The 10 Oldest UFC Champions of All Time

Tyron Woodley won the belt when he was 34 years old and held it until he was nearly 37, which is impressive considering he’s the fighter on this list that was champion in the lightest weight class. Age matters a little more the lower you go and Woodley was defiant in that affecting his reign right until the last moment, which is impressive considering his last defense came against a young lion in Darren Till. Woodley didn’t have the most graceful ending to his UFC career, but he’ll always be one of the greatest welterweights of all time. 

Chuck Liddell was one of the original stars in MMA and in 2005, he finally captured UFC gold when he finished Randy Couture with the knockout of the year that year in the very first round. He got four defenses of the 205-lb gold in before losing by knockout in the first round himself against Rampage. 

As if Anderson Silva needed another reason to be considered one of the greatest fighters of all time, he’s also one of the ten oldest UFC champions of all time. Unlike some other fighters on this list though, he didn’t have a long career to an old age and then win the title at the end, but instead won the title when he was 31 and kept it until 38, with 10 official title defenses in the meantime. His last UFC win came against Derek Brunson when he was 41. 

Stipe Miocic’s first title reign ended about six weeks out from his 36th birthday with a first-round loss to Daniel Cormier, but of course he ended up coming back to win the trilogy and become one of the older UFC champions of all time. The Cleveland native turns 42 this summer and will hope to jump up a few spots on this list when he tries to reclaim the championship against Jon Jones at some point this year and add his name to the list of UFC heavyweight champions for the third time. 

Jan Błachowicz entered the UFC as the KSW Light Heavyweight champion, but his start in the UFC didn’t go as he would have planned. After six fights in the organization, he was 2-4, picking up a bunch of losses by decision. That just made his eventual title win all the more glorious. Dominick Reyes was coming off of what most thought was a win against Jon Jones, but Jan put him away handily, with vicious strikes in the second round. In December of 2022, he had another title fight which, had he won, would have put him even further up this list, but that fight ended up a draw. 

A lot of the names on this list are naturally underdog stories. Being a fighter is hard enough, let alone one that is nearing the end of their career and is getting what’s likely their final shot at gold. None encapsulate that feeling better than Michael Bisping, who on short notice, knocked out Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 to finally become champion after a long and hard road. His first title defense came against Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217 where Bisping was nearing 39 years old. 

Werdum beat Mark Hunt in an interim title fight at UFC 180 and then unified the belts eight months later when he beat Cain Velasquez in Mexico City. By the time he was up for his first defense nearly a year later, the Brazilian was approaching his 39th birthday. Werdum was already one of the better heavyweights of all time, being the one to end Fedor’s historic win streak, but of course capping his career off with UFC gold, especially in his late-30s, was the cherry on top. 

DC was already going to be considered one of the GOATS of the sport just off of his initial heavyweight run which mostly took place in Strikeforce. After getting the title back and defending it against Volkan Oezdemir, it was revealed that he and then-heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic would have a champ vs. champ fight at UFC 226. As the first round was winding down, DC caught Stipe coming out of a clinch to become not just a two-weight world champion simultaneously, but one of the oldest UFC champions of all time. 

Glover Teixeira got his first chance at UFC gold when he was 34 years old, fighting a Jon Jones who was coming off of his hardest fight ever at the time. Teixeira couldn’t get the job done that time out, but over the next eight years he put together a 10-4 record in the UFC, including a five-fight win streak, to get one last chance to become a champion. Sure enough, he tapped Błachowicz in the second round to become the second-oldest UFC champion of all time at UFC 267 and proved that you should never count an old dog out. 

In the 2000s, Randy Couture was the UFC’s heavyweight champion when he was 45 years old, which is insane even by MMA’s standards and doesn’t look like it’ll be outdone anytime soon. Despite losing the title in November of 2008 to a young and hungry Brock Lesnar, Couture continued to get wins in the UFC up until he was nearly 47. He’s also the only fighter in UFC history to become a champion after already becoming a Hall of Famer and was the first UFC fighter to win belts in two different weight classes. Randy turned back the clock before we even could appreciate how tough of a job that was and he deserves all the props—and the top spot of this list—for it.