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With 12 divisions currently operating – ignoring the potential for the men’s Flyweight division being cut in 2019 – the UFC puts on plenty of title fights every year, meaning that sometimes, fighters who fans and analysts alike don’t always get the title shot they deserve.
Most of the time though, whoever ends up challenging for a UFC title has usually earned it, whether it’s down to a hot streak of wins or the fact that they’re a legendary former champion making a return. Sometimes, however, challengers have emerged that definitely didn’t warrant a title opportunity.
I’m not ragging on these fighters as being bad or even below-par – to even make it into the UFC you’ve got to be pretty great – but the following 5 title challengers most definitely didn’t really warrant a crack at UFC gold – and when they did, it went horribly wrong.
Here are 5 of the worst title challengers in UFC history.
#1 Bethe Correia
Despite the way her UFC career ended, only a fool would deny that Ronda Rousey remains one of the greatest and most dominant champions in UFC history. From the moment she arrived in the promotion in February 2013 to the moment she lost her title to Holly Holm in November 2015, Ronda cut a swathe of dominance through Women’s Bantamweight like few other fighters had ever done regardless of their own division.
It was probably that dominance that led the UFC to grant Bethe Correia with a title shot in August 2015. Sure, Correia was unbeaten in MMA at the time with a 9-0 record, 3 of those wins inside the UFC, but realistically, nothing she’d done suggested that she’d stand any kind of chance against Rousey.
Correia’s biggest win had come over Shayna Baszler – a fighter way past her prime – almost a year prior to her fight with Rousey, and before that she’d edged close decisions against the ageing Julie Kedzie and a very raw Jessamyn Duke. Basically, the UFC gave her the shot because she’d beaten two of Ronda’s training partners and was willing to talk some nasty trash in the build up.
Sure enough, come fight time Correia was hugely overmatched. She came out swinging at Ronda, the champion obliged her in a fire-fight and seconds later, the Brazilian was face down on the mat, unconscious. It was a pretty bad performance, but honestly she shouldn’t have been given the opportunity in the first place.
#2 Nate Quarry
Nate Quarry might be persona non grata with the UFC right now due to his part in the class action lawsuit against the promotion that’s currently ongoing, but back in 2005 he was one of the original TUF golden boys and he was certainly pushed too quickly into a title shot against Middleweight champion Rich Franklin, after just two wins in the Octagon, one of which came against a blown-up Welterweight.
Quarry had come into the inaugural TUF season as one of the favourites thanks to his solid 5-1 record, but an ankle injury during the tapings put him out of action. Due to his likeable, down-to-earth character though, he became wildly popular with the fans, and when he made his UFC debut proper and knocked out veteran Shonie Carter, he was treated like a star.
Another victory followed – a controversial TKO of Pete Sell – but rather than continue to build him slowly, Quarry was suddenly thrust into a Middleweight title shot at the dominant champion, Rich Franklin. Quite why he was given the shot remains a bit of a mystery – some have suggested that it came due to the release of the genuine top contender, Matt Lindland, under questionable circumstances.
At any rate, despite his pleas otherwise, Quarry clearly hadn’t earned his crack – he wasn’t even top-ten ranked at the time – and Franklin dispatched him with ease, shattering his nose in one of the UFC’s all-time most vicious knockouts at the end of the first round. Following the defeat Quarry took over a year off before returning to settle into a role as a mid-level contender – the spot where he should’ve been in 2005.
#3 Joe Soto
Since Zuffa’s takeover of the UFC in 2001 – discounting inaugural title fights in new divisions - only 3 fighters have ever debuted in the UFC in a title match. One was understandable – StrikeForce champion Gilbert Melendez challenged for the UFC Lightweight title in his debut and came up slightly short – while another, Frank Trigg, was given his shot due to the general dearth in talent at the time and went on to prove his worth as a top fighter in the Welterweight division.
The third, however, turned out to essentially be a solid journeyman at best, and he remains one of the strangest UFC title challengers of all time. His name? Joe Soto. Signed by the UFC in mid-2014, Soto had put together a solid record of 15-2, and even held Bellator’s Bantamweight title in 2009. But he’d been signed to fight on the undercard of UFC 177 against Anthony Birchak, not for the UFC title.
That was exactly what happened, though. Renan Barao – who was scheduled to fight TJ Dillashaw in a rematch for the title – ended up knocking himself out during his weight cut, and had to withdraw on the day before the event. And so Soto was given the shot in his UFC debut, essentially because he was slightly more qualified than Birchak, and the two men were the only other Bantamweights on the card.
To be fair, Soto didn’t put up a bad fight – he lasted until the 5th round when Dillashaw knocked him out with a head kick – but the fact that he went 3-4 in the UFC after the fight and lost his next two – including a knockout to his initial opponent Birchak – suggests he should never have gotten as far as a title shot in the first place. He was simply in the right place at the right time.
#4 Gan McGee
It’s a pretty established fact that the UFC’s Heavyweight division, prior to somewhere around 2007-2008, was a bit of a wasteland when compared to the rest of the promotion. That’s nothing against Frank Mir, Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski, who were all great fighters in their own right, but realistically, the majority of the world’s best Heavyweights prior to that time were plying their trade in PRIDE.
That meant that we saw some odd challengers for the title in the UFC’s biggest division, and perhaps the most notable of those was Gan ‘The Giant’ McGee. A training partner of the legendary Chuck Liddell, McGee debuted in the UFC in 2000 in what stands as the UFC’s only Super-Heavyweight fight. He lost to Josh Barnett in that outing and didn’t return until 2002, when he was matched with Pedro Rizzo.
McGee won that fight by breaking Rizzo’s nose, and while it was a big win in terms of name value, in all honesty, Rizzo was on a real slide at the time. That win was followed up with a sloppy TKO of the massively inexperienced, 0-1 Alexandre Dantas, and suddenly, McGee was granted a title shot against newly crowned champion Tim Sylvia.
In all honesty, it felt like the UFC had matched McGee with Sylvia simply because of his large size – he stood at 6’10”, and with Sylvia at 6’8”, the promotion billed the fight as ‘The Battle of the Giants’. In the end it wasn’t much of a battle as Sylvia knocked McGee out in the first round, and he never returned to the UFC after that – fighting just 4 more times in his career.
#5 Elvis Sinosic
A pioneer of MMA in Australia, Elvis Sinosic is widely regarded as one of the nicest guys to ever compete in the sport, and without him, who knows whether the UFC would ever have taken off Down Under as it has. With that said, there’s simply no way ‘The King of Rock N’ Rumble’ should’ve had a shot at the UFC Light-Heavyweight title in 2001, and it’s telling of the climate in the promotion back then that he actually did.
Sinosic actually came into the UFC with a questionable record – 3-3-1 – and off a loss, but as that loss had come against former UFC champ and legend Frank Shamrock, and the Aussie had pushed him to his limit, it was felt that he was worth a go-around in the Octagon. Matched with Jeremy Horn, the feeling was that Horn would dispatch the Aussie in easier fashion than Shamrock had done, thus securing a title shot at reigning 205lbs champion Tito Ortiz.
It didn’t quite go down that way, though, as Sinosic shocked the world by catching Horn in a triangle choke/armbar combination, forcing him to tap out after just 3 minutes of action. Now, if that happened today – a debutant beating the top contender to a title – the likelihood is that said debutant would be given at least another tough bout to follow up, while the title shot would go elsewhere entirely.
In 2001 though, Sinosic had beaten Horn and thus the UFC decided he’d taken his title shot, too. And so Sinosic was booked to challenge Ortiz at UFC 32 – and promptly got destroyed in one-sided fashion, losing by TKO in the first round. Elvis would go on to a further 5 UFC appearances, losing them all, and his career ended with his record at 8-11-2. He was a far better fighter than that suggests, but in all honesty he should never have received a UFC title shot.
