Sherdog’s Top 10: Fighters Who Lost Their Pro Debuts

10. Carlos Newton
One of the most effective submission fighters from the earlier days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Pride Fighting Championships, “The Ronin” was a dangerous grappler who gave just about everyone he fought fits. Yes, Newton tapered off at the end of his career, but that version of the Canadian was a shell of the man who submitted Pat Miletich and Jose Land-Jons and fell short in epic wars with Dan Henderson and Kazushi Sakuraba.

Newton captured the UFC welterweight championship when he tapped Miletich with a bulldog choke at UFC 31, but the Anguilla native was dethroned by a Matt Hughes slam five months later while attempting to defend it for the first time. It remains one of the most controversial endings in the history of the sport, as Hughes was trapped in a standing triangle choke at the time of the slam.

Despite all Newton accomplished, he found himself on the wrong side of the ledger in his pro debut at Extreme Fighting 2 on April 26, 1996, as he submitted to exhaustion against Jean Riviere 7:22 into the first round. Riviere would fight only twice more after their encounter.

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