Holly Holm’s Uphill Climb

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.* * * Holly Holm begins her quest to reclaim the Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s bantamweight title this weekend when she headlines UFC on Fox 20 against Valentina Shevchenko. Although it feels like she’s within reach of nailing down another crack at the title, history tells us that the road to regaining what was is very unkind and a lot more challenging than one would expect. And this is despite the notion that the title is being tossed around like a game of hot potato at the current moment. But why is it so difficult for fighters to regain gold? The list of former champions who eventually regained the world title is awfully thin. Randy Couture mastered the art by regaining the title as both a heavyweight and light heavyweight, but very few others have come close. Georges St. Pierre, Matt Hughes, Tim Sylvia, Cain Velasquez and…yeah… that’s about it. Dominick Cruz never actually lost the title in a fight so he doesn’t belong on this list. Sylvia gets a pass because he was stripped for failing a drug test and then lost to Frank Mir in a fight for the vacant title. For a sport that has been around for two decades, it’s remarkable that so few have been successful at regaining the title. As a matter of fact, it appears that once you lose the title, you fall out of the picture completely if you’re not given an immediate rematch. History explains this in very flat terms. Take a look at the former champions such as Johny Hendricks, Anthony Pettis, Renan Barao, Shogun Rua, Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida. …

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