UFC champions vacated nine titles in 2021–2025—roughly two per year
A five-year count of UFC title vacancies: nine relinquished belts, the annual breakdown, and why stripping a champion changes the total.
UFC champions relinquished nine undisputed divisional titles across the five complete calendar years from 2021 through 2025—an average of 1.8 titles per year. In that window, “roughly two a year” is a useful answer, but not a fixed schedule: the yearly count ranged from zero to four.
That is our count from the UFC championship lineages, checked against UFC announcements and retrospectives—not an official UFC vacancy statistic or an all-time rate. It counts belts relinquished through retirement, injury or a move to another division. Titles removed by the promotion are counted separately below.
The five-year vacancy count
The unit is one title relinquished, not one fighter. Amanda Nunes therefore contributes two vacancies when she retired holding both the women’s bantamweight and featherweight championships.
| Year | Titles relinquished | Champions and divisions |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 | Khabib Nurmagomedov—lightweight (UFC confirmation) |
| 2022 | 1 | Jiří Procházka—light heavyweight (UFC retrospective) |
| 2023 | 3 | Jamahal Hill—light heavyweight; Amanda Nunes—women’s bantamweight and featherweight (Hill’s relinquishment; Nunes’ two titles) |
| 2024 | 0 | No qualifying relinquishments in the divisional lineages |
| 2025 | 4 | Ilia Topuria—featherweight; Islam Makhachev—lightweight; Jon Jones—heavyweight; Zhang Weili—women’s strawweight (UFC’s year-in-champions review) |
| Total | 9 | Eight fighters; five calendar years |
The arithmetic is 9 ÷ 5 = 1.8 vacancies per year across the promotion. It is not a percentage of champions, nor the probability that a particular champion will vacate.
The count includes all men’s and women’s undisputed divisional championships active during the window, including the now-defunct women’s featherweight title. It excludes interim titles, the symbolic BMF belt and ordinary title losses in fights. A relinquishment counts even when an interim champion is immediately promoted to replace the departing champion.
For timing, a relinquishment belongs to the year the championship reign officially ended, rather than necessarily the year of the fighter’s first announcement. Nurmagomedov announced his retirement after UFC 254 in October 2020, but UFC confirmed his retirement and the vacant lightweight championship in March 2021.
Why “vacated” and “stripped” change the answer
A champion giving up a belt and the promotion removing it both end a championship reign without an in-fight title loss. They are not the same action—and reporting does not always use the terms consistently.
Two additional undisputed reigns ended through title removal during this window:
- Charles Oliveira, lightweight, 2022: He missed championship weight at UFC 274. UFC’s weigh-in statement said he would “vacate” the title when the main event began, but this was a mandatory consequence of the weight miss, not a voluntary relinquishment.
- Francis Ngannou, heavyweight, 2023: UFC stripped him of the championship when contract negotiations ended and the parties separated, according to ESPN’s account of the negotiations.
Include those removals and the broader total becomes 11 undisputed reigns ended through relinquishment or removal, or 2.2 per year. That answers a slightly different question from how often champions give up their titles.
What drove the vacancies?
Among the nine relinquished belts, retirement accounts for four: Nurmagomedov’s, both of Nunes’ titles and Jones’ heavyweight belt. Injury accounts for two, Procházka and Hill. Moving up a division accounts for three, Topuria, Makhachev and Zhang. Those three division moves and Jones’ retirement made 2025 the busiest year in this sample.
A later example illustrates why vacating does not necessarily mean retiring. On September 14, 2026, Tom Aspinall relinquished the heavyweight championship because ongoing eye complications prevented medical clearance, while stressing that he intended to return to competition (ESPN; Al Jazeera). That vacancy falls outside the five-year calculation.