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The UFC heavyweight curse: Fabricio Werdum loses his cool, and his belt

Connor Ruebusch unpacks the strange way in which former UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum lost his title at UFC 198.

The UFC heavyweight title is said to be cursed. No champion has ever managed two consecutive defenses of the belt, going all the way back to the first ever UFC champion, Mark Coleman. Randy Couture, Cain Velasquez, and Tim Sylvia all own more than two title wins, but all three were felled The longest single title run belongs to Cain Velasquez, who wore the belt for 896 days between December of 2012 and November of 2014, a time period in which he only managed to defend the strap--you guessed it--twice.