Who has the second most UFC title defenses?

Answer 1

Although Dan, "The Beast", Severn has 101 victories in MMA, he is not the winningest person in UFC history.

MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts. Mixed Martial Arts is a concept that has been around and has been visited frequently for many years. One of the first publicized "Mixed Martial Arts" events (and commonly considered the first American MMA match) was between a Judoka (a practitioner of the sport of Judo) named "Judo" Gene Lebell and a boxer named Milo Savage on December 2, 1963. Savage was choked out in the fourth round.

Another famous "Mixed Martial Arts" match was between famous boxer Muhammad Ali and a popular Japanese professional wrestler named Antonio Inoki. This match took place in Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan on June 26, 1976.

As you can see neither of these fights were "UFC" and neither of these fights were what we would commonly refer to as "MMA" presently. By definition they were two different "martial arts" competing against each other. This was the concept behind the formation of the UFC. The UFC is the organization name, the brand if you will, that created Mixed Martial Arts.

Mixed Martial Arts is what they had to name the sport when trying to become a legitimate company in the United States. Quickly after the first UFC Pay-Per-View events took place, many US politicians began to speak out and move to ban UFC from the United States. Chief among this was Senator John McCain in 1995.

With all of the legal trouble that was beginning for the UFC, it came up for sale. Dana white, a "boxercise" instructor and business owner, saw that it was for sale and mentioned it to his friends, Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III (Fertitta Brothers). They immediately created Zuffa, a sport promotional company. Zuffa bought the UFC and began the work of legitimizing it and making it legal in the United States.

In order to legalize what the UFC was doing, it had to become a sport. The company was named UFC so they couldn't call the sport UFC. The sport was then officially called "Mixed Martial Arts". At that point they started creating universal rules and getting judges and referees and become a complete sport. They were soon sanctioned by several states under the universal rules of MMA and began having events.

So, you can see that the SPORT is called MMA. Within MMA there have been several promotions. A promotion is a company that puts on MMA events. Each promotion has specific things that make them supposedly different from each other. Some differences are: Weight classes, equipment (i.e., gloves, shoes, tape/wraps, etc) and other things such as striking restrictions and round configuration. Some promotions have a different round configuration. Pride Fighting Championships had a 10 minute first round and two 5 minute rounds after that. Their scoring was a not a "per round" scoring. It was an overall scoring. The difference in the rounds were because they were in Japan and had their own sanctioning body.

So anyway, the overall "sport" is called MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). One PROMOTION within that SPORT (even though it is the founding promotion, it is still a promotion) is the UFC. So when you say, "Most wins in UFC history" you are directly "pigeon-holing" yourself.

Your answer will be a very small answer be because people often fight in other promotions outside of the UFC. The UFC frequently cuts fighters' contracts and releases them when they lose and bring them back when they start to win again.

For instance, the original answer that was posted to this question was, "Dan 'The Beast' DeWayne Severn has 80 wins total," Specifically answer your question in its context, that answer is wrong. (which is the problem with "wiki's" in general. While it is a community knowledge base, it is also a community ignorance base.) Dan Severn only fought in the early days of the UFC and he only fought in that promotion 12 times.

Even though Dan Severn, at the time of his retirement in 2012, had an MMA record of 101-19-7, he only had a UFC record of 9-3.

So the answer to the question posed is not 80 wins. The correction to the previous answer is actually that Dan Severn at the time of his retirement in 2012 has 9 UFC victories.

The answer to the actual question posed, as of my current date of 8/12/13, is that there is a tie between Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre (GSP) at 19 overall UFC Victories.

Answer 2

I think Georges St-Pierre holds the record for the second most number of title defenses in the UFC. He is the current reigning UFC Welterweight champ. He has defended the title a record 8 times.

Anderson Silva owns the record for the most number of title defenses with 10 title defenses.

Answer 3

Tito Ortiz holds the record for most UFC fights.