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Climbing to the top of the UFC is an almost impossible task for even the best fighters, and staying there is even harder.
Unfortunately, over the years we’ve seen a number of examples of fighters who ascended to the top of the UFC mountain and stayed there – only for them to later experience a remarkably quick fall from grace.
Usually, these fighters took serious punishment in their climb up, meaning their eventual fall was almost inevitable. However, it was still shocking to watch.
Here are five UFC champions who reached the top, only to fall from grace quickly.
#5. Robbie Lawler – former UFC welterweight champion
Few fighters took as long and winding a path to UFC success as former welterweight kingpin Robbie Lawler.
‘Ruthless’ debuted in the octagon way back in 2002 as a young prospect, but after gaining fame for his brutal knockouts, a handful of losses saw him wash out of the promotion in 2004.
Undeterred, Lawler became a nomad of sorts, fighting with PRIDE, Elite XC, Icon Sport and Strikeforce, winning a number of titles in the process. When he eventually returned to the octagon in 2013, though, few observers expected him to find true success.
Proving the doubters wrong, though, ‘Ruthless’ discovered the best form of his career, defeated the likes of Josh Koscheck and Matt Brown. He eventually won the gold from Johny Hendricks at the second time of asking.
Lawler’s title reign remains legendary, as his two title defenses against Rory MacDonald and Carlos Condit were amongst the greatest fights of all time. However, after he lost his title to Tyron Woodley in 2016, his downfall came swiftly.
‘Ruthless’ took a year away and then returned with a win against Donald Cerrone, but suffered a knee injury in a loss to Rafael dos Anjos. Since then, he hasn’t looked like the same fighter.
He’s lost four of five fights, suffering one-sided losses to the likes of Neil Magny and Colby Covington, with his only victory being against an equally past-his-prime Nick Diaz.
Essentially, Lawler reached the top relatively late in his career, and the wars he had while he was there caused a rapid fall from grace afterwards.
#4. Chris Weidman – former UFC middleweight champion
When Chris Weidman unseated legendary UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva in the summer of 2013 and then defended his title successfully against him in a rematch, it felt like a new era had dawned on the division.
‘The All-American’ had world-class wrestling, a tremendous striking game, and was dangerous with submissions, too. With a record of 11-0 after the two bouts with Silva, he looked basically invincible – a feeling that only grew when he brushed aside Lyoto Machida and Vitor Belfort, too.
However, late 2015 saw Weidman run into Luke Rockhold. After missing an ill-advised wheel kick that resulted in him being trapped on the ground, he suffered a horrific beating and lost his title in the fourth round.
Incredibly, since that fight, Weidman has won just two bouts, while losing six in return. Along the way, he’s suffered some devastating injuries and now looks to be on the verge of the end of his career.
More importantly, Weidman’s losses to Yoel Romero, Jacare Souza and Dominick Reyes weren’t just bad, they were brutal. All three saw ‘The All-American’ left completely unconscious. Even in his win over Kelvin Gastelum, he suffered a horrendous knockdown that could’ve ended the fight on another night.
So what caused Weidman’s swift downfall? It’s hard to say, but the general consensus is that the beating he took from Rockhold, coupled with the USADA ban on IV rehydration – which made his weight cuts harder – essentially made him fossilize overnight, sending him sliding down the ladder.
#3. Junior dos Santos – former UFC heavyweight champion
At his peak, when he claimed the UFC heavyweight title from Cain Velasquez in late 2011, Junior dos Santos looked like he had the potential to become the greatest heavyweight fighter of all time.
At that point, the Brazilian had reeled off a total of eight wins in the octagon, with six of them coming by KO or TKO. That included stoppages of Velasquez, Fabricio Werdum and Mirko Cro Cop.
However, after defending his title successfully against Frank Mir, dos Santos ran into a rejuvenated Velasquez and suffered a horrific beating en route to losing his title. When Velasquez repeated the feat and destroyed him in even more devastating fashion in a trilogy bout, it was hard to see how he’d recover.
Sure enough, he never really did. While he edged out Stipe Miocic in controversial fashion, with many fans thinking Miocic deserved the nod, he then suffered a bad knockout to Alistair Overeem before suffering the same fate in a rematch with Miocic.
At that point, it not only looked like JDS’s chin was cracked, but there was also a clear blueprint to beating him – force him into the fence and swarm him with strikes.
The Brazilian did pick up wins over Blagoy Ivanov, Tai Tuivasa and Derrick Lewis, but none of them were truly convincing. When he was stopped by Francis Ngannou in the summer of 2019, the end followed swiftly.
JDS lost a further three fights via KO or TKO before leaving the UFC in late 2020. While his departure came years after his fights with Velasquez, it was clearly all downhill for him following those beatings.
#2. Renan Barao – former UFC bantamweight champion
Few fighters in MMA history can match the winning streak that Renan Barao produced between 2005 and 2014. Between those years, the Brazilian claimed an insane 32 victories in a row, including seven in the UFC. When he claimed the bantamweight title, it felt like a lengthy, dominant reign would follow.
However, when he met T.J. Dillashaw in his fourth title defense, he came up against a buzzsaw and was completely dominated, eventually falling to a fifth-round TKO defeat. Nobody had seen it coming, but Dillashaw made Barao look practically amateurish.
When the Brazilian bounced back with a win over Mitch Gagnon, though, many observers expected him to be able to reclaim the title from Dillashaw in a rematch.
That wasn’t the case, though. After being forced out of the initial bout due to a weight-cutting issue, Barao was again hammered by Dillashaw, this time being stopped in the fourth round. From there, his downfall was remarkably swift.
Barao fought a further seven times inside the octagon, winning just once and losing all of the others, usually in clear-cut fashion. Essentially, it felt like after his first loss to Dillashaw, he’d aged overnight.
What exactly caused this to happen? It’s hard to say, but the best guess would be a culmination of damage taken over the years – as well as huge weight cuts taking their toll – that simply peaked with the Dillashaw loss, leaving the Brazilian unable to ever recover.
#1. Tony Ferguson – former interim UFC lightweight champion
Given that he’s now on a five-fight losing streak, it seems almost hard to believe that just over two years ago, Tony Ferguson was arguably the most feared man in the UFC’s lightweight division.
Coming into 2020, ‘El Cucuy’ had won an incredible 12 fights in a row in the octagon, defeating the likes of Donald Cerrone, Anthony Pettis and Rafael dos Anjos. Sure, he took plenty of damage along the way, but he’d always found a path to victory.
Early 2020 was supposed to see the long-anticipated bout between Ferguson and lightweight kingpin Khabib Nurmagomedov. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, those plans went out of the window.
Instead, in the headliner of UFC 249, Ferguson met Justin Gaethje in an interim title bout and took the worst beating of his career. If anything, ‘El Cucuy’ was too tough for his own good and somehow lasted into the fifth round before the fight was mercifully stopped.
Since then, Ferguson has lost another four fights in a row, falling to Charles Oliveira, Beneil Dariush, Michael Chandler and, most recently, Nate Diaz.
Sure, all four men are high-level fighters, but ‘El Cucuy’ hasn’t looked like his old self in any of the bouts, and basically appears to have aged dreadfully since the Gaethje beating. Essentially, he’s fallen from grace arguably faster than any other fighter in the promotion's history.
