Who truly is the best fighter to never win the title?

[J-Pac]

Not sure if it fits your criteria, but Jake Shields was probably the #2 welterweight AND the #2 middleweight at one point in his career. Guy was such a force.

 

[TheBulge]

Dan Henderson, especially in the late 00s. That tournament win in the 90s doesn't count. In his TRT phase he was an absolute monster but had bad luck with Anderson and Jones holding the MW and LHW titles. And then he ran into an even bigger monster with a mohawk.

 

[TAMALLDAY]

LOL at Joe B

 

[TAMALLDAY]

Dustin has never made sense considering he's had repeated chances and keeps losing. Probably losing to his 3rd champion this Saturday too. As well as lost a few important contender fights.

And if you're going to go for a guy like that then Benavidez blows him out of the water anyways. He beat all contenders for years and generations, but couldn't get by Cruz or Mighty Mouse. Who he by contrast had relatively competitive fights with instead of being blown out of the water.

Or when he got SQUASHED twice by Figgy

 

[Dr Fong]

A better case can be made for others based on accomplishments.

But I maintain that what an elderly, injured Romero achieved in MMA provides pretty good justification to speculate that a prime version would have been one of the GOATs, champions included.

 

[BFoe]

Probably Hendo.
Mousasi, Nick Diaz, and Overeem as well.

 

[OmegaRugal]

YOEL. But he was robbed by Rob ... twice

 

[markg171]

Or when he got SQUASHED twice by Figgy

Are you actually retarded enough to say it's a bad thing that at 14 years into his career Benavidez was still great enough to be able to win his way to #1 contender again to fight Fig for the FLW belt?

7 years since he last lost to Mighty Mouse for that belt? And 10 years since he lost to Cruz for the BW belt?

Jesus Christ man.

 

[checktheknuckles]

Carlos Condit

Dude absolutely should have been champ. Beat Robbie and I'm a huge fan of Robbie, but same with Condit. But no way Robbie won that fight. Condit should have had the belt that night.

 

[Clark Rogers]

Benevidez has to be on that list in the manlet classes. Condit and Porier are good choices too.

Shocked nobody on the front page said Chael lol.

 

[Rationality]

I don't know how it's Poirier over, say, Condit. Condit arguably beat Lawler and came closer than anyone to ending GSP's prime run. Also in terms of "best" he fought in a WW division that was full of killers. Poirier never came close in a title fight that I recall.

 

[blaseblase]

Joseph Benavidez. He had an 8 year span where his only losses were to Cruz and Mighty Mouse. And he took both of them to split decision.

 

[CashMoney1991]

Dustin for sure, he has beaten so many great fighters but cant beat the champ

 

[OldNick]

Anthony Johnson.

 

[wufabufa]

Horiguchi has to be my number one.

Yoel, Condit, Zabit get some honorable mentions as well.

 

[Kyojiro Kagenuma]

In this question I am not including former PRIDE FC fighters who won the Pride belt but failed in bids for UFC gold. Simply because at the time Pride had some of the best guys in the world si at one point the Pride belt equalled the achievement of winning UFC Gold. So instantly it rules out guys like Dan Henderson who had 3 cracks at UFC gold but was a 2 weight PRIDE Champ.

I have a bunch of guys I cannot decide between, Dustin Poirer, Tony Ferguson, Joseph Benevidez, Yoel Romero, Nick Diaz, Jon Fitch


PS Like PRIDE I am not putting Urijah Faber on my list because he was WEC champion so the very best in his weight at that time.

Who do you guys believe had more than enough talent to win gold but just couldn't get over the line

Honestly I think the more interesting question is who's the worst

 

[markg171]

Honestly I think the more interesting question is who's the worst

Tony. There was never any fundamentals behind what he did, his chin was always overrated in that it was recovery based and not actually great at taking a shot which is why he was always getting hurt, and he skated by on a lot of questionable, lucky, and even illegal calls.

The whole thing was always balanced on a knife. He nearly lost during his streak about a dozen times. His present losing streak should be surprising nobody, even if obviously yeah he's also totally past his prime too by now. That's exaccerbating his issues, not his primary issue.

Plus I wouldn't really favour him over any of RDA, Eddie, Conor, and Khabib, who were the champs during his streak. Yeah he beat RDA in RDA's first fight post-title reign, but he also needed an eyepoke in the 2nd to actually get his 48-47 scorecard. Tony only actually took over in the latter rounds while RDA won all the early ones except the one he got badly eyepoked in. Eddie can outbrawl anybody, Conor KOs him, and Khabib takes him down with ease.

Ironically though he's also probably the one with the uncrowned greatest claim to a title. People forget that the UFC decided to strip both Conor and himself at the same time to create a new vacant belt for him and Khabib to fight over rather than just promote Tony to undisputed champ and have him defend. Tony getting injured and having to pull out just justified everything in hindsight, but they were doing that before his injury and he was being screwed out of ever being the undisputed champ.

 

[HeffDoesWant]

Anthony Johnson.

I'm not sure if he is my top pick but he belongs in the conversation

 

[Fioretti]

The fuckin Fitch delusions...

Still?

 

[Oenomaus]

I’ll mention my guys Maia and Jacare - they were both climbing the rankings at the same time at one point and it was a very very exciting time as a fan. Maia deserved the WW title shot 1-2 fights before he got it, but unfortunately I don’t think he was going to ever beat Woodley. Had Condit won over Woodley I think Maia would’ve been champ Jacare never got the shot he deserved, still salty about it as he was already getting up there in age and had limited time to compete