Who was the worst UFC Champion?

  Who’s the worst champion in UFC History? You probably have some ideas, but they are junk, let me tell you!

Determining the quality of a UFC Champion is a bit complicated. For some, the quality of a champion is in their actual title reign, valuing the strength of their defenses or the quality of the fights, but i’ve always found that lacking. Most championship reigns don’t even have successful title defenses, a lot of titles are stripped due to injury and evaluating a reign based on “good fights” is very pro wrestling to me, so instead, I evaluate the quality of a champion based on how good they are as a figurehead for the division when they win the title. A Fighter can, and often does, elevate their profile after winning the title if they defend it, but in a general sense, a fighter who wins a UFC Championship should prove that they are deserving of a title shot before winning it, so determining that someone is at a “championship tier” would, ideally, be done before they ever get a shot, but unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in, which leads to the conversation of “Worst Champions” being built around the fighters who won the title rather than the worst championship reigns.

So all that leaves us now is our criteria. We are going to pour over almost all of UFC history, so we have to determine what it is we can cut out immediately. First, we’re not going to include Interim Champions, taking them completely out of consideration. I’ve mulled this over because sometimes Interim champions are legit, but it’s enough of a grey area that it’s not worth considering. That said, there are some Interim Champions who were eventually promoted to Undisputed Champion, and for those cases, we will consider the start of their title reign to be at the winning of the Interim Championship as well as the Reign that lead into the promotion - it’s a weird case just roll with me. Next, we’re only going to consider Male champions; this isn’t because I think that women’s mma is worse or the champions are worse besides valentina shevchenko, who is demonstrably worse than every male champion and also every female champion, but mostly because it’s a much more scattered divisional picture that i’m less familiar with. Lastly, we have to determine what we mean by “Worst Champion” - I think that there are a few ways that people will typically mean when they say someone is the worst, so we can try and separate these very different ways to classify a bad Champion. There is the least skilled, which I choose to classify as relative to the era to avoid just saying that the oldest UFC Champions are the worst because Pat Miletich would get cooked by Kamaru Usman. There is Most Vulnerable, which is similar to least skilled in that it means that you are likely to lose the title quickly, but i distinguish this by saying that maybe this fighter in their time period won the title through a very curated path where they avoided bad match ups, and the expectation of them going forward is to lose the title quickly because of these aforementioned matchups. There is the Least Proven; fighters who have the label of “Champion” beside their name, but didn’t show a lot before getting the title and still doesn’t really deserve the prestige that comes with being a UFC Champion, and then there’s just the general vibe of “Hmm i don’t know if this guy should be champion”. I don’t really know how to explain this because it’s entirely vibe driven; sometimes, fighters just don’t really FEEL like the champion of the division they hold the belt in, based on a litany of factors we’ll explore later. The last thing I want to talk about before going in is the most notable omission, Winning the title in a shitty way. A lot of people could chalk this up to “Hmm i don’t know if this guy should be champion”, and it’s true that winning the title based on an injury or a bad decision could leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, but it’s not universal, neither is being the first champion in a division started from scratch or winning a vacant title because the previous champion dropped it for whatever reason. I think that a lot of weird champions exist in this no man’s land that don’t necessarily qualify for any other category, but did win the title in a really bad way, and most of those fighters do work to establish themselves as someone who can be accepted as a champion and erase the initial title win, but I think that judging fighters for how they WIN the title does a lot of work to undercut the initial premise; it’s not about worst title wins, it’s about determining who the worst fighter is to hold a UFC Championship, and even a great fighter who deserves a title shot can win the belt in a bad way, and that shouldn’t be viewed as a negative, at least inherently.

So let’s get into it; These are the worst Champions in UFC History

LEAST SKILLED
In the grand scheme of things, there are not a lot of fighters who have won UFC Championships that are not skilled fighters in some capacity or another, especially if they didn’t win a vacant championship or start the division’s lineage. For me, it’s a very short list - Maurice Smith, Brock Lesnar and Matt Serra. The one that stands out immediately here is Brock Lesnar; Smith and Serra were career journeymen who pulled off massive upsets to win the Heavyweight and Welterweight Championships respectively, but Lesnar was a green as grass rookie relative to the field. 1-1 In the UFC, Lesnar was matched up with Randy Couture after over a year of inactivity, notably being navigated away from interim champion Antonio Nogueira, who, funny enough, would fight Brock Lesnar’s 1 loss in Frank Mir for the Interim champion just a few weeks after Lesnar fought Couture, which indicates that the UFC felt like they could catch Couture cold and sneak Lesnar in as champion. In the fight, Lesnar looked every bit the part of the young and inexperienced challenger, bullishly getting a takedown or two but mostly being clinched and chipped away at by the 67 year old Couture before clipping a Couture dip in the second round and following up for the TKO. Lesnar was piloted to the title shot, put up against a weaker champion, and managed to pull out a victory more through luck than by clever navigation of the fight space. Obviously, this is being framed negatively, because you could argue that his inexperience means that beating Couture means he is actually very skilled, but Lesnar had shown very little technical ability in his two previous UFC Fights, mostly proving he could manhandle wrestling averse fighters, and he didn’t do much to reverse that perception in the Couture fight. Maurice Smith had a negative record going into his title fight, mostly a result of being a kickboxer who competed in Pancrase against the company’s best, and while I think that Smith’s skill level and history in Pancrase contributed to his victory over MArk Coleman in a really fascinating way, that’s really just one fight, and even for the time period, Maurice Smith was not regarded as a great fighter. Matt Serra’s career is really a puzzling hodge podge of stuff; initially a middling lightweight, Serra had moved to Welterweight and was… fine? He got a title shot by winning TUF 4, kind of a conceptual season of “Zero to Hero” where the cast was active and former UFC Fighters with the winner being granted a fight for the title. This is a neat little idea that is extremely 2006, a time when the sport was becoming popular through the initial seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, but still small enough where you could swing potentially granting Pete Sell a fight with Anderson Silva because he won some 2 round exhibition matches in a warehouse. Serra won his season, being matched up with newly crowned Welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, and famously knocked St-Pierre out in the first round to be crowned champion, and honestly, it reflects a lot worse on GSP than it reflects well on Serra. Serra is a great source of knowledge, a great grappler and a charming personality, but there is a reason he was on TUF 4 to begin with - he wasn’t good enough to get a title shot. He won, but that doesn’t add skill depth to him retroactively. Of this group of fighters, I think it’s pretty easily Brock Lesnar - Maurice Smith’s specific skillset and experience contributed directly to him beating Mark Coleman, and while Matt Serra was a firm middle class of fighter his entire career, he had demonstrated a skillset. Brock Lesnar, in his 3 UFC fights, didn’t show himself to be anything except a big dumb wrestler, and even in htat, he couldn’t take down and control Randy Couture. Lesnar would develop into a more versed fighter, but as he won the title, he is a shoe in for the least skilled.

MOST VULNERABLE
Determining the most vulnerable champion in UFC History is an interesting blend of lack of skill as well as a good division. If you’re a mediocre fighter but your division is dog then what does it matter that you’re not Jose Aldo? So as a result, we can eliminate most champions in history, especially ones going back to the 90’s and early 2000’s because divisions were just less competitive in the UFC. For my money, there’s really only two choices for most vulnerable champion; Matt Serra and Michael Bisping. I’ve gone on a whole diatribe about Matt Serra, so what’s the deal with Bisping? Well, it’s kind of to his benefit and detriment that he was as vulnerable as he was. Bisping was a step just above journeyman but just below contender; some might call this a gatekeeper, but Bisping wasn’t really that either. He was a bogstandard fighter, quietly always winning fights he was favored to win and always losing fight he was the underdog in - he was very few people’s hard wall for a rise to prominence because the UFC wanted him to succeed, but as a result of his mediocrity, he would constantly run into walls where he would lose. After 10 years in the UFC, Bisping did start to hit a stride, going on a 3 fight win streak and beating Anderson Silva in the process, earning a title shot against Luke Rockhold on a week’s notice. Bisping was a huge underdog, he had lost to Rockhold pretty easily before, but luck would shine on Bisping that night as Bisping caught Rockhold with a big left hand and put him down and out to be crowned the UFC Middleweight Champion. While a lot of celebration happened because the local boy made good, there were a lot of absolute terrors at Middleweight at the time. Chris Weidman, Jacare Souza, Yoel Romero, Gegard Mousasi, Robert Whittaker, a Rockhold rubber match, all of whom you’d favor in a fight with Michael Bisping, and that’s why Bisping didn’t fight any of them - never even pretended like it. He called out Dan Henderson to avenge a loss from 7 years prior and spent the next year chasing Georges St-Pierre, a retired welterweight, while ducking and dodging Jacare and Yoel Romero until they eventually lost waiting for him. This cowardice doesn’t follow Bisping to his piss soaked grave, but the vulnerability absolutely should, because it’s this vulnerability and this weakness that makes Bisping’s title win mean anything in the first place. If Bisping had fought a champion he had a good stylistic match up against, then the win means a lot less, no matter how much people want to spin the history of it. If you were there, there is no question Bisping is the most vulnerable champion ever, and it’s that vulnerability and how Bisping ran away from it that defines my feeling on the man - it’s fuck Michael Bisping for life. For LIFE.

LEAST PROVEN
The least proven fighter to win a title is an interesting criteria. There are some fighters who are called unproven who get a title shot, like Michael Chandler or Gilbert Melendez, who did all their legwork outside the UFC and people aren’t as familiar with them. There are fighters who are navigated to championships on a long path of not elite talent and there are fighters who get title shots incredibly quickly, all of it depends on the era as near immediate title shots are pretty rare modern day. My short list of Least Proven are as followed: Tim Sylvia, Brock Lesnar, Alex Pereira, Islam Makhachev and Cody Garbrandt. I’ve already talked about Lesnar, and i went deep into Pereira previously, so i’ll touch on the other 3 quickly. Tim Sylvia got a title shot in the UFC after absolutely throttling Wesley “Cabbage” Correira, a mid tier journeyman who is most notable for being able to get his shit pushed in. Sylvia was a regional champion and a charge of early 2000’s supercamp Miletich Fighting Systems, and at the time in the heavyweight division without Couture or Barnett, Sylvia was chosen to face Ricco Rodriguez. He would end up knocking Ricco out round 1, becoming one of the first undefeated UFC Champions in the company’s history, and while i think he would develop into the ufc’s signature heavyweight of the era, his title shot was pretty junk. Islam Makhachev was the opposite; long winning streak without a good opponent, but he had the connection to Khabib Nurmagomedov and passed the eye test, so they put Islam in title contention to appease Siberian FAcebook. Makhachev won, good for him, he has exactly one good win in his career and it was for the title, this is a super cool thing that can happen in MMA in 2022. Cody Garbrandt was a perfect blend of Sylvia and Makhachev - He got a title shot not too fast, he had 5 fights in the UFC, but the only quote unquote good fighter he beat was Thomas Almeida, who was a short notice replacement. He got the shot because of the deep rivalry between champion Dominick Cruz and Team Alpha Male, getting pushed to the title over TJ Dillashaw who insists that Cruz was ducking him, but as a quick aside, i don’t know how you duck someone when you fought them in the same year and beat them, that era was so stupid, but Dillashaw did deserve another shot, definitely more than Garbrandt. So of these 5 on the shortlist, It’s really just between Brock Lesnar and Cody Garbrandt. Sylvia was mostly a product of a time with few contenders; Lesnar went 1-1 in 2008 prior to being put in a title fight, and his win was against Heath Herring, who was fine. He was, at best, the 4th best fighter in the UFC, and worldwide he would definitely shuffle down to around 6th, but he was very popular and they could still run Nogueira/Mir for the interim title. Garbrandt got a shot and won, but he didn’t look that great beforehand despite the hype, and after he didn’t look as good, but got a shot because of shit talk and rivalries, which is somehow less justifiable WHILE there was another contender perfectly able to fight. It’s close, basically just splitting the hairs between there being multiple quote champions in Lesnar’s time period vs only one in Garbrandt’s, but I think Lesnar is the clear choice. Lesnar had fewer fights, had shown he was good much less than Garbrandt, and overall was snuck into a shot he definitely did not earn because there was another title labelled “Interim” that was a better representation of the best fighter in the division. It was a hoax then, it would be a hoax now.

Hmm idk if this guy should be champion
In the realm of vibes, there have been a solid amount of fighters who got labelled with it that probably shouldn’t have been; Aljamain Sterling won the title in a trash way, but he was also a top Bantamweight who has been a great fighter for years. Robbie Lawlor carried the baggage of the past with him into the title fight and won on a bad decision, but i was pretty alone in thinking he didn’t feel like he should have been champion. For me, there are only 3 fighters that really stand out with no exceptions; Matt Serra, Matt Hughes and Charles Oliveira. Matt Hughes is the weird standout here as Hughes would become one of the most dominant champions in UFC History and a lock for top 5 Welterweight ever, but at the time he won the title, he was a regional great, but his UFC performances were middling. He got the shot against Carlos Newton, I think it was primarily a narrative shot as Hughes as a Miletich Fighting Systems product and Miletich was who Newton beat for the title, and the finish is one of MMA History’s most famous and controversial. Newton locked Hughes in a triangle choke, Hughes picks Newton up and leans him on the cage, and a few moments later, Hughes slams Newton and knocks him out, being declared the winner by knockout… only there’s a reason Hughes slammed Newton in the first place. It’s comedic at this point, the camera shot on Hughes incredulously saying “I Won?”, but at the time? I have to imagine it was really frustrating if you were a Carlos Newton fan because Matt Hughes was unconscious from the triangle choke. It’s one of the most insane things in MMA’s weird history that is a story passed around campfires, and it kind of goes unacknowledged that Matt Hughes absolutely did not feel like he should have been UFC Champion off the back of this. Hughes would go on to be a great champion with many great performances, but we can’t judge the reign, just who he was when he won it, and when he won it, he was the guy who won a title by being choked out. Charles Oliveira was pretty much the complete opposite of Hughes - 10 year UFC Veteran, a ton of hype when he came in that slowly petered out as he proved time and time again he could not rise to the occasion. Speaking personally, i was a huge Oliveira fan for years, but even as he strung together a win streak at Lightweight, I just dismissed his chances to contend for a title - he hadn’t earned it. He was set up for a title fight against Michael Chandler, I didn’t believe in him - he was going to do well, then lose some moments and fold like he always had. Winning the title was a great occasion, as he had to endure some damage from Chandler, persevere and come out on top… but I still didn’t believe in him. Even when he won, I didn’t care; nobody would have considered him the best Lightweight in the world - that role belonged to Dustin Poirier, who denied fighting for the title in order to fight Conor McGregor, which opened the door for Chandler and Oliveira to fight for the strange role of second best fighter in the division while also being champion. When Oliveira and Poirier fought, I expected Poirier to decimate Oliveira, I had no faith in him… and then Oliveira won. To me, this is when Oliveira truly won the title, which is why i mention it. For me, his victory over Dustin Poirier is when Oliveira broke his generational curses and showed that he was actually different and had actually changed and was worth getting excited about as the best Lightweight in the world. Charles Oliveira, when he won the title officially, had every reason to give people zero faith in his ability to be the best, and even as he held the title, nobody could claim that he felt like the champion - he won a vacant title, and Poirier refused the spot in order to fight for money. The most embodying of the vibe of “Hmm idk if this guy should be champion” is, realistically, between Charles Oliveira and Matt Serra. Serra was worse than Oliveira with no fair right to get a title shot, but when he beat GSP, he beat a great fighter who had worked his way up to the title - Charles Oliveira was a good fighter who won a vacant championship, and even when he won, it wasn’t considered “real” until he beat Poirier. For that reason, it has to be Oliveira; Serra pulled an upset and wasn’t viewed as a great champion, but at least he was, undeniably, champion - Oliveira wasn’t even that.

So, all of this considered, who is the worst of the worst? The worst to ever be UFC Champion? The absolute bottom of the barrel?

It’s Matt Serra. Come on, man, what else was it going to be?

I really wanted to gussy this up with insights and nerd stuff but when you get down into the details, it becomes even more obvious that it’s Matt Serra. Lesnar is the only one close, and Lesnar was mostly just right place, right time, there is no reason that Matt Serra, in his time or any time before or after his time, should have been UFC Champion, he knows that, and it doesn’t matter, he’s written into UFC History because he absolutely should not have been champion. Could i wax philosophical about Maurice Smith being a terrible champion? Sure, but I don’t think that Smith was terrible in 1997. I don’t think Aljamain Sterling was this abysmal champion even if he did win the title by DQ, I don’t think it’s fair to hold Pat Miletich or Dave Menne’s feet to the fire because they were inaugural champions when their divisions were toilet water - Matt Serra was a terrible champion because he was not supposed to be anything close to a champion. He shouldn’t have fought for a title, he shouldn’t have fought for a fight for the title, he damn sure should not have beaten Georges St-Pierre, even if GSP Wasn’t the pound for pound great he would develop into, but, i mean, he did, and he’s inseparable from the story of mixed martial arts for doing it. It’s boring because it’s elementary; it’s factual… it’s history.