Henry Cejudo knocked out UFC GOAT contender in 32 seconds to save his division

02/18/2025 05:38 AM

‘The Messenger’ had to save the flyweight division before he could become ‘Triple C’.

The UFC’s flyweight division was in a strange place around 2018 with lots of talk of the entire weight class being removed from the UFC before it came into a new era.

There wasn’t a whole lot of buzz around the 125-pounders at the time but that suddenly changed when the second longest title reign in UFC history was brought to an end.

Henry Cejudo defeated Demetrious Johnson via split decision in a rematch but the uncertainty surrounding the flyweights didn’t end with a changing of the guard.

The former Olympic gold medallist had only just won the title and now he was being tasked with keeping the division alive.

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Henry Cejudo stopped TJ Dillashaw in just over 30 seconds to keep flyweight alive

On the same night that Henry Cejudo defeated ‘Mighty Mouse’ in a classic fight, TJ Dillashaw defended the bantamweight title by stopping Cody Garbrandt for a second time.

The two champions were then matched up with one another in a fight that would see Dillashaw somehow drop down to flyweight to try and become a two-weight world champion.

At the time, the bantamweight champ believed that if he won the title, he would make history as the last UFC flyweight champion before the division was shut down.

It was clear that Dillashaw had no long term plans to compete at flyweight following his meeting with Cejudo which was scheduled for UFC on ESPN+ 1 in January of 2019.

"The UFC wants to get rid of the division and they hired me to go down and close it and get another belt in the process," Dillashaw told Forbes ahead of the fight.

"It's a win-win for me. They're paying me a (expletive) load of money to move down and kill the 125-pound division and collect a second belt. So, it's game time."

Whilst this fight would be his last in the flyweight division before he permanently moved to bantamweight, Cejudo did successfully keep the division alive.

After catching Dillashaw early, he got him out of there in just over 30 seconds in what was a heavily disputed stoppage at the time.

Both men were keen to run it back at bantamweight in a rematch but after Dillashaw was stripped of the 135-pound title following a positive drug test, Cejudo made his way up and became the UFC’s fourth ever champ-champ by beating Marlon Moraes for the vacant title at UFC 238.

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Henry Cejudo’s legacy is already assured in combat sports but he returns on February 22

After defending the bantamweight title against Dominick Cruz at UFC 249, Henry Cejudo announced that he would be retiring from MMA.

His name was already in the history books as a former gold medallist and simultaneous two-weight world champion but the writing was always on the wall that he would return to the Octagon.

Since coming back in 2023, ‘Triple C’ has suffered back-to-back losses to the former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling and the current champ Merab Dvalishvili.

Cejudo now looks to prove that his days of competing at the highest level aren’t over by taking on Song Yadong in the main event of UFC Seattle this Saturday on February 22.