to the company and both fights could either be all time bangers or all time dogshit.

The rest of the card has minimal name value but some cool guys - some of which I think are going to be hilarious mis-matches.

It's a good barometer of most UFC cards. Flip a coin as to the quality. There's better fights we could and should be watching but circumstance and stupidity means we wont!

# ? Nov 11, 2023 00:08

Unperson_47: Oct 14, 2007

I have a feeling Jiri vs. Pereira is gonna be badass

# ? Nov 11, 2023 00:15

BlindSite: Feb 8, 2009

Unperson_47 posted:

I have a feeling Jiri vs. Pereira is gonna be badass

It really does have that potential and I can't loving wait. I think the worst case is a knockout in a minute or so, but I don't think we'll get that often seen problem with two hitters where they just stand there arguing in sign language for 5 rounds.

Jiri is psychotic enough to just bite down and come forward like a nut case.

# ? Nov 11, 2023 00:31

Xerzes: May 16, 2012

"Even during his fights he tended to move like a genie had granted a hopeful duck's wish to be a kickboxer."
I love you, sentence. Excellent writeup.

# ? Nov 11, 2023 07:21

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Xerzes posted:

"Even during his fights he tended to move like a genie had granted a hopeful duck's wish to be a kickboxer."
I love you, sentence. Excellent writeup.

This entire writeup started with that line in an otherwise blank .txt file, so thank you, that is gratifying.

# ? Nov 11, 2023 10:27

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

Absolutely amazing read, thank you Carl. I hadn't really grasped how long I've actually been watching UFC until I got to the point in the history when I started remembering fights and then saw the dates attached to them :stare:

Also (as Xerzes also posted):

CarlCX posted:

Even during his fights he tended to move like a genie had granted a hopeful duck's wish to be a kickboxer.

# ? Nov 11, 2023 11:09

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

CarlCX posted:

This entire writeup started with that line in an otherwise blank .txt file, so thank you, that is gratifying.

It's my favorite line.

# ? Nov 11, 2023 15:29

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# ? May 3, 2024 08:42

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

And his first title defense is probably a middleweight. God bless us, everyone.

# ? Nov 12, 2023 08:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Hammer House: Stinger Splash Zone > The Sins of the Snowball King: A Light Heavyweight Championship History