Youngest and Oldest UFC Champions

Recently, the following statistic has been popping up across MMA forums and message boards: “In all history of UFC, only twice has a fighter 35 or older won a title match at welterweight or below”.  The two title wins by the 35+ year old at lighter weight classes both belong to Tyron Woodley, who defended his title against Damien Maia and Darren Till at 35 & 36 years old, respectively.

Many fans have been using this statistic to predict doom for featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, in his UFC 298 title defense against Ilia Topuria. The 35-year-old Volkanovski is coming off a head kick knockout at the hands of lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, adding fuel to the fire behind his detractors.  Will father time once again remain undefeated, or will Volkanovski defy the MMA-Math and successfully defend his title, joining Woodley in the over-35 champion club? We will find out this coming weekend.  In the meanwhile, here’s a compilation of the youngest and oldest UFC champions through history of the organization:

Oldest to win in a UFC title bout:

Not surprisingly, the oldest male fighter to win a UFC title was Randy Couture at 44 years of age in the Heavyweight division. The oldest at 170 and below is the aforementioned Tyron Woodley at 36, and the oldest under 170 lbs is currently Volkanovski, who defeated Yair Rodrigues at just shy of 35 years old in his last Featherweight title defense. The oldest for women – current Bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington at 35.

Youngest to win in a UFC title bout:

In this section, some of the fans may be surpirsed, as the official UFC narrative has Jon Jones as the youngest champion at 23 years old.  However if we include the old school UFC tournament titles, the honors go to Vitor Belfort who took home the UFC 12 Heavyweight tournament belt at the age of only 19!  At the same event, 22 year old Jerry Bohlander also won the first UFC light heavyweight tournament at 22 years old, almost a year younger than Jon Jones was when he stopped Mauricio Rua for that same lineal 205 lbs belt. In women’s divisions, Rose Namajunas holds the honors, winning her first UFC title at 25.

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Oldest to win their first UFC title bout:

In this category, Glover Teixeira takes the lead as he captured his first UFC light-heavyweight title at 42. Among women, Weili Zhang edges out Valentina Shevchenko by less than a year.

Oldest to compete in their first UFC title bout

Regardless of win or loss outcome

The oldest fighter to challenge for a UFC title, successfully or not, was Mark Hunt at 40 years old. Close behind him was Yoel Romero, who was also over 40 for his first shot at Robert Whittaker. The oldest woman to compete for a title was Tonya Evinger, with Amanda Lemos only a month younger for her first title shot.

Youngest to compete in their first UFC title bout

Regardless of win or loss outcome

Once again, Vitor Belfort with his UFC 12 Heavyweight tournament win takes home the record in this category. John Alessio was also only 20 when he challenged Pat Militech for the welterweight title back in 2000. For women, once again we have Rose Namajunas who unsuccessfully challenged for the women’s strawweight title against Carla Esparza at the Ultimate Fighter 26 finale.

What can we conclude for this data?

For one, women’s primes seem to be much shorter than men’s.  This could be due to the ‘biological clock’ which forces some women out of active competition in order to start a family, or simply the fact that men’s data is going back much more further than women’s.

Two – it’s never too late! In the men’s division, we have had more than one 40-year-old show up to their first title challenge, and even if ultimately they weren’t successful, older fighters can look to Daniel Cormier, Glover Teixeira, and Randy Couture for inspiration.

Finally, the adage about younger fighters being more successful at lighter weight classes seems to hold true.  What does that tell us about the upcoming Volkanovski-Topuria fight? I don’t know but I’m picking Alexander The Great to once again retain his title.  To hell with the statistics!