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This weekend sees social media superstar Jake Paul take on former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley in what is the biggest fight of his career thus far. Win, and the gravy train keeps on rolling; lose, and the aura that Paul has built up will be shattered.
Over the years we’ve seen plenty of fighters in the UFC and elsewhere build an aura around them, only for it to be destroyed with a single loss. And often when this happens, it’s impossible for a fighter like this to ever regain the momentum they had before such a devastating loss.
So with this in mind, here are five fighters who saw their aura shattered after a devastating loss.
#5. Brock Lesnar – former UFC heavyweight champion
On the face of it, Brock Lesnar should never really have developed an aura of invincibility in the first place. The former WWE champion entered the UFC in 2008 and immediately began his career in the octagon with a loss when he was submitted by Frank Mir in the first round of their clash.
However, Lesnar’s superstar status ensured that the UFC gave him a much stronger push to the top of the card than a fighter with a 1-1 record normally would’ve been granted.
He defeated Heath Herring in his second UFC appearance, and was then shunted into a UFC heavyweight title fight with legendary champion Randy Couture – and ended up winning via second round knockout.
A win over Mir in a rematch in his first title defense made Lesnar look absolutely unstoppable, and suddenly, the former pro-wrestler became known as the ‘baddest man on the planet’. With his incredible amateur wrestling background, brute-force punching power, size and sheer athleticism, Lesnar looked unstoppable.
Even a bout of diverticulitis didn’t seem capable of slowing him down as he returned from a year on the shelf battling the disease to make a second title defense against Shane Carwin. However, the fight, which Lesnar won via submission after suffering a beating in the first round, hinted at a chink in the armor of ‘The Beast Incarnate’.
Simply put, it appeared that Lesnar couldn’t take a punch all that well, something that was proven correct when he was shellacked by top contender Cain Velasquez in his third title defense.
After his loss to Velasquez, the terrifying reputation that Lesnar had built was essentially dead in the water. Another bout of diverticulitis kept him out for another year, and when he returned, he was quickly TKO’d by Alistair Overeem before retiring from MMA.
A brief comeback in 2016 saw him defeat Mark Hunt, but Lesnar would never again build the same aura of invincibility that he once had.
#4. CM Punk
Current AEW superstar and former WWE champion CM Punk should never have had any kind of aura around him prior to his UFC debut in 2016. After all, he wasn’t coming from any kind of martial arts background, had been banged up during his WWE tenure, and was already 37 years old.
But when the UFC matched him with a near-amateur in the form of Mickey Gall at UFC 203, dedicated a countdown episode to him training with a highly-respected camp in Roufusport, and showed him seemingly in far better shape than ever before, it was hard not to be sucked in.
So by the time UFC 203 rolled around and Living Colour’s Cult of Personality played over the speakers, fans all around the world – particularly those who’d followed Punk in WWE – were quick to jump onto the hype train.
Unfortunately, said train came flying off the tracks when Punk looked every bit like a rank amateur against Gall. He threw one of the worst-looking punches in UFC history to open the fight and was subsequently taken down, beaten up and choked out.
Punk was completely respectful of Gall after the fight and appeared to have taken his opportunity seriously, but it was immediately clear that he simply wasn’t cut out for the rigors of the UFC. Any ideas that fans had of him transitioning into an MMA superstar were out of the window.
The former WWE champ had one more fight with the UFC – another loss, this time to Mike Jackson – and quickly left the sport, eventually heading back to pro-wrestling with AEW.
#3. Kimbo Slice
In the mid-2000’s, Kevin ‘Kimbo Slice’ Ferguson quickly became one of the first viral stars of the YouTube era, when footage of a number of his street fights in Miami, Florida, were uploaded onto the web.
When the hype began to build, it was only a matter of time before he became involved in MMA. And despite footage of him losing a street brawl to policeman and one-time UFC fighter Sean Gannon being readily available, Kimbo was quickly signed up by burgeoning promotion Elite XC.
The street fighter won his first two professional MMA bouts, beating Bo Cantrell and Tank Abbott, and the ratings he drew on the Showtime network were enough to convince the CBS network to broadcast his next fight live on a Saturday night.
And so in May 2008, Slice’s knockout win over James Thompson headlined the first Elite XC show on CBS, and immediately became the most watched MMA fight in television history to that point.
Elite XC seemed to have a superstar on their hands, and began to market Slice as the next Mike Tyson – despite the fact that he was still largely unproven. Five months later, the house of cards came crashing down.
Initially booked to fight UFC legend Ken Shamrock in another CBS-broadcast fight, Slice ended up faced with UFC washout Seth Petruzelli after Shamrock cut himself backstage during a warm-up. And just 14 seconds into the fight, Petruzelli knocked Slice down with a jab and quickly finished him off.
The Miami street fighting legend’s aura was thoroughly shattered, his Tyson-like reputation proven to be smoke and mirrors. Elite XC would close its doors just months later, and while Slice did make his way to the UFC for a brief time a year or so later, he was never able to regain the hype he initially had around him.
#2. ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed
MMA isn’t the only combat sport where a fighter’s aura can be shattered after just one devastating loss. The same thing happened to the British boxing legend, 'Prince' Naseem Hamed, two decades ago, completely derailing his glittering career.
Hamed made his professional boxing debut in the early 1990’s, and after a string of early victories, he defeated Freddy Cruz to win the WBC international super-bantamweight title in 1994.
At just 21 at the time, it seemed like Hamed was destined for stardom. Not only did he carry incredible power in his hands, but his reflexes were practically unparalleled – allowing him to fight with his hands down and simply dodge his opponent’s punches using his head movement.
With a cocky, trash-talking persona and wild, lengthy entrances that would often see him dance to the ring to two or three different tracks, ‘Prince Naseem’ quickly became a pop culture icon in the UK.
And when he won the IBF, WBO and WBC featherweight titles, that popularity translated across the globe, and boxing fans were quick to proclaim him a pound-for-pound great.
However, April 2001 saw ‘Prince Naseem’ faced with his most difficult opponent to date – Mexico’s Marco Antonio Barrera – with the vacant IBO featherweight title on the line. And despite being favored to win, Hamed was thoroughly outboxed by Barrera, eventually losing a 12-round decision.
The loss completely wrecked Hamed’s unbeatable aura, and the cocky reputation he still carried suddenly turned him into a laughing stock, rather than the icon he’d been before. He fought professionally just once more, edging out a win over Manuel Calvo before retiring in 2002 at the age of just 28.
#1. Ronda Rousey – former UFC women's bantamweight champion
It’s arguable that no other fighter in UFC history carried an aura of invincibility quite like Ronda Rousey. At her peak, ‘Rowdy’ seemed unstoppable and capable of destroying top-ranked foes in just seconds, to the point that it felt like her UFC bantamweight title reign would go on forever.
After a career in judo that saw her win an Olympic bronze medal in 2008, Rousey first burst onto the MMA scene with Strikeforce. She put together a record of 6-0, capturing the Strikeforce bantamweight title in the process.
But it wasn’t just her undefeated record that made Rousey a big deal. She’d beaten every one of her opponents with the same hold – the armbar – and seemed to carry herself as a superstar from the word go.
It was Rousey’s star power that convinced UFC President Dana White to introduce female fighters into the UFC, and it was ‘Rowdy’ who became the first UFC women's bantamweight champion at UFC 157 when she submitted Liz Carmouche.
Rousey would go onto defend her title successfully on five occasions, with her last two defenses taking her less than a minute combined.
At that stage, she seemed so unstoppable that UFC announcer Joe Rogan famously spoke about the potential of Rousey beating a number of the UFC’s top ranked male bantamweights.
However, in her sixth defense – against former champion boxer Holly Holm – Rousey’s aura was shattered. She was unable to take Holm down and was woefully outgunned on the feet, leading to her suffering a second round knockout via a head kick.
Any idea that she was invincible quickly went out of the window, and ‘Rowdy’ fought just once more in the UFC, with her comeback ending at the hands of new UFC women's bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes in less than a minute.
And while Rousey is still remembered as a UFC legend, she’s now looked upon as someone who ruled over a developing division, rather than the pop culture icon she once was.
