
To Become a UFC Champion is to Reach the Pinnacle of MMA… But Some Fighters Throw it All Away… Here Are Ten MMA Champions Who Got Stripped of the Title…
The UFC has come a long way from its original five weight classes. Now they’ve had dozens of champs but not all of those fighters have had the same success. To become a champion is the easy part. Defending that title with a mark on your back is even tougher.
It’s a fact that for a number of reasons, many fighters have been stripped of their titles. Today we’re going to look at ten fighters who got stripped of their belts. Some failed drug tests, others just refused to defend their straps.
Honourable mentions go to Murilo Bustamente and Jens Pulver. Check out the ten different cases below.

10. Tim Sylvia
Tim Sylvia is one of the weirdest looking fighters out there. Yep, he’s massive, very heavy (265lbs is the heavyweight limit) and ugly. But he was never exactly at peak conditioning. That didn’t matter for a while though, because he was able to smash his way to the UFC heavyweight title, knocking out Ricco Rodriguez at UFC 41.

He’d defend his belt against Gan McGee – jeez, there’s a name from the past – and of course, he’d fail a drug test after that. Just a year after stripping Josh Barnett, they’d have to strip their heavyweight champ again. Sylvia would regain the title nearly three years later, smashing out Andrei Arlovski at UFC 59.