5 longest winning streaks in UFC history

#2 Anderson Silva – 7 years, 16 fights

Anderson Silva holds the UFC's longest winning streak at 16 fights

While he’s now won just one of his last six fights, legendary former UFC Middleweight champion Anderson Silva remains the holder of the greatest winning streak in UFC history. Averaging a fight every five months or so during his streak, Silva was simply unstoppable from his June 2006 debut – a knockout of the iron-chinned Chris Leben – to that fateful night in July 2013 that saw Chris Weidman knock him out to end the run.

Silva claimed the UFC Middleweight title in just his second UFC fight – a brutal knockout of longtime champion Rich Franklin – and he made a total of ten successful title defences during his reign. If Travis Lutter – dispatched via submission in February 2007 – had made weight, Silva would’ve had eleven successful defences, and of course, he also stepped up to 205lbs on three occasions, beating larger fighters in James Irvin, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar.

Silva’s finishing rate during his winning streak was incredible, too – of his sixteen wins, just two of them went the distance – his fights with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu masters Thales Leites and Demian Maia. Outside of those, though? It was a masterpiece of violence, as Silva stopped ten fights with strikes and three via submission, with the other coming via a doctor stoppage. Despite his recent issues with PEDs and his string of losses since 2013, his incredible win streak means he’ll always be a contender as the greatest MMA fighter of all time.