You Arent A Champion Unless You Defend Your Belt

Men that Never Defended THeir Belt

Randy Couture : Wins the Title against Maurice Smith and then goes Missing in action

Bas Rutten : Wins against Kevin Randleman and then never fights in the UFC again.

Josh Barnett : stripped for failing steroid test before defending

Frank Mir : Motorcycle accident, never defended

BJ Penn : stripped when he signed with K-1

If you won the belt. If you have the right to wear the belt. Then you are the champion. If you defend your Championship against all comers? Then you have the chance to become Legend.

Would Overeem be included in this group?

good thought Franklin


The THread title is actually a quote from Jens Pulver and I liked it

What about in team sports? Alot of teams win titles and dont defend lol. In MMA it is so hard to win a title that once u win it it is even harder to defend in my opion. I think once u win the belt u are a champ to me.

I agree, I was jsut drunk and watching a Pulver interview and he said it and it got me thinking

Well situations are different in every case. Of course Overoid is a douche but not everything is that black and white. While I can't stand Mur, he was severely hurt, and he was striped some time later. Ditto with Bas Rutten. I will defend BJ because he was making a bussiness decision, fighters have to do what they think is best for themself IMO.

In the case of Barnett and Randy, you're right. However I still refer to them as champions.
I'm a little less critical of Randy than I am of Barnett because I like him better.

lol Jens didn't coin that phrase.

Randy and BJ have defeneded belts after that you know

Wolfgangsta wrote:

lol Jens didn't coin that phrase.

didnt say he coined, said I heard him say it and liked the sound of it and bam posted a thread

tolivendiewithLA wrote:

Randy and BJ have defeneded belts after that you know

si good fellow I am aware of this

Yo LA are you saying the UFC held events after 40? Don't tell bird that.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

Yo LA are you saying the UFC held events after 40? Don't tell bird that.

come come, I got UFC 1 all the way to 61

then I have gaps in between

I just prefer the old days

61 thats like three years ago isn't it?

UFC held one event a year for 50 years until 3 years ago when they started holding like 30 a year.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

61 thats like three years ago isn't it?

Kens last time headlining a UFC PPV

Wolfgangsta wrote:

UFC held one event a year for 50 years until 3 years ago when they started holding like 30 a year.

I asked my pops if he ever thought UFC would be having 3 PPVs in 11 month

its nuts how far it has come

people dont realize, every original UFC event went off with a SLEW of legal problems always about 70 hrs before the bout started and ending when the show started. There were so many legal battles back then.

It really was a marvel the shit went off

Gotta say, and Ken NEVER gets credit for this, I must be the only person in the world that has this on tape (my pos taped it) in 1996 Ken Shamrock was on Larry King Live sparring (verbally) John McCain. Ken did an excellent job representing MMA as a sport not human cock fighting, which was all that seemed to come out of Johns mouth. at one point Ken basically says you keep talking about morals (as in boxing had them MMA didnt) but you cheated on your sick hurt wife so why should you be the judge on morals. Cant remember exact words but that was the jist of it, John was pissed but didnt say much it was funny. I cannot find it on youtube so I need to figure out how to upload VHS to the internet