For the longest time, Robert Whittaker knew what his goal was. Before he was someone every fight fan knew. Long before he was a staple of big time UFC pay-per-views like Saturday’s UFC 308, where he faces Khamzat Chimaev in the co-main event. Back when he was first starting out, the why of it all was always so clear to him.
“The goal was to be one of the greatest fighters who had ever lived,” Whittaker said. “That was it.”
Becoming a UFC champion, getting that shiny gold belt around his waist? That was just a byproduct. It was a physical reminder to everyone else. It told them where you stood in the pecking order. Plus it came with a big boost in pay, which helped.
But a funny thing happened after Whittaker won the UFC middleweight title. Very quickly, the moniker “UFC champion” began to seem very important. It was how people knew him, how they identified him to others. Any time his name came up in news stories it always appeared now as some form of “Robert Whittaker, UFC champion.” That was who he was to the world.
So when he lost the title to Israel Adesanya via second-round knockout in 2019, it was almost like an identity crisis.
“It really pushed me,” Whittaker said. “It pushed me down a path of self-reflection. I think one of my biggest growing points as a person, not just as a fighter, was then. Because it forced me and kind of propelled me down a path of searching within and trying to find answers to questions that I’ve always had.”
Here’s the thing about a UFC title: Almost every person who’s ever had it has also lost it. For such a heavy chunk of leather and metal, it’s incredibly ephemeral, like trying to hold on to a handful of smoke. The idea is that it’s supposed to be a physical marker of a metaphysical concept. This person is the best. But you’re only seen as the best for as long as you have that title. When you lose the belt, what then?
The first thing that occurs to most newly ex-champs is redemption. They’ve had the belt, lost the belt, and now they must get the belt back — immediately.
That’s how it was for Chris Weidman, who was just four years and 10 fights into his pro career when he dethroned the great Anderson Silva to become middleweight champion in 2013. Weidman defended the title three times, then lost it to Luke Rockhold in his first defeat as a professional fighter.
That loss was crushing, Weidman said, for multiple reasons.
“I got my ass whipped in that fight,” Weidman said. “After I threw that spinning back kick, got taken down, Rockhold was in mount and I was just exhausted. So I got really beat up in that fight, which is tough. But also, that was my first loss ever. I didn’t think anyone could beat me. So your ego takes a beating too.”
Almost every person who’s ever had a UFC title has also lost it. For such a heavy chunk of leather and metal, it’s incredibly ephemeral, like trying to hold on to a handful of smoke.
As he was healing from that loss, Weidman said, his focus was solely on getting the belt back. From a distance, that goal might seem no different than it was before, when he was just another contender trying to make his way up to the title. But in practice, it translated to a different mindset that he felt stunted rather than accelerated his growth as a fighter.
“You become obsessed with the belt,” Weidman said. “You feel like, it’s mine. So instead of focusing on, hey, maybe there are some things I should be getting better at, you’re just focusing on that end result. I was telling myself it was just a bad night, that wasn’t me in there. Then you’re not addressing some of the issues you need to. You’re not learning from it that way. It was just, ‘I need to get back in there.’”
What makes it even trickier is the way the mental calibrations change once you’re already been the champ, Weidman pointed out. If he’d been asked to beat one more contender before getting his first title shot, he might have felt slighted or annoyed, but no less hungry in the lead-up to the fight itself. But after losing the belt, any potential fight that wasn’t for the title felt like it was just preamble, some extra item on the checklist that had to be completed but not necessarily fixated on.
“You kind of feel like, ‘OK fine, I’ve just got to beat this one guy and then I’ll get my title shot,’” Weidman said. “That’s a different way of thinking than you had when you were trying to become a world champion for the first time. It’s like the goals in your head get kind of messed up.”
One fighter who gained some perspective on the whole concept in an unconventional way is Dominick Cruz. He became the inaugural UFC men’s bantamweight champion after the WEC organization was added to the UFC roster at the end of 2010. Cruz defended the belt twice before being forced to give it up in 2014 due to injuries. After making a successful return after three years away, he was again sidelined by injuries. All around him, people seemed to be writing him off.
“I’ll never forget when I blew my knee out for the third time,” Cruz said. “(UFC CEO) Dana (White) called me on the phone and I had to tell him I blew my knee out. He said, ‘You are literally the most unlucky person I’ve ever met in my life.’ And I said, ‘What am I supposed to do with that, Dana?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’”
While Cruz was on the shelf, rehabbing his many injuries and trying to forge a secondary career as a color commentator for the UFC, he watched other champions come and go. Some were the best in their divisions. Others got to be champion because someone else — for one reason or another — wasn’t available. Still, on-air talent was expected to hype up everyone with a UFC belt around his waist as the best in all the land.
“That gave me a totally different perspective that this isn’t actually about a championship at all,” Cruz said. “This is about promotion. It’s a marketing tool.
“While I was talking about these other athletes and how they were the next best champion that ever existed, it really showed me that I needed to learn to be happy with what I had created because what if I never got back? Was I still a champion even if I wasn’t called champion by the organization? Going through all that, it really created a perspective for me that I needed to love myself even if I never came back to the sport. Nobody could give that to me except for me.”
Cruz returned to win the title again in 2016, surprising just above everyone except himself. When he finally lost the belt in an actual fight later that year, he stunned many media members by showing up to the post-fight press conference and delivering a breakdown of his own defeat that was coldly analytical with no hint of self-pity or even much in the way of sorrow.
It’s a post-fight moment that’s still remembered fondly, in large part because of how rare it is to see a champion talk so clearly and dispassionately about his own failures. But at the time, Cruz said, he didn’t think it was anything so special.
“I think it was because I know who I am,” Cruz said. “If you can’t show up after a loss the same way you show up after a win, there’s something missing. You can’t have wins in this sport if you don’t also have losses. If it was just wins all the time with no chance of losing, this game would be boring. If you can’t go up there and talk about it after you lose, it’s because you’re not willing to look at the lesson.”
But there are a lot of things that can make it difficult for most fighters to see losing the title as a learning opportunity. The way people treat you changes instantly, for one thing. As Weidman pointed out, one day you’re a permanent VIP, flying first class between promotional appearances to show off the belt and soak up the adulation. The next thing you know you’re lumped into the far less distinguished and all-encompassing category of “former UFC champion,” a moniker that sticks to you like tree sap.
“I’m not complaining,” Weidman said. “You get a lot of respect from people as a former champ. People constantly call you a legend and all this stuff, and that’s really cool. It’s nice, but when you’re the champ? Man, you get treated like the champ. It’s a different kind of treatment when you used to be the champ.”
As for Whittaker, he now finds himself in a situation where he could be one win from another crack at the UFC middleweight title. If he beats Chimaev on Saturday it will undoubtedly put him on the short list of candidates for any upcoming championship fight at 185 pounds. And while he’d certainly love to fight for the title again, Whittaker said, he knows he can’t let it become his only focus.
“I think more or less, (winning) the belt really opened up the door to show me what I could be,” Whittaker said. “It wasn’t so much about reaching the belt for me. It was about what I could be as a person, as an athlete, because I didn’t really think it was possible until then. And I feel like I’m so much more than I was when I had the belt, because I can see that the ceiling’s much higher than I ever believed it was. There is no ceiling, really. And that just kind of gave me room to grow so much more.”
It’s as if, for a young fighter who hopes and dreams but doesn’t yet truly know, winning a title can be confirmation. Yes, you are as good as you told everyone you were. You are who you believed you could be.
But take away that hardware, and do you still believe? Are you still you, even without the trophy that marked your finest hour? And if not, who are you?
“I think a lot of fighters make it their goal to get the belt, and then they struggle to find a goal past the belt,” Whittaker said. “It requires a lot of self-reflection, a lot of soul searching. Because sometimes you have to find the answers within yourself, as corny as it sounds, and sometimes you’re not going to like the answers that you find. Or, heaven forbid, you don’t find anything. Then you have to try and create new goals and new targets and new drives. And that’s something you’ve got to do for yourself.”
