7 former Bellator champions who jumped to the UFC - and how they fared

#6 Joe Soto

Joe Soto had a surprising UFC title shot in his 2014 debut

The inaugural Bellator Featherweight champion, Joe Soto won his title by beating Yahir Reyes way back in the first season of the promotion in 2009. He made one successful defense – beating Diego Saraiva in 2010 – before being dethroned by former international wrestler Joe Warren a couple of months later. Strangely, that would be his final Bellator appearance.

Soto then went on to put together a solid 6-1 record on the regional circuit before being signed by the UFC in 2014, and while he was initially pegged to debut at UFC 177 against Anthony Birchak, things went a bit turbo when Renan Barao was forced out of his title fight with champion TJ Dillashaw, and so on less than one day’s notice, Soto found himself in line for a UFC title shot.

The ultimate underdog story didn’t end how Soto would’ve liked, though, and he was TKO’d by Dillashaw in the 5th round of their fight. That led to a three-fight skid for the former Bellator champ, but 3 wins from 2016 through to 2017 seemed to have righted the ship for him.

Losses to Brett Johns and Iuri Alcantara sent him back down the ladder, however, and in August 2018 the UFC released him with a 3-5 record. It’s hard to rank his UFC run in a lot of ways – you’d probably lean towards it being unsuccessful, but then he performed well against Dillashaw and was never expected to be a world-beater in the first place. Essentially, you’d probably say he did decently, but it’d be hard to go any further than that.