Dominick Reyes is a phoenix from the ashes, once again returning to light heavyweight title contention at UFC 333.
‘The Devastator’ endured one of UFC’s most brutal losing streaks, suffering highlight after highlight shortly after his highly contentious loss to Jon Jones in 2020.
Coming back from a four-fight losing streak is testament to Reyes’ never-give-up attitude, and is only emphasised by the impressive statistics behind the feat.
Dominick Reyes’ history of defying the odds
Fighters Weekly collated data from ESPN fight records, going back to the first UFC events.
- Only 43% of UFC fighters on a 4-or-more-fight losing streak come back to win.
- Only 12% of these fighters return to win by knockout.
- Fighters returning from a KO/TKO loss only win by KO/TKO 14% of the time in their next fights. (247 of 1,705 qualifying fights)
- Fighters coming off a first-round finish win by first-round finish in 18% of their UFC fights. (491 of 2,711)
Huge underdog in dodgy Jon Jones fight
To this day, Reyes vs Jones is one of the most controversial fights in UFC history. As per MMA Decisions, 14 of 21 media members scored the fight for the challenger, Reyes, and 78% of 9,121 fans had it in his favour.
‘You had to be there.’ At the time, MMA fans felt this fight was a foregone conclusion. Forums were discussing how and when Jones would dispatch his latest victim, and not just that but saying decision would be his least likely outcome. If two judges had scored one more round for Reyes, it would have been a different outcome.
On his current trajectory, we could see Reyes in an interim light heavyweight title clash soon, especially with uncertainty surrounding Carlos Ulberg’s injury. With that, Reyes gets a rare chance to reclaim what could have been rightfully his years ago, in a sport known for being unforgiving.