play1:18Deiveson Figueiredo reclaims flyweight title after five-round thrillerDeiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno meet in an epic five-round match, with Figueiredo reclaiming his UFC flyweight title.
play1:22Valentina Shevchenko wins back women’s UFC flyweight title at UFC 306Valentina Shevchenko defeats Alexa Grasso in the co-main event of UFC 306 to gain back her women’s UFC flyweight title.
Magomed Ankalaev defeats Alex Pereira to become new light heavyweight champ (1:28)Magomed Ankalaev quiets the Las Vegas crowd as he beats Alex Pereira via unanimous decision to become the new UFC light heavyweight champion. (1:28)
Deiveson Figueiredo reclaims flyweight title after five-round thrillerDeiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno meet in an epic five-round match, with Figueiredo reclaiming his UFC flyweight title.
Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno meet in an epic five-round match, with Figueiredo reclaiming his UFC flyweight title.
Valentina Shevchenko wins back women’s UFC flyweight title at UFC 306Valentina Shevchenko defeats Alexa Grasso in the co-main event of UFC 306 to gain back her women’s UFC flyweight title.
Valentina Shevchenko defeats Alexa Grasso in the co-main event of UFC 306 to gain back her women’s UFC flyweight title.
It’s difficult enough to conquer one opponent inside an MMA cage, but Alex Pereira will have two obstacles to overcome in his attempt to regain the UFC light heavyweight championship on Saturday at UFC 320 (ESPN PPV, 10 p.m. ET).
His primary focus, of course, will be on champion Magomed Ankalaev, who dethroned Pereira when they met in March. The other stumbling block Pereira will be up against is UFC championship history.
Ankalaev-Pereira 2 will be the first bout for both fighters since the belt changed hands, and toppled UFC champions have not fared well in immediate rematches. In the 16 such matchups in the fight promotion’s modern era (since November 2000, when the UFC first utilized the Unified Rules of mixed martial arts), four ex-champions have succeeded in regaining the title.
Pereira might be familiar with that daunting statistic, because he was a participant in one of those four triumphant rematches. Then again, maybe he has tried to forget the night in April 2023 when he was on the wrong end of the UFC’s most recent ex-champ success story.
Five months after taking away the middleweight title from Israel Adesanya in November 2022, Pereira had abundant reason to be confident going into the rematch. His title-winning knockout at UFC 281 had actually been his third victory over Adesanya across a couple of combat sports. Pereira defeated Adesanya twice in kickboxing, including the only knockout loss of Adesanya’s 80-fight kickboxing career.
“I do know how to beat him,” Pereira told reporters through an interpreter in the leadup to UFC 287. “I do know how he fights, I do know how he works. … I believe that me beating him this Saturday, I will never face him again.”
Adesanya, for his part, embraced the role of challenger in the encore. Ignoring that he was again the betting favorite, he knew the fans had seen him get stopped in the first meeting.
“This fight, I feel like the underdog,” he said during fight week. “I feel like everyone’s counting me out. I feel like, because of the result of the last fight, people are like goldfish memories. They’ve forgotten what I’ve done in this game. They forgot who I am. And it’s time to remind people how great I am.”
Adesanya certainly reminded Pereira. Late in Round 2 of a back-and-forth, all-standup battle, while covering up against the cage as Pereira swarmed him, Adesanya suddenly blasted two counter right hands that stopped Pereira in his tracks. Just when “The Last Stylebender” appeared to be in trouble, he became the trouble. The knockout win made Adesanya a champion again, and he felt like a new man.
“Beating me, he made me a better fighter, a better person,” Adesanya said in his postfight interview, referring to the consecutive Pereira pairings. “In this camp, I didn’t f— around. If you know me, you know I like to vacation, but … I stayed on the grind and I put myself through it.”
This weekend is Pereira’s opportunity to show off what he took away from the first Ankalaev fight. Conventional wisdom going into the first meeting said he would be in trouble against Ankalaev’s smothering wrestling, but Pereira stuffed all 12 of the Russian’s takedown attempts. Conventional wisdom also held that a standup fight would be to Pereira’s advantage, but Ankalaev got stronger in the striking exchanges as the fight wore on and was rewarded with a unanimous decision in his favor.
What did Pereira learn from the loss? Less than seven months later, has he had sufficient time to implement the adjustments necessary to turn the tide in the rematch? Is his confidence still bruised and needing more time to rejuvenate? Pereira might think he knows the answers to those questions, but he doesn’t yet. He and the fans will find out Saturday.
Ankalaev doesn’t know the answers, either, but he said the only thing that will change in the rematch is that it will be an easier win for him. Calling the 38-year-old Pereira “too old to make substantial changes,” Ankalaev told reporters through an interpreter last Thursday in Las Vegas, “I don’t think even he believes that if he finds a different game plan or changes something, then he could beat me. I just think he’s going out there to make good money, just for the check.”
That gesture, as humble and gracious as it was, ultimately got filed away in the “be careful what you wish for” department.
Seven months later, at UFC 49, Couture mauled Belfort from start to brutal finish, amassing 14 minutes, 6 seconds of control time in a fight that lasted just 15 minutes. Couture landed 50 significant strikes to Belfort’s three, battering and bloodying the resilient but sagging Brazilian. And when the referee, at the advice of the cageside doctor, waved off the drubbing at the end of Round 3, Couture was a champion once again, at 41 years old.
“Thankfully, we get smarter as we get older,” he quipped during the postfight interview, his white shorts covered in Belfort’s blood. “I don’t do a lot of things I used to do when I was younger. … I feel better than I’ve felt my whole life.”
For 18 years, Couture would remain the only deposed UFC champion to win back the belt in an immediate rematch. Ten other ex-champs — including legends Anderson Silva and José Aldo — tried to be like “The Natural” but failed. Finally, Deiveson Figueiredo broke through in 2022, regaining the men’s flyweight title by winning a unanimous decision in a rematch with Brandon Moreno, who had choked him out seven months earlier.
By matching Couture’s accomplishment, Figueredo apparently opened the floodgates. In the 3½ years since he became the second fighter in modern UFC history to regain a title in an immediate rematch, four others have attempted it and two have succeeded: Adesanya and Amanda Nunes, both in 2022. “The Lioness” took back the women’s bantamweight title from Julianna Peña at UFC 277, knocking her down three times and scoring six takedowns in a one-sided beatdown that one judge scored a stark 50-43.
Deiveson Figueiredo reclaims flyweight title after five-round thriller
“For the rematch, my mindset was different,” Edgar wrote for ESPN.com before his retirement bout in 2022, recapping a glorious career highlight. “Going into the first fight, I believed I could beat BJ. I didn’t know, but I believed. Going into the second fight, I knew I could. I think that’s why the gap between us was a lot bigger the second time.”
The gap was enormous. Edgar nearly tripled Penn’s output of total strikes and won every round on all three scorecards, keeping his title and ensuring that, as he later said, “the lightweight division was going to continue without BJ Penn.”
Several other once-dominant former champions have had cruel reckonings while trying to regain their mojo immediately afterward.
“Definitely immediate rematch,” Shevchenko said afterward, “because I know I was winning the fight.”
She definitely was ahead according to the judges, but that didn’t help her in the rematch six months later. Shevchenko had her moments, but so did Grasso, and the fight ended in a split draw, with Grasso keeping the title. But not for long. The matchmakers booked a third consecutive meeting at UFC 306 last September, and Shevchenko won a unanimous decision to take back the gold.
Valentina Shevchenko wins back women’s UFC flyweight title at UFC 306
True, redemption didn’t come for Shevchenko in the fight immediately after losing the belt. But at least she returned to the promised land eventually. That has not been the case for others.
Joanna Jedrzejczyk was an undefeated strawweight champion and a 6-to-1 betting favorite for her 2017 title defense against Rose Namajunas. But the challenger was undaunted by Jedrzejczyk’s intimidating scowl. Namajunas dropped her with a right hand less than two minutes into the fight, then finished Jedrzejczyk with a left hook knockdown and ground-and-pound (eliciting the famous Daniel Cormier commentary exclamation, “Thug Rose! Thug Rose! Thug Rose!”).
When they fought again five months later at UFC 223, Namajunas was again an underdog. But she also was again a winner, this time going five rounds and taking a clear decision to retain the belt.
Jedrzejczyk, like some other once-lofty ex-champs, had a difficult time coming to grips with the two-part come-down. After the rematch, she had harsh words not simply for “Thug Rose” but for the 115-pound division as a whole. “They cannot compare themselves to me,” she said. “They are all only jealous and talking too much all the time. I’m telling them: Bow down. I’m the queen.”
Despite the dismal track record for redemption seekers, the immediate championship rematches keep on coming. It makes sense in a sport in which contendership is ephemeral. If an ex-champ is offered the opportunity to regain the belt, there’s no time like the present. Within the MMA attention span, one can be here today and gone tomorrow.