5 UFC stars who saved their weight division

#4. David Terrell – UFC middleweight division (2004)

David Terrell's knockout of Matt Lindland at UFC 49 breathed new life into the middleweight division

Back in 2004, the UFC’s middleweight division was in a seriously strange position. It hadn’t had a titleholder since Murilo Bustamante vacated and headed to PRIDE in mid-2002.

After the Brazilian left the promotion, the clear-cut top fighter at 185lbs was Matt Lindland. An Olympic silver medallist in Greco-Roman wrestling, ‘The Law’ had largely beaten the rest of the division’s top fighters, including Phil Baroni, Ivan Salaverry and Ricardo Almeida.

There was just one big problem. Lindland’s fighting style was hardly considered exciting – in fact, the fans regularly ended up booing when he was in action.

More to the point, the Olympian hardly saw eye-to-eye with the UFC’s brass, and his personality wasn’t all that marketable either.

Therefore, by 2004 it felt like the UFC were trying to hold off on crowning a new champion until someone – anyone – could beat Lindland. In turn, that meant that the 185lbs division felt like it was on hold, despite middleweight fights featuring on most of the UFC’s cards.

That all changed at UFC 49. Lindland – still begging the UFC for a shot at the vacant title – was matched with debutant David Terrell. He was a renowned grappler who lacked experience in MMA.

However, despite ‘The Law’ being favored, he clearly wasn’t ready for what ‘The Soul Assassin’ could bring. Terrell clocked him with a left hand and knocked him down in the opening seconds before finishing him off with some follow-up shots. The whole fight took just 24 seconds.

Following this, it took the UFC a matter of months to announce a fight for the vacant title between Terrell and Evan Tanner. While Terrell failed to claim the gold, he did solve the UFC’s Lindland problem – making him the unlikely saviour of the middleweight division.

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#3. Valentina Shevchenko – UFC flyweight division (2018)

Valentina Shevchenko provided the UFC flyweight division with the dominant champion that it needed

The UFC dedicated an entire series of The Ultimate Fighter to introducing the new women’s flyweight division in 2017. Right away, however, it felt like the entire idea was a waste of time.

Sijara Eubanks and Nicco Montano made their way to the finals to compete in the inaugural title bout. Despite being the favorite to win, Eubanks then failed to make weight when her kidneys began to shut down.

She was replaced by Roxanne Modafferi, who had previously lost to Eubanks. Montano duly defeated ‘The Happy Warrior’ by unanimous decision to become the UFC’s first female flyweight titleholder.

However, if the UFC thought the division was now up and running, they were painfully mistaken. Montano didn’t fight for another nine months, and a planned title defense against Valentina Shevchenko went down the pan when the champion failed to make weight.

The UFC then stripped Montano of the title and decided to create a fight for the vacant belt between Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Despite being great fighters, they had just one fight at 125lbs between them.

However, ‘Bullet’ put on an impressive showing to beat Jedrzejczyk. Within months, she showed that she was a far better champion than Montano.

2019 alone saw her successfully defend her title twice. Since then, she’s put together a total of six successful defenses – making her one of the UFC’s most dominant champions.

Essentially, were it not for Shevchenko, the UFC flyweight division could’ve been dead in the water before it’d even got going. Therefore, ‘Bullet’ literally saved it.