Sometimes all a person needs is a change. Things aren’t going well for one reason or another, so they change something up and all of a sudden everything clicks.
In MMA, that change is oftentimes centered around weight.
Maybe an athlete is cutting too much weight to compete in a division and they decide to move up and become an unstoppable force—Donald Cerrone comes to mind after his 2016 tear as a welterweight, as does Conor McGregor after he jumped from featherweight to lightweight and became champion there.
Maybe an athlete is too small for the weight class they’ve chosen and need to cut a little more weight to get in there with people their own size—not that long ago, TJ Grant became a world title contender by going from welterweight also-ran to lightweight wrecking ball. Rafael Dos Anjos became a world champion by doing the exact same thing.
Provided it’s motivated by the right factors and frame of mind (and not because you lost three of four and you don’t know what else to do), making a change in the weight class of choice can be the ideal tonic for a fighter with no other obvious path before him or her.
What follows is a look at some such fighters who may benefit from such a change based on their present standing in a division, their struggles within their present class or their pursuit of elite status being clearer if they elected to make a little switch.