5 champions who found themselves at loggerheads with the UFC

This month will see UFC 270 take place. In the main event of the show, UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou is set to defend against interim titleholder Ciryl Gane.

Incredibly, Francis Ngannou’s entire UFC career could be on the line this month, as he remains at loggerheads with the promotion. He could well walk away from MMA's biggest stage, depending on whether he defeats Gane.

Unsurprisingly, Francis Ngannou isn’t the first reigning champion to end up at loggerheads with the UFC. We’ve seen a number of other titleholders square off with Dana White and company in the past for numerous reasons.

With that considered, here are five UFC champions who ended up at loggerheads with the promotion.

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#5. Jon Jones – former UFC light heavyweight champion

Jon Jones ended up in a major dispute with the UFC over his pay in 2020

One of the more recent examples of a UFC champion clashing with the promotion is Jon Jones, who held the UFC light heavyweight title on three occasions from 2011 to 2020.

One of the most dominant fighters in the history of MMA, Jones defeated opponents such as Daniel Cormier, Alexander Gustafsson and current champion Glover Teixeira during his runs with the title. However, he often found himself in spats with Dana White and other members of the UFC’s brass.

In his earliest days as light heavyweight kingpin, it felt like Jones could do nothing wrong. Some fans even suggested that he could become MMA’s equivalent of Floyd Mayweather or Tiger Woods.

However, cracks began to appear in 2012 when Jones refused to fight Chael Sonnen on short notice, triggering the cancelation of UFC 151. White, in particular, was furious. He accused Jones of killing the sport and things were never quite the same between the two parties.

While Jones was able to stay onside with the UFC for the majority of the next decade following the incident, even despite multiple failed drug tests and legal issues, problems arose again in 2020 following Jones’ win over Dominick Reyes.

Jones professed a wish to move up to the heavyweight division, most notably for a clash with Francis Ngannou. However, he quickly became angry when the UFC apparently wouldn’t meet his financial demands.

The result was a nasty Twitter spat between Jones and White, which ended with ‘Bones’ on the sidelines for the whole of 2021. While cooler heads have supposedly prevailed since, Jones has still not returned to the octagon, nor have the UFC given a date for his next fight.

#4. B.J. Penn – former UFC welterweight and lightweight champion

BJ Penn's 2004 spat with the UFC arguably changed the promotion's business practices entirely

To newer fans of the UFC, it might’ve felt like B.J. Penn was the consummate company man by the time he was eventually released by the promotion in 2019. Not only was he kept around despite a lengthy losing streak, but he was also inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2015.

However, when he won his first UFC title back in 2004, he ended up in a major spat with the promotion and could well be seen as the architect of one of their more questionable business practices today.

After narrowly failing to capture the UFC lightweight title, ‘The Prodigy’ was given a shot at gold in a fight with longtime welterweight champion Matt Hughes at UFC 46. Despite coming into the fight as a massive underdog, Penn was able to submit Hughes in the first round via rear-naked choke, becoming the new titleholder.

However, the fight with Hughes turned out to be the final one on the Hawaiian’s contract with the UFC. Citing a bigger financial offer, he decided to jump ship to Japanese promotion K-1 while still holding the title.

Naturally, the UFC were furious, with Penn later stating that he received an angry phone call from Dana White, who essentially threatened to erase him from the promotion’s history altogether.

While ‘The Prodigy’ did return to the fold two years later, with his relationship with White seemingly repaired, this incident is usually cited as the reason the UFC introduced its much-maligned “champion’s clause” to their contracts. The clause essentially prevents a fighter from leaving the promotion while holding a title.

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#3. Jens Pulver – former UFC lightweight champion

Jens Pulver clashed with the UFC over pay issues in 2002, resulting in his departure from the promotion

A genuine pioneer of MMA in the lighter-weight classes, Jens Pulver became the UFC’s first-ever lightweight champion when he defeated Caol Uno at UFC 30 in 2001.

However, despite defending his title successfully on two occasions, beating Dennis Hallman and B.J. Penn, ‘Lil Evil’ has never been inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, nor is his name regularly mentioned on the promotion’s shows.

The reason for this is probably because he left the promotion under a serious black cloud in 2002, abandoning his UFC lightweight title without actually losing it in the octagon in the process.

Naturally, Pulver’s spat with the promotion was all about money. While the UFC was not the pay-per-view juggernaut it is today back in Pulver’s time as champion, his pay was still remarkably low. His manager Monte Cox stated that he received just $22k to beat Penn, for instance.

However, after the Penn fight, Pulver’s contract expired. Quietly, Cox allowed the UFC’s 30-day option of a contract extension to expire, freeing ‘Lil Evil’ from the promotion. According to Cox, Dana White was left livid and suggested that he and Pulver would never do business in the sport again.

So even though Pulver did eventually return to the UFC for a time in 2006, even coaching the fifth season of The Ultimate Fighter alongside his old rival Penn, this incident is probably the reason that he’s now persona non grata with the promotion.

#2. Tito Ortiz – former UFC light heavyweight champion

Tito Ortiz' reluctance to face Chuck Liddell put him at loggerheads with the UFC and Dana White

The UFC’s poster-boy when the Fertitta brothers and Dana White brought out the promotion in 2001 was Tito Ortiz. He held the UFC light heavyweight title from 2000 to 2003 and was a wildly popular champion.

Unfortunately, despite once employing White as his manager, Ortiz butted heads on more than one occasion with the UFC’s brass. Most notably, he found himself shelved at the height of his popularity in 2002 after the promotion refused to cave to his financial demands.

After making five successful defenses of his title, ending with his win over UFC legend Ken Shamrock at UFC 40, Ortiz seemed destined to face top contender Chuck Liddell in his next bout.

However, there was one big problem: Ortiz and Liddell were friends and training partners. While Liddell was willing to commit to the fight, ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ was not, at least not for the same money he’d been making before.

So, when he couldn’t come to terms with the promotion, they simply pushed him aside and booked a fight between Liddell and Randy Couture for an interim light heavyweight title instead. It was a clear message to ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’, showing him that while he was the UFC’s poster-boy, he could still be replaced at the drop of a hat.

In the end, Ortiz was tempted back into the fold and dropped his title to Couture in their eventual bout at UFC 44. However, while he remained with the UFC until his first retirement in 2012, he continued to butt heads with them over the years, with this incident marking a turning point in his relationship with the promotion and with White.

#1. Randy Couture – former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion

Randy Couture remains the only UFC champion to end up in a full legal wrangle with the promotion

Perhaps the greatest example of a champion ending up at loggerheads with the UFC remains Randy Couture. Sure, ‘The Natural’ stands as one of the promotion’s ultimate legends, as he won the heavyweight title and light heavyweight titles on multiple occasions, but he’s also the only reigning UFC champion to end up facing off with them in court.

Despite Couture once claiming that he felt like he’d been “swimming upstream” with the UFC’s owners for years, his issues only really began in 2007. Prior to that, he felt like one of the darlings of the promotion. Initially winning the UFC heavyweight title in 1997, when his second title reign ended in 2002, he was instantly offered a shot at the interim light heavyweight title against Chuck Liddell.

When his time at 205 pounds ended with his apparent retirement in 2006, the UFC brought him back into the fold a year later by awarding him an instant title shot at heavyweight champ Tim Sylvia. That resulted in Couture becoming a five-time UFC champion.

However, after making his first defense against top contender Gabriel Gonzaga, ‘The Natural’ was angered when the promotion failed to sign former PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko and chose to pursue a fight with the Russian elsewhere.

Couture abruptly announced his “resignation” from the UFC, which naturally didn’t sit well with the promotion, who were confident that with ‘The Natural’ under contract, any attempt at fighting for a rival promotion would be illegal. The result was a lengthy legal battle that lasted for the best part of a year, with both sides hitting out at one another in petty fashion in the media. That included a reveal of Couture’s actual pay and contract.

It looked like the issue was heading all the way to court, only for the two sides to abruptly come to terms in late 2008, with Couture returning to the fold to defend his title against Brock Lesnar. In doing so, he earned himself a new, better-paid contract.

However, while ‘The Natural’ seemed to have buried the hatchet with the promotion, things turned sour again in 2013 when he moved to rival promotion Bellator, once again bringing up all the bad feelings and resulting in Dana White stating that he “didn’t respect Couture at all.”