A handful of rivalries did more to build the UFC than any single champion did alone, because they turned one fight into a multi-year story fans had to follow. The best of them share a pattern: a first meeting that went one way, a rematch that either reversed it or confirmed it, and stakes that kept rising each time the two men shared a cage. Several predate the promotion's modern look entirely — for context on just how different the sport was when some of these rivalries began, see a short history of the UFC.
Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Hughes
Hughes beat a 23-year-old St-Pierre by first-round submission at UFC 50 in October 2004, handing him his first UFC loss. St-Pierre got his answer two years later, stopping Hughes by TKO in the second round at UFC 65 in November 2006 to win the welterweight title. The trilogy closed at UFC 79 in December 2007, where St-Pierre submitted Hughes again in round two to unify the interim and full welterweight belts. St-Pierre won the series 2-1 and went on to become one of the division's longest-reigning champions.
Chuck Liddell vs. Randy Couture
Couture won the first meeting at UFC 43 in June 2003, wearing Liddell down for a third-round TKO. Liddell reversed it in brutal fashion at UFC 52 in April 2005, knocking Couture out in just over two minutes to take the light heavyweight title — the first knockout loss of Couture's career. The trilogy finale at UFC 57 in February 2006 ended the same way, a second-round knockout for Liddell. Each fight did bigger pay-per-view numbers than the last, and the rivalry is widely credited with helping turn UFC events into must-see pay-per-view spectacles rather than niche cards.
Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar
This one was never a trilogy — it's on this list for a single fight. Griffin and Bonnar met in the April 2005 finale of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, a three-round slugfest that Griffin won by unanimous decision. Both men were awarded UFC contracts afterward regardless of the result, and the fight is widely credited with convincing a national Spike TV audience that the sport was worth watching, at a moment when the promotion's future was still genuinely in doubt.
Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard
Maynard won the opening fight by lopsided decision in 2008, Edgar's first loss as a pro. The rematch at UFC 125 in January 2011 went the other way — or rather, nowhere: five rounds that ended in a draw. The trilogy was finally settled at UFC 136 in Houston that October, where Edgar came back from an early knockdown to stop Maynard in the fourth round and keep the lightweight title. The head-to-head finished 1-1-1, one of the rare major rivalries nobody won outright.
Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber
Faber submitted a young Cruz in the first round at WEC 26 in 2007 — still the only loss of Cruz's professional career. Cruz got his revenge four years later at UFC 132, winning a clear unanimous decision, and closed the series for good at UFC 199 in June 2016, dropping Faber twice en route to another unanimous decision while defending the bantamweight title. Cruz won the series 2-1, with the first fight standing as the one real blemish on an otherwise dominant run.
Nate Diaz vs. Conor McGregor
The most recent entry on this list is also the shortest series: two fights, split evenly. Diaz, stepping in on 11 days' notice at welterweight, submitted McGregor with a second-round rear-naked choke at UFC 196 in March 2016 — the first loss of McGregor's UFC career. McGregor got the rematch at UFC 202 that August, dropping Diaz multiple times early and holding on for a majority decision over five rounds. The series never got its decider; both men moved on to other targets.
The rivalries at a glance
| Rivalry | Series result | Defining fight |
|---|---|---|
| St-Pierre vs. Hughes | 2-1, St-Pierre | UFC 79 submission for the unified title |
| Liddell vs. Couture | 2-1, Liddell | UFC 52 first-round knockout |
| Griffin vs. Bonnar | Single fight, Griffin | TUF 1 Finale decision |
| Edgar vs. Maynard | 1-1-1 | UFC 136 fourth-round stoppage |
| Cruz vs. Faber | 2-1, Cruz | UFC 199 unanimous decision |
| Diaz vs. McGregor | 1-1 | Never settled |
What made these rivalries last
None of these pairings stayed interesting because of trash talk alone. Every one of them had a title, a short-notice storyline, or a first loss attached to it, which gave the rematch actual stakes rather than just a grudge. The series that went the longest — St-Pierre-Hughes and Liddell-Couture — also happened to track a changing of the guard in real time, with the older champion losing his grip on the division fight by fight.
The one constant across all six is that the first fight rarely settled anything. A single result can be a style mismatch, a bad night, or a short-notice disadvantage, and the history above is full of fighters who lost early and came back to win the series. That's the real case for rivalries over one-off fights: three data points, spread across years, tell you far more about who the better fighter actually was than any single result could on its own.