People often talk about the most undeserving title challengers of all-time, such as the Brian Lopez-Benchimol article seen here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/982539-vitor-belfort-and-the-25-most-undeserving-title-challengers-ever.
“Sugar” Rashad Evans is one man who will never appear on that list. He belongs at the top of “the biggest title shot snubs ever” list.
Why? Let’s take a closer look.
Since the beginning of 2010, Evans is 3-0, including two wins over former UFC Light Heavyweight Champions Tito Ortiz and Rampage Jackson. All three of those wins were at Light Heavyweight as well.
Henderson is 4-1 with wins over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Fedor Emelianenko, Rafael Cavalcante, and Renato “Babalu” Sobral. He lost to Jake Shields back in April of 2010. During that five fight span, Henderson has fought at Middleweight, Light Heavyweight, and Heavyweight.
In that time, Evans has faced the best in the world inside the Octagon. Henderson has one UFC fight, a “win” that many people who don’t professionally score the fights had as a draw.
How about looking at their UFC records overall?
Evans is 11-1-1, with victories over four UFC Light Heavyweight champions. Henderson is 4-2, and in the two biggest fights of his life, UFC title fights, he got beat by “Rampage” Jackson and choked out by Anderson Silva.
Rashad Evans has lost four title shots due to injury (two to him, one to “Shogun” Rua, one to Jon Jones) since he became the number one contender back in May of 2010. Dan Henderson has spent that time defeating lesser competition.
Rashad Evans is the rightful number one contender for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship, and hopefully matchmaker Joe Silva will see it that way before he makes another “Sugar-less” title fight.
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