5 reasons why Max Holloway isn't the featherweight GOAT

#4 Jose Aldo has more title defenses

The number of times a fighter successfully defends their title is often used as a metric to determine said fighter's greatness. Opinions on who the greatest fighter is will often vary, but statistics do not lie.

Logic once dictated that only deserving fighters earned title shots. While this may no longer apply in the UFC, when Jose Aldo was the reigning featherweight champion, most of the challengers he faced were deserving fighters on impressive win streaks.

Thus, the number of times a champion defended their title correlated to their success as a fighter, as they were facing elite competition. Aldo managed to successfully defend his featherweight title seven times while Max Holloway managed only three successful title defenses before losing the belt to Alexander Volkanovski.

Aldo was a more dominant and successful champion than Holloway was, turning away every challenger for four years while Max Holloway defended the title for two. Statistically, Aldo was, at the very least, a greater champion.

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#3 Aldo is a two-time featherweight champion

Jose Aldo held the UFC featherweight title for five years, losing it in his fifth year to Conor McGregor in what is arguably the most well-known knockout in UFC history.

Yet, after capturing the title, McGregor exhibited zero interest in defending his newly acquired championship, eventually forcing the UFC's hand. The Irishman was stripped of his belt and at UFC 200, Jose Aldo rebounded by dismantling Frankie Edgar for a second time to recapture the featherweight championship.

Outside of Georges St-Pierre, Jon Jones, TJ Dillashaw, Cain Velasquez, and Dominick Cruz, not many champions in recent memory who have lost their titles have managed to regain them.

This places Aldo in rare company. Holloway, by comparison, has attempted to recapture his featherweight title from Volkanovski once, failing in his initial attempt. He is scheduled to face the reigning featherweight champion at UFC 276 in what will be his second attempt at regaining the belt.

Although Aldo lost the title soon after to Holloway, that doesn't discount the Brazilian's standing in UFC featherweight history. No one, for example, would ever assert that Chris Weidman is a greater middleweight than Anderson Silva because he defeated him twice. He still does not match the longevity of Silva's win streak or the number of title defenses Silva managed.