Tracing the HW and LHW Champions

Trplsec · Sep 5, 2010

Interesting article. It crosses promotions and even rules to some degree but it's cool to see "who beat who".

Few easy paths to linear titles

By Dave Meltzer

With all the different organizations in mixed martial arts boasting competing claims of who is No. 1, there is an old-fashioned way of determining who the real world champion is at each weight class.
Itâ€™s the linear test.
The linear champion, a term used more commonly in boxing, is the guy who beats the champion to become the champion, regardless of specific belts recognized by sanctioning bodies.
With the exception of heavyweight and possibly lightweight, the current linear champion in the five major weight divisions is the person who holds the UFC belt.

The politics of MMA, in which the sportâ€™s biggest company, the UFC, doesnâ€™t work with other promotions, makes for a series of twists and turns in the claim for linear supremacy.
For evidence, you need look no further than the oldest division in the sport, the heavyweights.
Heavyweight: Not Brock Lesnar
The first true heavyweight MMA champion, before weight classes even existed in UFC, was Ken Shamrock. The UFC debuted on November 12, 1993, in Denver, with a one-night tournament, won by Royce Gracie.
The companyâ€™s first actual singles title match was on April 7, 1995, with Gracie vs. Shamrock for what was called the â€œWorld Superfight championship.â€
The match, the longest in UFC history, went 36:06 before it was called off due to pay-per-view time running out, and ruled a draw. At the time, MMA fights had no judges. If there had been judging, Shamrock, who weighed between 205 and 210 pounds, would have easily won the decision from the 180-pound Gracie.
Gracie dropped out of UFC, and on July 14, 1995, in Casper, Wyoming, Shamrock beat Dan Severn with a guillotine in a battle of the two top fighters in the organization at the time, to become the first Superfight champ.
Severn won a rematch on May 17, 1996, in Detroit, on a split decision in one of the worst fights in company history. When Mark Coleman beat Severn on February 7, 1997, the title was renamed the UFC heavyweight championship.
While Brock Lesnar holds that championship today, the linear title scenario isnâ€™t as cut-and-dried. The UFC belt passed from Coleman to Maurice Smith to Randy Couture, all in 1997. Couture then had money issues with the original UFC ownership group, left the company without being defeated, and went to Japan.
The linear title left UFC with Couture, who lost via armbar to Enson Inoue in a Vale Tudo fight in Tokyo on October 25, 1998. Inoue then lost to Mark Kerr in the PRIDE organization. Kerr then lost to Kazuyuki Fujita on May 1, 2000, and thatâ€™s where things get really interesting.
Fujita battered Kerr to win a decision in a major upset. It was the first match for both men in an eight-man, one-night event that was billed to crown the best fighter in the sport, the original PRIDE Grand Prix tournament.
Fujita suffered a knee injury in the Kerr fight from ramming his knee into Kerrâ€™s head so many times. He came to the ring for his second fight, in order to collect his paycheck, and as soon as the bell rang, his corner threw in the towel in a match with Coleman, so technically, he competed and lost. Coleman went on to win the tournament, and the linear title stayed with PRIDE until the closing of the organization in 2007.
Colemanâ€™s next loss was to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, who later became PRIDEâ€™s first world heavyweight champion. Nogueira held both the linear and PRIDE titles until losing to Fedor Emelianenko via decision on March 16, 2003.
Nobody beat Emelianenko until June 26, 2010, in San Jose, when Fabricio Werdum submitted him with an armbar in 1:09 in a Strikeforce match. So while Lesnar holds the most publicized version of a world title, Werdum actually holds the linear claim that traces back to Shamrock.
Light heavyweight: All UFC
In the light heavyweight division, the UFC title, at the time called the middleweight title, dates back to December 27, 1997, when Frank Shamrock beat Olympic gold medal winning wrestler Kevin Jackson with an armbar in 14 seconds in a match in Yokohama, Japan.
Shamrock actually never lost another match until 2007, but he stopped fighting as a light heavyweight in 2003.
Shamrock would now be considered by todayâ€™s standards a medium sized welterweight. At the time, there was no middleweight division. He fought sparingly after vacating the UFC title at the end of 1999 due to better money offers, and was a middleweight when he lost to Renzo Gracie via disqualification in 2007.
Because Shamrockâ€™s days as a light heavyweight were limited, the most legitimate title claim remained with UFC, which filled the void after Shamrock left the company with an April 14, 2000, match in Tokyo where Tito Ortiz beat Wanderlei Silva via decision. For the past decade, that title can be perfectly traced in the UFC cage to the championship held today by Mauricio â€œShogunâ€ Rua, who beat Lyoto Machida on May 8, 2010 in Montreal.
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Tracing the HW and LHW Champions

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Tracing the HW and LHW Champions

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