5 UFC fighters who shot up the rankings quickly

#2. Glover Teixeira – UFC light heavyweight champion

It took Glover Teixeira a long time to win UFC gold, but he made it to the top of his division in no time at all

UFC 267 saw Glover Teixeira become one of the most unlikely champions in the promotion’s history. He choked out Jan Blachowicz to claim the light heavyweight title despite turning 42 years old just days prior.

However, it’s easy to forget that when Teixeira debuted in the UFC back in 2012, he came into the promotion as a highly-touted prospect. He wasted no time in clambering up the rankings to the top of the 205-pound division.

To be fair, Teixeira was not an inexperienced youngster at the time. He’d been renowned as one of the better fighters outside of the UFC in the division for some time. His record when he signed with the promotion was 17-2. However, the way he cut a path up to the top of the division when he burst onto the UFC scene was still pretty scary.

Teixeira choked out Kyle Kingsbury inside a round in his octagon debut at UFC 146, then took two rounds to batter Fabio Maldonado five months later. 2013, meanwhile, saw him defeat three top-10-ranked contenders in Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, James Te Huna and Ryan Bader. Those wins put him in line for a shot at then-champion Jon Jones less than two years after his UFC debut.

Teixeira lost that shot at Jones and began his long and winding road to his eventual UFC title win from there. However, the fact he made it that far in the time that he did was still highly impressive.

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#1. Israel Adesanya – UFC middleweight champion

No fighter clambered through the UFC's rankings quite as quickly as Israel Adesanya did

Perhaps no fighter in UFC history has been able to climb the rankings all the way to becoming a world champion quite as quickly as Israel Adesanya.

‘The Last Stylebender’ defeated Robert Whittaker to claim the UFC middleweight title in October 2019 at UFC 243. Incredibly, at that stage he’d been with the promotion for less than two years.

The crazy part is that Adesanya’s rise didn’t merely take him one or two fights, either. His win over Whittaker was actually his seventh inside the octagon, just showing the strength of schedule and his willingness to compete to get to the top.

Adesanya debuted in the UFC in February 2018 against the unheralded Rob Wilkinson. When he used his kickboxing skills to destroy ‘The Razor’ in the second round, it was clear that he needed a step up in competition.

From there, every opponent he faced sat slightly higher up on the ladder than the previous one. All of them, from Brad Tavares and Derek Brunson to Anderson Silva and Kelvin Gastelum, fell at the hands of ‘The Last Stylebender’.

Nearly four years after his octagon debut, Adesanya remains unbeaten at 185 pounds and is now very much in the conversation around who is the UFC’s middleweight GOAT. It’s been a remarkable rise for him and he remains the best example of a fighter who simply shot up through the UFC’s rankings.