Who are the top 5 featherweights in UFC history? In a short span of time, we now find ourselves looking at our fourth UFC Featherweight Champion, sporting multiple defences. The featherweight division was always stacked with great competition, so today it’s time to rank the best featherweights in MMA history and why.
Number 5: Urijah Faber
NOTABLE WINS (FEATHERWEIGHT ONLY): DOMINICK CRUZ, EDDIE WINELAND, JENS PULVER, JEFF CURRAN
Urijah Faber is one of those fighters who’s career is hard to pin down. He is quite clearly one of the greatest fighters of all time, but he fought across multiple weight divisions throughout his career. Dominick Cruz once said Faber probably has the most title fighters of any fighter, but he lost all of them. This isn’t actually true, as a matter of fact he had the most title defences in WEC history, WITH five title defences. WEC being the premier MMA organisation for lighter weight classes prior to its absorption into the UFC.
Faber is often forgotten by fans in featherweight discussions because most of his time in the UFC was spent as a bantamweight, where he held the record for most fights in the divisions history so far. His career as a featherweight though is legitimately outstanding, beating all comers until finally losing to the also excellent Mike Brown.
Greatest moment?
Though we wouldn’t realise it for a while, perhaps Faber’s greatest moment was stopping Dominick Cruz via submission in their first bout. At the time it was just another win for Faber, but for a very long time Faber was the only person to ever beat Cruz.
Number 4: Frankie Edgar
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Notable wins (Featherweight Only): Cub Swanson, Urijah Faber, Chad Mendes, Charles Oliviera, Jeremy Stephens, Yair Rodriquez
Frankie Edgar holds a unique position on this list. He isn’t the best ‘featherweight’ specifically, but is probably the best fighter on this list overall. Up until he had his first knock out, Frankie Edgar had never lost a decision that wasn’t close or controversial. Edgar beat the legendary BJ Penn multiple times, and held the lightweight title, something all the more incredible when you remember that today he fights as a bantamweight.
At featherweight he just had the awkward position of never quite matching up with Jose Aldo well. Every fight, Edgar showed he had the tools to beat Aldo, including low kicking Aldo during his outstanding defensive pivots, but just didn’t commit to those tools for long enough to get the win.
Outside of that, in his prime Edgar beat quite literally everyone he fought at featherweight, including the always great Cub Swanson, future lightweight champion Charles Oliviera and many more. A technically sublime fighter, who demonstrated perfect fundamentals in all aspects of MMA, Edgar is one all aspiring fighters should watch and learn from. He was able to shut down just about anyone.
Greatest moment?
Knocking out Chad Mendes (who would probably number 6 on this list) in the first round. Frankie was never known for one punch power, and Mendes was one of the big three of the featherweight division (including Frankie and Aldo). We expected Edgar to win for sure, but to immediately connect and knock out Mendes was an incredible feat.
A bonus mention goes to Edgar’s fight against Yair Rodriguez. Yair was a young upstart on a great win streak known for crazy flashy kicks and his great reach. Edgar while still great, was clearly an older fighter. Yet the fight was from start to finish total domination. Edgar repeatedly took Yair down and roughed him up against the cage until picking up a 2nd round TKO stoppage.
3. Max Holloway
Notable wins: Cub Swanson, Charles Oliviera, Jeremy Stephens, Ricardo Lamas, Jose Aldo (x2), Anthony Pettis, Brian Ortega and Frankie Edgar
One of the earliest articles on Diesel Gym London was a retrospective on Max Holloway’s entire fight career leading up to his first title fight against Aldo. Max Holloway has a fascinating career, in that you really see him learn MMA in the cage before your eyes.
Holloway had not long been training before making his professional debut and we see him going from a wild brawler with some legitimately crafty tricks, and slowly phasing out his wild man brawling approach, becoming the greatest body hitter in the sports history.
On the way to the title, Max Holloway really cleared out the division to the point where when he became the champion, it didn’t seem like there was a ton for him to actually do. He too defeated current lightweight Champ Oliviera on his way to the top and nearly every fight was an absolute barn burner.
Greatest Moment?
This one is hard to pick, as Holloway continuously topped his performances against greater and greater opponents. By the time Holloway had become champion, though it was a good fight against Aldo, it wasn’t the same shocking moment as it was when McGregor one the title. Aldo’s unbeatable aura had gone.
Instead I think his greatest moment was in his fight with Ricardo Lamas, they had fought to an exciting decision and they both knew it. Right before the final bell was to be rung, Holloway pointed at the floor, said ‘let’s go’ and engaged in a foolish, but daring slug fest with Lamas until the final bell rung. Truly his most iconic moment.
2. Alexander Volkanovski
Notable wins: Darren Elkins, Chad Mendes, Jose Aldo, Max Holloway (x2), Brian Ortega
This could be a controversial pick, as Volkanovski doesn’t have as many top profile wins as the other fighters here. My reasoning for placing him at the top is simple, much like his stable mate Israel Adesanya, he simply walked into the UFC and practically walked out with the title.
It’s true that Volkanoski doesn’t have as many wins, but he was only given notable opposition for the first time in 2018, and then he immediately started beating them. While Holloway was thrown to the wolves and had to fight a murderers row to get the title. No one was really paying attention to Volkanovski, he was given a fight against Chad Mendes and beat him effortlessly. By the time people realised that Volkanovski was great he was the champion and he had beaten every defending featherweight champion so far.
In a time where Holloway looked unbeatable, Volkanovski bested him twice.
Greatest moment?
Probably his last fight, where Brian Ortega leapt on him in a tight guillotine and Volkanovski just… refused to go out? I’m sure there’s a technical reason there – but he was able to tough out multiple submission attempts and ruthlessly beat on Ortega.
1. Jose Aldo
Notable wins: Mike Brown, Cub Swanson, Urijah Faber, Mark Hominick, Kenny Florian, Chad Mendes (x2), Frankie Edgar (x2), Korean Zombie, Ricardo Lamas, Jeremy Stephens, Renato Moicano
Despite Joe Rogan’s attempts to put Holloway over Aldo as the greatest of all time, no other fighter has a record close to Aldos. Jose Aldo is possibly the greatest MMA fighter of all time, and almost certainly the greatest defensive fighter of all time.
Despite being known for ruthless leg kicks, Aldo has a defensive, so tight and so subtle, that audiences often didn’t realise how rarely Aldo was even hit. In his time, Aldo fought quite literally everyone there was to fight beating the greatest featherweights multiple times.
His seven title defences were not only the most in the UFC so far, but also surpassed Urijah Faber’s WEC record. He is so far the only fighter to win the featherweight title twice. While it’s possible a fighter may one day surpass his legacy – it may not be for a very long time.
Greatest moment?
His electrifying rematch with Chad Mendes is the best fight of his career by far. Is it his greatest moment though? He had the 8 second knee victory vs Swanson, and his first match with Mendes saw him get an incredibly knee KO and him being lifted up by a cheering Brazillian crowd.
I think for me though his greatest moment was his win over Korean Zombie. Zombie dislocated his shoulder in the fight and was TKO’d while trying to pop it back into place, this was gnarly enough – but after Aldo’s victory it was revealed that he had fought while having kidney stones. I can’t imagine a more agonising hell, but Aldo toughed through it, because he really is that good.
