365 days and seven new champions.
The tenth UFC weight class was created on December 12, 2014 when Carla Esparza became the inaugural UFC strawweight champion at the TUF 20 season finale.
That made ten champions on the UFC roster and, since then, seven of those champions have been dethroned.
Cain Velasquez lost his heavyweight title in a unification bout with Fabricio Werdum in June, Jon Jones was stripped of his title in April, Chris Weidman was dethroned by Luke Rockhold at the weekend, Anthony Pettis had his belt taken by Rafael dos Anjos in March, we all know when Conor McGregor unified his 145 lb title, Holly Holm neck-kicked Ronda Rousey out of her belt last month and Joanna Jedrzejczyk won the strawweight title in March.
To give you a little bit of context into how often titles have typically changed hands, let’s look at the turnover between 2013 and 2014.
Between December 12, 2013 and December 12, 2014, only two titles moved to a new owner and neither of them actually occurred during a fight.
Georges St-Pierre vacated his welterweight title on December 13 and Dominick Cruz was forced to vacate his bantamweight belt on January 6. Other than that, all champions retained their belts through that year.
It’s safe to say, therefore, that the past 12 months have seen the UFC’s weight divisions open wide up and we, as fans, absolutely love it.
