5 UFC champions who were seen as unstoppable despite a clear hole in their game
Whenever a UFC fighter claims gold in the octagon, it becomes easy for fans to label them as unbeatable, particularly if their title win is impressive. Often, any flaws the new champion has become overlooked.
Over the years, we’ve seen a number of UFC champions who were labeled as unstoppable despite having a clear hole in their overall game.
At times, some of these fighters were nearly impossible to beat, largely because they were able to keep their weakness well-protected. However, as everyone knows, nobody is unbeatable in the octagon.
Here are five UFC champions who were seen as unstoppable despite a clear hole in their game.
#5. Andrei Arlovski – former UFC heavyweight champion
A good chin is an attribute that is handy for any UFC fighter to have, particularly a champion. But in the heavyweight division, it’s even more paramount.
Because bigger fighters naturally hit with more power, the heavyweight division tends to produce more sudden knockouts than any other weight class. It’s no surprise, then, that durable fighters like Cain Velasquez and Stipe Miocic are usually seen as the most dominant heavyweights in the promotion’s history.
However, when Andrei Arlovski claimed the heavyweight title in 2005 by submitting Tim Sylvia, it was largely well-believed that his chin wasn’t great at all.
Despite having three knockout losses to his name, though, fans were quick to label him as unstoppable when he easily dispatched challengers Justin Eilers and Paul Buentello.
At the time, of course, the majority of the world’s best heavyweights were in PRIDE and so it seemed inconceivable that any of the UFC’s big men could beat Arlovski.
That idea was quickly proven wrong, though. Despite most observers expecting him to whitewash Sylvia when they rematched in 2006, things didn’t go to plan for ‘The Pitbull’.
Again showing superior speed, he knocked ‘The Maine-iac’ down. But when Sylvia rose to his feet, Arlovski got too wild. He walked right into a heavy counterpunch, and his chin let him down as he fell victim to another KO loss.
Unsurprisingly, the invincible aura ‘The Pitbull’ had cultivated vanished instantly, as the hole in his game had been painfully exposed at just the wrong time.
#4. Israel Adesanya – former UFC middleweight champion
The general consensus is that to succeed in the modern-day UFC, a fighter must have well-rounded skills and be able to compete with the best in every facet of the game.
However, at times, one-dimensional fighters have proven that they can still make it to the top and even claim gold in the promotion. Perhaps the best example of this in recent years is former middleweight kingpin Israel Adesanya.
‘The Last Stylebender’ debuted in the octagon in 2018 with a reputation as a fearsome striker. He quickly backed that up by dispatching opponents like Rob Wilkinson and Derek Brunson with sniper-like accuracy on the feet.
ADESANYA!!
@Stylebender finishes Brunson in round 1! #UFC230 https://t.co/WGu676jNr6
However, even from his early days, it was clear that he had a major weakness in the form of his skills in the clinch and in the wrestling department.
Marvin Vettori was able to push him to his limit using a clinch-heavy gameplan in 2018 even though he didn’t win. Many fans suspected it’d only be a matter of time before Adesanya fell to a wrestler.
However, when he kept running through his foes all the way up to his title win over Robert Whittaker in 2019, he instead began to grow a reputation for being unstoppable.
By 2022, it felt like nobody in the middleweight division could touch ‘The Last Stylebender’ despite his wrestling still largely being seen as a weakness. Essentially, nobody could get through his striking to really test that weakness, aside from Jan Blachowicz in Adesanya’s lone foray up to 205 pounds.
Surprisingly, despite losing his title last year, Adesanya has still not really been tested in the grappling department by an opponent at 185 pounds. In the end, he was beaten at his own game by Alex Pereira.
In this instance, Adesanya is a rare example of a fighter who has been able to protect a clear weakness in his game perfectly.
#3. Matt Hughes – former UFC welterweight champion
Matt Hughes famously ruled over the UFC’s welterweight division with an iron fist for the best part of five years, holding the title on two occasions during that period.
However, despite many fans believing him to be unbeatable during his two reigns as champion, the powerful wrestler always had a pretty clear-cut hole in his game. Put simply, Hughes never looked like the most natural striker.
Sure, he could crack opponents with power in his punches, but it was always clear from his stance that he could be hit if a foe could time their attacks correctly.
However, that seemed near-impossible against a wrestler on the level of Hughes. His double leg takedown was remarkably tricky to stop and if he could get his hands wrapped around a foe’s body, a high-impact slam was almost inevitable.
Even when he lost to B.J. Penn in 2004, the general consensus was that he’d taken ‘The Prodigy’ lightly and had simply fought a bad fight.
It wasn’t until he faced off with Georges St-Pierre for the second time in 2006 that the hole in his game was finally exploited.
‘GSP’ was able to stop Hughes’ takedowns and made picking him apart on the feet look stunningly easy, eventually finishing him via TKO.
From there, Hughes’ aura of invincibility was shattered. Although he still picked up a handful of good wins, he went onnto suffer a further three knockout losses before his 2011 retirement, proving that as he aged, it became impossible for him to hide his major weakness.
#2. Ronda Rousey – former UFC bantamweight champion
During her reign as UFC bantamweight champion from 2013 to 2015, Ronda Rousey not only developed a reputation for being unstoppable, but many fans went even further.
Those fans suggested that ‘Rowdy’ could probably beat the majority of the promotion’s male 135lbers, with announcer Joe Rogan even mentioning this idea on the broadcast of numerous events.
However, while Rousey’s grappling game, based around her incredible judo skills, looked awesome, it was safe to say that she had a clear-cut weakness.
That weakness was her striking. Although ‘Rowdy’ was more than happy to trade off with her foes on the feet, it was clear that she didn’t quite have as much polish there as she did on the ground.
Rousey did score a big knockout in 2015, stopping Bethe Correia in under a minute. However, her striking in that bout was so wild that a good counter-striker would clearly have seen holes to exploit.
Despite that, the majority of the fans still saw her as unbeatable and couldn’t imagine her losing, even when she was matched with the division’s best technical striker in the form of Holly Holm.
Of course, when that fight finally happened, the hole in Rousey’s game was exposed in the cruelest way possible. She was defeated violently with a second-round knockout.
Five years ago today, @HollyHolm shocked the world by knocking out Ronda Rousey with a picture-perfect head kick at UFC 193 ⚡️🌏
Holm was a big underdog against Rousey, who had never lost to that point in her career. https://t.co/hE6iDqDmCQ
Suddenly, all of those fans who once believed ‘Rowdy’ to be unbeatable immediately changed their minds, seeing her as one-dimensional and washed up instead.
It was a classic – and brutal – example of the fickle nature of MMA and its fanbase.
#1. Anderson Silva – former UFC middleweight champion
Perhaps no fighter in the history of the UFC seemed quite as unbeatable as Anderson Silva did during his prime years. During his run with the middleweight title, ‘The Spider’ seemed to be operating in an entirely different dimension to many of his opponents.
Remarkably, though, not only did Silva have a major hole in his game, but basically everyone from his fellow fighters to the fans seemed to know what it was.
The Brazilian was simply not the best wrestler and, unlike other skilled strikers, he never really developed a bulletproof approach to takedown defense.
Instead, ‘The Spider’ would either snipe his opponents on the feet with strikes they never saw coming. If he was taken down, he’d immediately hunt for submissions and often catch his foes in them.
It was an approach that clearly worked for him, and even when Chael Sonnen appeared to have exposed the hole in his game in their 2010 bout, Silva still found a way to win.
On this date in 2010, Anderson Silva pulled off one of MMA's greatest comebacks by submitting Chael Sonnen in the fifth round at UFC 117. https://t.co/NX1SmfZQD6
At that point, with a record 16 UFC wins in a row to his name, he genuinely felt like Superman. Everyone knew his kryptonite, but it was still close to impossible to capitalize on it.
Incredibly, by the time Silva’s MMA career ended in 2020, despite suffering seven losses in the octagon, just one – his 2016 defeat to Daniel Cormier – came via a fighter outwrestling him.
With that considered, Silva remains an outlier in the promotion’s history; a fighter who was somehow almost always able to protect his known weakness perfectly.