The Last Stand of The Great Champions?

Already in 2013, three of UFC’s most successful champions have either been dethroned or have seen their championship reigns flash right before their eyes

Newly crowned no.1 pound for pound fighter on the planet Jon ‘Bones’ Jones saw his championship reign hang in the balance when he faced ‘The Mauler’ Alexander Gustafsson back in September at UFC 165.

A reasonably debatable result for fans to talk about, but an easy candidate for fight of the year. A career of complete dominance against almost anyone the champion has been matched up with, Jon Jones met his toughest challenge against the swede, finding himself on the wrong end of a takedown for the first time in his career, busted up, battered and bruised, but in the end, the champions name was announced by UFC emcee Bruce Buffer, AND STILL. But only just!

April 7 2007, the last time we saw welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre taste defeat, well, officially anyway. Did Johny Hendricks do enough to take away that shiny gold strap that GSP has carried for so long? Many believe he did more than enough, Hendricks was billed as the man to end St-Pierre’s title reign in the 170lbs division, and he seemed to prove those people correct with the performance he put in just last weekend at UFC 167.

Similar to Gustafsson, we expected a new champion to be crowned but only for two judges at cage side scored the bout 48-47 in St-Pierre’s favour, it was enough to see the champions hand raised once again.

Now, lets just go back to July 6, 2013. Lets just try remember what we all got up to that evening. That’s right, we witnessed by far the most shocking upset in mixed martial arts history, we found out that Anderson Silva is in fact human, he can be beat.

Chris Weidman landed a left hook that sent shockwaves throughout the MMA world, he has just knocked out the greatest fighter of all time. Ok, now Anderson Silva was just clowning, that’s the response we hear quite often from Silva fans, and that is indeed true, but lets not forget he did lose the first round of that battle, and was not exactly a heavy favourite in the fight to begin with.

Has Silva finally found his match, kind of like GSP with Johny Hendricks? Jones with Gustafsson? I guess we shall find out December 28th when both combatants will enter The Octagon one more time for the UFC middleweight title.

This year we have been given some memorable moments, but has it told us that it is in fact time for a change? Anderson Silva will be looking to make sure that Chris Weidman’s performance in the first fight was no more than a fluke while Weidman will be out to prove that it is now his time to take the reigns at Middleweight, and next year we could also witness two potential rematches between Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks and Jon Jones vs Alexander Gustafsson.

With UFC confirming they will have 46 shows next year, is it safe to say that we will be spoiled in the coming months? I dont know about you but boy am I excited for 2014.

By Jason Farrell – @J_Farrell1

Owner/Editor of SevereMMA.com. Writer, Podcaster, Producer of 'Notorious: Conor McGregor' film, 'Conor McGregor: Notorious' TV series, 'Ten Thousand Hours', 'The Fighting Irish' and more documentary films.