Fighter Profiles

IntroductionFabricio Werdum is the most decorated jiu-jitsu black belt to win the UFC Heavyweight Championship. A 3-time BJJ World Champion, 2-time ADCC Heavyweight Champion, and ADCC Hall of Fame member out of Porto Alegre, Brazil, Werdum is best known for two single moments in modern heavyweight history: the June 2010 triangle-choke submission of Fedor Emelianenko at Strikeforce that ended Fedor's 28-fight unbeaten streak, and the June 2015 third-round submission of Cain Velasquez at UFC 188 i

IntroductionGlover Teixeira is the oldest first-time UFC champion in history. A Brazilian-American jiu-jitsu black belt out of Sobrália, Minas Gerais, who emigrated to Connecticut at age 19 to work landscaping jobs and support his family back home, Teixeira built one of the longest, most patient title runs in modern UFC light-heavyweight history. The path was eighteen professional fights and 22 UFC appearances before the championship — a 2014 title-shot loss to Jon Jones at UFC 172 along the way

IntroductionJan Blachowicz is the only male Polish UFC champion in history. A 6'2" Polish Power-style striker out of WCA Fight Team in Warsaw, with a BJJ black belt, Muay Thai world-amateur title and seventeen years of European MMA experience before stepping into the UFC, Blachowicz built one of the most unlikely championship reigns of the modern light-heavyweight era. After a 2-4 UFC start that nearly ended his contract in 2017, he won eight of his next nine, knocked out Luke Rockhold and Corey

IntroductionJamahal Hill is the only UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion in history to win the title and then forfeit it without losing a fight. A southpaw striker out of Black Lion Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with the second-highest significant-strike differential in UFC championship history (+157 over Glover Teixeira at UFC 283) and seven of his twelve wins coming by knockout, Hill won the vacant UFC Light-Heavyweight Championship at UFC 283 in January 2023 — only to rupture his

IntroductionAlexandre Pantoja is the second-most accomplished UFC Flyweight Champion in history, behind only Demetrious Johnson. A Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt out of Arraial do Cabo, Rio de Janeiro, Pantoja built one of the longest title runs in modern UFC history — four successful defences over Brandon Royval, Steve Erceg, Kai Asakura and Kai Kara-France between July 2023 and June 2025 — before losing the belt at UFC 323 in December 2025 in one of the most freakish title-fight finishes in UF

IntroductionHenry Cejudo is the only person in history to hold both an Olympic gold medal and a UFC championship belt. A 2008 Olympic gold medallist in freestyle wrestling at 55 kg — the youngest American to win an Olympic wrestling gold at the time, age 21 — Cejudo translated the Olympic-pedigree wrestling base into a UFC career that produced two division championships (Flyweight 2018, Bantamweight 2019) and a brief simultaneous double-champ run that placed him in the rarefied four-fighter list

IntroductionFrancis Ngannou is the most physically extraordinary heavyweight in the history of mixed martial arts. The UFC's official punching-power testing measured a single Ngannou right hand at 96 horsepower — more force, more dramatically, than any human punch ever recorded. Born in extreme poverty in Batié, Cameroon, hauling sand by hand at the village quarry from the age of ten, walking across the Sahara as a 26-year-old refugee to find a boxing gym in Paris, sleeping in homeless shelters

IntroductionBelal Muhammad is the most underrated UFC champion of the modern era. A Palestinian-American welterweight from Chicago who was undrafted by The Ultimate Fighter, knocked out in the first round of his second UFC fight by Vicente Luque, and dismissed by major media as a 'boring decision fighter' for nearly seven years, Muhammad spent 2019-2024 building one of the most efficient championship-credentialed runs in UFC history — ten wins in twelve fights, beating Demian Maia, Stephen Thomp

IntroductionLeon Edwards is the only Briton to have held a UFC championship belt for more than a single defence. A switch-stance, range-managing southpaw out of the Ultimate Training Centre in Birmingham, Edwards built his title run on a single moment — the rear-leg head kick that knocked Kamaru Usman unconscious with 56 seconds left on the clock at UFC 278 in August 2022, while Edwards was being beaten 4-0 on the scorecards. The kick is, statistically, the most dramatic title-winning finish in

IntroductionDricus du Plessis is the first South African in UFC history to hold a championship belt. A jiu-jitsu specialist with 11 submission wins and 9 knockouts in 23 professional victories, du Plessis built one of the most unconventional title runs in modern middleweight history — a herky-jerky, rhythmically bizarre fighting style that opponents repeatedly described as impossible to read, leading him through Darren Till, Derek Brunson, Robert Whittaker, Sean Strickland, Israel Adesanya, and

IntroductionAlex Pereira is the most improbable champion in modern UFC history. Eight years ago he was working as a tire repairman in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, drinking heavily, and looking for a way out of a life that had spiralled. Today he is a two-time UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, a former UFC Middleweight Champion, a 33-7 professional kickboxer who simultaneously held two Glory Kickboxing belts, and the only fighter in modern combat sports to win world titles in two different weight

IntroductionKamaru Usman is, by the only metric that ultimately matters in mixed martial arts — successful title defences in a championship reign — the most dominant UFC welterweight in the company's history. Five title defences. Sixteen straight UFC wins between 2015 and 2022, a streak that ranks behind only Anderson Silva and Khabib Nurmagomedov in modern UFC history. A 2010 NCAA Division II national wrestling champion. The Ultimate Fighter 21 winner. A finisher who knocked out two of the thre