Demetrious Johnson, the last male fighter in the UFC that defended the belt more than fourth consecutive time
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It is not surprising to notice the growing competition amongst UFC’s male fighters. They’re more and more well-rounded, more respectful to the opponent’s game, and more knowledgable in the sweet science of striking and grappling, to an extent that sometimes these fighters can pull a counter to a counter! Take into consideration the great “Mighty Mouse” Demetrious Johnson.
However, in the current roster, some fighters are just exceptional and it seems like they have no competition in the near time whatsoever. Right now, amongst all the UFC champions, Kamaru Usman has the most title defenses with 4 successful wins as a defending champion out of which he finished 3 of them.
However, if he wins at UFC 268 against Colby Covington, he will defend the title for the fifth consecutive time. The last fighter to have kept the title for more than 4 consecutive defenses has left the UFC, “Mighty Mouse” Demetrious Johnson. Johnson’s last and eleventh successful UFC title defense happened against Ray Borg in October of 2017. For a more detailed analysis of our claim on why Demetrious Johnson is the last fighter to hold the title longer than 4 defenses, let’s roll out every division of UFC’s male roster.
A look at Demetrious Johnson’s flyweight and other UFC weight classes
Starting from the top of the scales, the heavyweight, the most title defenses happened was by Stipe Miocic i.e. three which also broke the record for the most in UFC Heavyweight History, before he lost the belt to Daniel Cormier, who defended the title only once against Derrick Lewis. Currently, Stipe lost the belt after one defense against Francis Ngannou and Ngannou is yet to defend the title.
Had Jon Jones stayed out of his troubles, he wouldn’t have been stripped of his title in 2015, and possibly the longest-reigning UFC light heavyweight champion would’ve been the champion with most defenses, sadly that’s not what turned out in reality. With Jones coming back into the title picture again, he defended his title 3 times before he relinquished it to go to the heavyweight division.
UFC’s middleweight division was long run by the great Anderson Silva with Silva having the second most title defenses in UFC history after Johnson i.e. 10 after Johnson’s 11. Anyway, Silva was dethroned way back in 2013 by Chris Weidman, since then, Weidman and Israel Adesanya are the only people to have the most title defenses i.e. three. Adesanya is the current champ and seems he would carry the division for a very long time provided his striking is exceptional from the rest of the division.
The welterweight division, as mentioned before is run by Kamaru Usman and Usman is possibly going to be a fighter in a long time to defend the title more than 4 times provided he defeats Colby Covington in the rematch at UFC 268. The lightweight division, across history, has not more than 3 consecutive title defenses aligned with BJ Penn, Frankie Edgar, Benson Henderson, and Khabib Nurmagomedov all achieving that status so it’s unfortunately not unique.
The featherweight championship was long held by Rio’s very own Jose Aldo with 7 title defenses but that happened back in 2014 before Aldo was stopped by McGregor in 2015. Since then the featherweight title defenses maxed out to three by Max Holloway before Holloway lost to Alexander Volkanovski, currently, Volkanovski has defended the belt only twice.
The bantamweight division is the most competitive and contentious division right now, the division last had Renan Barao with most title defenses, but was dethroned by Dillashaw back in 2014 and now Dillashaw is the person with most title defenses since then i.e. two. No one in the flyweight division has surpassed more than 3 title defenses- achieved by Deiveson Figueiredo- let alone Demetrious Johnson’s 11 times run.
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