Do you consider Sakuraba to be a UFC champion?

[NoSmilez]

Saku fought in the UFC ? I don't think so

Technically he had two fights.

 

[NoSmilez]

Equating Sak's tournament win with Royce's wins would be revisionist history.

Pre-Superfight championship, the tournament winner was the undisputed champion of the UFC given there was no alternative. That's how the concept of a 'champion' was decided - note that it's literally in the name of the promotion. The winner of UFC 1-4 was the winnner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and therefore recognised as 'champion'.

But once it was firmly established that there was a champion who held a belt, clearly a tournament champion was not at all undisputed and tournaments like the one Sak won were not taken very seriously.

Any attempts to exclude Royce (and, yes, Steve Jennum) from being recognised as 'champions' and to include random tournament winners aren't just revisionist semantics, they aren't logical or good faith semantics. You may as well try to claim TUF winners were equal champions - the actual context matters.

It's just not Royce. You have to count a lot more people as champions then. They are tournament champions but they aren't what we know as champion by today's definition.

 

[Dr. Rose]

I know. I just took the opportunity to nerd out and talk about the old school

I hear ya, We don't get a chance to do that on here as much as we had in the past.

 

[Cowboy Kurt Angle]

No