Sherdog’s Top 10: Fighters Without UFC Gold

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3. Urijah Faber

Before the Ultimate Fighting Championship added divisions below 155 pounds, Faber carried the torch for a legion of diminutive athletes. “The California Kid” was not only World Extreme Cagefighting’s most popular competitor; he was also its best. Faber won the WEC’s featherweight title on March 17, 2006 and held the strap for more than two years before falling to Mike Thomas Brown in November 2008. He would never again have his hand raised when the stakes were at their highest.

Faber has experienced plenty of success since the WEC was absorbed by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, dominating the majority of the bantamweight Top 10 since his Octagon debut. The Team Alpha Male standout’s list of victims includes Takeya Mizugaki, Eddie Wineland, Brian Bowles, Scott Jorgensen and Michael McDonald. Two names are glaringly absent from that list: Dominick Cruz and Renan Barao, the two men who have held the bantamweight title during Faber’s UFC tenure.

Faber lost to Cruz at UFC 132; and when “The Dominator” was shelved by a knee injury, he lost an interim title bout to Barao at UFC 149. When more injury woes nixed a title unification bout between Cruz and Barao, Faber, coming off an impressive 4-0 campaign in 2013, stepped in to challenge the newly anointed undisputed champion. A first-round stoppage victory by Barao moved Faber to 0-6 in title fights -- including 0-3 in the UFC -- since he first relinquished the WEC belt to Brown. Consider Faber the bantamweight division’s most dangerous bridesmaid.

Number 2 » Wanderlei Silva