The UFC Heavyweight Title: A visual history

Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration

It may feel like a wild last few years, but chaos has been the rule
rather than the exception in the
UFC heavyweight division for nearly three decades now.

At UFC 260 in March of 2021, Francis
Ngannou knocked out Stipe
Miocic to become the 18th man to wear the undisputed UFC
heavyweight belt. That night, well over five years ago, marked the
last time the title changed hands in the “normal” way: with a
challenger defeating an undisputed champion in the Octagon. Since
then, the title picture has been a mess of injuries, contract
disputes, defections and retirements, leading up to this weekend’s
interim title bout.

This Sunday at the White House, in the co-main event of
UFC Freedom 250, former middleweight and light heavyweight
champion Alex
Pereira will attempt to add an unprecedented third divisional
title to his already legendary résumé. Opposing him will be
Ciryl
Gane, a former interim titleholder and multiple-time title
challenger who is making his own case to be included among the
greatest heavyweights of all time.

While the winner of Sunday’s co-main event will have a major new
feather in his cap, Pereira and Gane will be fighting for the
interim belt while regular champ Tom
Aspinall continues to convalesce from the eye injury he
suffered in his bout with Gane last October at UFC 321. That fight,
which ended in a no-contest late in Round 1, was bizarre and
frustrating, but par for the course.

From its inception in 1997, the UFC’s heavyweight division was
marked in its early years by a dizzying series of twists and turns,
including three different champions in its first year, multiple
champs abandoning the title to fight elsewhere and two men losing
their belts in the lab rather than the Octagon. The UFC’s
heavyweight title was also a clear second fiddle to its
Pride Fighting Championships counterpart for most of that first
decade.

With the 2007 absorption of Pride and, a few years later, the
acquisition of Strikeforce
and
International Fight League, the UFC’s heavyweight division
eventually gained the preeminent status it still enjoys. For the
next decade, the man wearing UFC heavyweight gold could lay a claim
to “baddest man on the planet” status that was hard to dispute—that
is, until Ngannou became the first sitting champ to vacate his belt
when he decamped for
Professional Fighters League.

Here is a graphic representation of the 29-year history of the UFC
undisputed heavyweight title and the times it was won, lost or
defended. Interim title fights are omitted with the exception of
Andrei
Arlovski vs. Tim Sylvia 1
and Aspinall vs. Sergei
Pavlovich, since the winners of those fights ended up
inheriting the undisputed title without a unification bout. From
6-foot-10 giants to 5-foot-9 monsters, from larger-than-life pro
wrestlers to humble firefighters, from drug scandals to grisly
injuries in and out of the cage, the picture tells a story as
strange and amazing as the sport itself.

Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration