Lengthy UFC title reigns seem to be a thing of the past.
It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that we all sat in front of our TVs on Saturday nights and marveled at the dominance of UFC champions like Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, and Demetrious Johnson, all of whom carried their respective titles for a combined 6,663 days.
Other fighters such as Jose Aldo and Jon Jones have had undeniably impressive title runs with ‘Junior’ defending the featherweight title seven times and ‘Bones’ notching 11 total defenses across two different reigns as the UFC light heavyweight champion.
With championship reigns seemingly getting shorter and shorter, Cormier believes that could offer an explanation as to why the UFC is sorely lacking star power these days. ‘DC’ also offered his take on how many defenses a fighter needs in this day in age before reaching that coveted Hall of Fame status.
“I think the reason we don’t have that star, is it’s hard to be a long-reigning champion,” Cormier said on a recent episode of Good Guy/Bad Guy with Chael Sonnen. “That’s the problem. The game has gotten so hard now, that Anderson [Silva] had what, 11 title defenses? Jon Jones had 13? Who is doing that anymore? We talked bout Sean O’Malley as if he had a great title reign, but he defended the belt one time. Imagine if he did it seven times…
“A long title reign is very difficult. It’s what’s needed to become a real draw. You cannot just be a flash-in-the-pan champion. Unfortunately, [Israel Adesanya] was a draw because he held that belt for a long time, but since he lost the belt, the number isn’t as great…the reigns aren’t as long [now]. I was talking to some of the guys on the weigh-in show… what would you consider a great championship reign today? For me right now, I think defending that belt three times. Winning the title, defending it three times, I think it gets you in the Hall of Fame because it’s so hard to hold on to the belt today” (h/t BJPenn.com).
Valentina Shevchenko, Kamaru Usman, and Amanda Nunes have the most dominant UFC title reigns in recent years
Nowadays, a reign like the ones that Silva, GSP, and ‘Mighty Mouse’ had just don’t seem to exist. The closest we’ve gotten to it thus far has been Valentina Shevchenko who defended the women’s flyweight title seven times before surrendering the belt to Alexa Grasso in March 2023.
Since then, ‘Bullet’ has regained the title and will look to resume her dominance over the division in 2025.
The next closest thing to her impressive run was Kamaru Usman’s successful defense of the welterweight title five times in less than two years, though four of those five fights came against Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal.
Israel Adesanya and Amanda Nunes also defended their middleweight and bantamweight titles five times apiece.
‘The Last Stylebender’ ultimately surrendered his belt to Alex Pereira in late 2022 before taking it back five months later while Nunes opted to lay down her gold and retire last year following a dominant performance against Irene Aldana at UFC 289.
