Historical timeline with greatest LW champions

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scm1

Well-Known Member
Aug 5, 2015
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In this thread I will present historical timeline with biggest LW championship bouts.

This is my attempt to define who are the greatest MMA LW champions?
And, this is based just on the championship bouts, not overall career (for that we have All Time rankings).


First LW champion was Yuichi Watanabe. That was Shooto promotion in 1991.

But right now, we will skip that early period and start with 8 man, 1 day LW Lumax tournament in 1997.
That was all Japanese tournament, but at that time they were best in lightweight categories.
Naoya Uematsu won the tournament by submitting (Achilles Lock) Caol Uno in the finals

First big championship bout was in 1999 for Shooto vacant belt. Caol Uno defeated Rumina Sato.
In Dec 2000, Uno defended that belt in a rematch with Sato.
Then he vacated that Shooto belt and fought Jens Pulver for inagural UFC LW belt.



After Pulver defended UFC belt two times, he had a contract dispute with UFC.
In 2003, B.J. Penn and Caol Uno fought to a draw for the vacant title.
 

scm1

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Aug 5, 2015
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After 2003 title bout failed to produce new UFC champion, UFC suspended LW division for the next couple of years.



But LW fighters were very active in Japan.
 

scm1

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Aug 5, 2015
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Here is a graph with the historical LW Title picture for period 2009 - 2015.



In 2009 UFC was already the biggest MMA organization, but some other organizations had good LW divisions.
That is why I included LW title bouts for WEC (yellow), Strikeforce (blue) and Dream (purple).
 
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scm1

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Aug 5, 2015
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I added all 3 historical graphs and I will add more materials later.
You can give me your comments now.
 

kneeblock

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Apr 18, 2015
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I'm glad you started with Lumax and Shooto. LW has a fairly clear lineage that goes horribly awry before being fixed years later in the UFC.

For now, I start the lineage with Uno/Sato, but not until their second fight when they were almost definitely #1 and #2. It then goes to Pulver who loses it to Duane Ludwig who doesn't fight again at LW until his loss to Tyson Griffin. Griffin is lineal champ until he loses it to Frankie Edgar who loses to Gray Maynard. Edgar loses the belt to Bendo and Bendo loses it to Pettis in one of the most significant unification bouts in the history of MMA, but more on that later.

There is the argument that Ludwig's departure from LW was longstanding enough to constitute abandonment requiring a new lineage. There are few who would contest that the Pride Bushido ww tournament won by Takanori Gomi is the best place to begin a new lineage based on the caliber of competition in said tournament.

Gomi loses to Maurcus Aurelio who passes the neo-Lineal belt to Mitsuhiro Ishida. Ishida loses to Gomi at Shockwave and Gomi next loses to Nick Diaz. This gets tricky because the fight was contested at 160 lbs. If you don't accept that result, Gomi next loses to Sergey Golayev who loses to Eiji Mitsuoka who passes to Yokota who passes it to Kawajiri. Kawajiri loses to Aoki who officially gives the Dream title a connection to the official lineage. Aoki loses to Eddie Alvarez, unifying that portion of the lineage with Bellator's title. Alvarez loses in the UFC to Cowboy Cerrone and he is still the current holder of that claim to the title which includes Pride, Bellator, Dream's promotional titles.

If you do accept the Diaz result, he next loses to KJ Noons at 160 who loses a rematch, but at 170. Noons next loss at 155 is against Jorge Masvidal who loses it in his next fight against Gilbert Melendez. Gil loses it to Bendo who passes it to Pettis.

Pettis becomes the unified lineal champion, having a claim to both the UFC and Pride lineages along with the original Shooto title, having also been the final WEC champ.

When Pettis lost to Dos Anjos, most of the lineal title went to him, but Donald Cerrone has a technical claim to it, largely depending on where you stand with Nick Diaz.

Dos Anjos vs. Cerrone will finally, after so many years give us an undisputed unified champion with both the lineal title and every major promotional title in history.

The most interesting thing about all of this is that BJ Penn was never the lineal champ.
 

BackOffWarchild

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LOL.

There has never been a greater LW than BJ Penn. And the concept of a "Lineal Champ" is, well...

 

kneeblock

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LOL.

There has never been a greater LW than BJ Penn. And the concept of a "Lineal Champ" is, well...

Not sure one can say BJ was the best LW. He was the best guy who fought at LW and certainly the most accomplished p4p of all LW champs, but he didn't seem to win when it counted at LW except against Sherk and Uno which were his two most impressive victories.

It's actually at WW that BJ was a lineal champ and arguably where he had more important fights.
 
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BackOffWarchild

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Not sure one can say BJ was the best LW. He was the best guy whp fought at LW and certainly the most accomplished p4p of all LW champs, but he didn't seem to win when it counted at LW except against Sherk and Uno which were his two most impressive victories.

It's actually at WW that BJ was a lineal champ and arguably where he had more important fights.
You must have missed some random fight that took place in Hawaii against some random all-time great from Japan. Or the absolute destruction of peak Diego Sanchez.
 

kneeblock

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Great posts kneeblock @Kneeblock

t I personally considered BJ lineal after his rotr win vs gomi
This is a common misconception. Unfortunately, while Gomi was a pretty successful Shooto champ prior to fighting BJ, he had just one fight prior lost to Joachim Hansen in an absolute war.

The Gomi fight was BJ's first fight back after his draw with Uno so it was sort of like his revenge on Shooto. But in his very next fight he moved up to WW and took the lineal WW title from Matt Hughes.
 

regular john

Muay Thai World Champion
May 21, 2015
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the timeline with the LW "lineal" belt or whatever is so fucked up that you just have to say "fuck it". the current UFC LW belt is the ultimate shit.

as for who actually is the greatest LW champion it's a clusterfuck. I agree with the theory that BJ Penn was "the best guy who fought at LW" but his biggest accomplishments aren't reflected in LW title fights. IMO though it's got to be either him or Edgar or Benson due to the record 3 UFC title defences.
 

scm1

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Aug 5, 2015
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the timeline with the LW "lineal" belt or whatever is so fucked up that you just have to say "fuck it". the current UFC LW belt is the ultimate shit.

as for who actually is the greatest LW champion it's a clusterfuck. I agree with the theory that BJ Penn was "the best guy who fought at LW" but his biggest accomplishments aren't reflected in LW title fights. IMO though it's got to be either him or Edgar or Benson due to the record 3 UFC title defences.
I saw several versions of LW Lineal Championship.

In most often used version, LW Title goes to Japan and stays there until 2012, when Eddie Alvarez brings it to Bellator.
So, in this version all UFC LW champions since 2008 are skipped.

In another version LW Lineal title somehow stays in USA and completely ignores Takanori Gomi.

If you check what Fightmatrix have on their website for LW Lineal champions, you will see that BJ, Edgar, Benson, Pettis and RDA are not included.
In that golden UFC LW period (2008 - 2015) they have following LW Lineal champions:
Sergey Golyaev, Eiji Mitsuoka, Kazunori Yokota, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Shinya Aoki, Eddie Alvarez, Donald Cerrone.

So, what that all means?
Isn't Lineal Championship meaningless and just a fun way to do MMA math?
Kneeblock, what do you say?
 

scm1

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Aug 5, 2015
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For each championship bout we calculate a score (Championship bout Level) where the maximum value is 8.
To calculate championship bout level we use following:
- what was the current ranking of those two fighters (ranking before and after) .
- how strong the Promotion was at that time
- how strong the division was at that time

Here is the Championship Bout Level for all UFC LW title fights since 2005:



Marker with + represents title defense and X is title capture.
 

kneeblock

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Apr 18, 2015
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I saw several versions of LW Lineal Championship.

In most often used version, LW Title goes to Japan and stays there until 2012, when Eddie Alvarez brings it to Bellator.
So, in this version all UFC LW champions since 2008 are skipped.

In another version LW Lineal title somehow stays in USA and completely ignores Takanori Gomi.

If you check what Fightmatrix have on their website for LW Lineal champions, you will see that BJ, Edgar, Benson, Pettis and RDA are not included.
In that golden UFC LW period (2008 - 2015) they have following LW Lineal champions:
Sergey Golyaev, Eiji Mitsuoka, Kazunori Yokota, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Shinya Aoki, Eddie Alvarez, Donald Cerrone.

So, what that all means?
Isn't Lineal Championship meaningless and just a fun way to do MMA math?
Kneeblock, what do you say?
No. I think I've responded to this point several times. The lineal title is a critical historical analysis of championships from the origins of weight classes in the sport of MMA. Your bias toward scientism in analyzing things purely along data points you're getting from promotions ignores why promotions make titles, which are largely for fatuous reasons having less to do with meritocracy than selling tickets.

If you'd like a separate disquisition on it by the guy who got me into lineages and posted several excellent threads over the years, read this (much as I hate to link to the old place) by Whistleblower:

MMA's worldwide leader in UFC news, gear and events

I put the LW lineage start at Sato/Uno 2 while he starts at Sato/Uno 1. Also, he potentially discounts Diaz/Gomi on the grounds that it was ruled a NC where I discount it because it was at 160. Otherwise we're in agreement.