The UFC Welterweight Title: A Visual History

On Saturday, Rafael dos Anjos will look to keep his hopes of a second UFC title alive. He could hardly have chosen a tougher hill to climb.

In the main event of UFC on ESPN 51 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, former lightweight champ Dos Anjos will face perennial contender Vicente Luque in a high-stakes welterweight contenders’ match. The winner will be one step closer to a shot at the belt currently held by Leon Edwards, who earned it last August by upending Kamaru Usman, then defended it in March in their trilogy fight. Usman’s crashing descent from perhaps the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport a year ago, to a man on a two-fight skid facing an uncertain future, is just the most recent example of the uniquely cruel and unforgiving nature of the 170-pound division.

If welterweight isn’t the best weight class in UFC history, it must be a close second behind lightweight. Scan the 11 names on the left-hand side of the infographic, and you see a lot of meat and not a lot of filler. There are a couple of the greatest fighters of all time and several more who were at least among the greatest of their time. The right-hand side tells a story as well, with some incredibly skilled and accomplished fighters trying and failing to scale the throne. Not many weight classes have a second tier as historically impressive as Jon Fitch, Jake Shields, Carlos Condit and Demian Maia.

Of course, that has always been welterweight’s chief charm: It is a division historically ruled by dominant champions. Compared to the sad-sack early years of the UFC’s lightweight and heavyweight divisions, where nobody even seemed to want the belts, and in fact multiple sitting champions bailed for greener pastures, 170 was put in an immediate stranglehold by Pat Miletich, who held the newly minted strap for almost three years. Ever since, it has been more of the same. While welterweight has its share of parity and weirdness, and boasts two of the greatest championship upsets ever, it’s a division where a man often gets the belt and spends a couple of years turning away all comers.

Here is the 25-year history of the UFC welterweight title and the times it was won, lost or defended. It tells the story of a hyper-competitive, cutthroat division, one where to strap the belt on your waist meant attaching one of the sport’s largest bull’s eyes to your back.

Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration