On This Day — November 4: Three New Champions in One Night at UFC 217
There are bigger dates on this calendar, and there are more famous single fights. But for one night with everything on it — a returning legend, a grudge match, and an undefeated champion walking into a trap — November 4 stands alone: UFC 217 at Madison Square Garden in 2017, the first card in UFC history where three title fights produced three new champions. The Garden sold out — 18,201 people, a $6.2 million gate — for a card the UFC billed as its biggest of the year. It undersold it.
There are bigger dates on this calendar, and there are more famous single fights. But for one night with everything on it — a returning legend, a grudge match, and an undefeated champion walking into a trap — November 4 stands alone: UFC 217 at Madison Square Garden in 2017, the first card in UFC history where three title fights produced three new champions. The Garden sold out — 18,201 people, a $6.2 million gate — for a card the UFC billed as its biggest of the year. It undersold it.
2017 — The return: St-Pierre climbs a division and takes a second crown
Georges St-Pierre had been gone for almost four years. When he walked away after UFC 167 in November 2013, relinquishing the welterweight title rather than defending it one more time, he left on twelve straight wins and nine consecutive title defenses, unbeaten for over a decade. Nobody knew if he was retired. Most assumed he was done.
He came back at 36, in a division he had never fought in, against Michael Bisping — the UFC's first British champion, a man on a five-fight win streak who had taken the middleweight belt at UFC 199 and defended it against Dan Henderson. The fight had been agreed early in the year and delayed for months by injury, which only lengthened the promotion: Bisping spent it promising that the smaller, older, rustier man had made a mistake choosing him.
The first round was a séance: the jab pumping, a takedown with a minute left, and then, at the horn, a superman jab and a wheel kick that had the Garden clutching itself out of sheer nostalgia. For long stretches it looked like a memory of St-Pierre rather than the thing itself, which was still remarkable. But Bisping grew into the fight in the second — right hands finding the range — and in the third he opened St-Pierre up with elbows from his guard until the Canadian's face was a mask of blood. The comeback was becoming a war of attrition, and wars of attrition were Bisping's home ground.
Then, standing, St-Pierre slipped a counter left hook onto Bisping's chin and put him down. He swarmed, took the back as Bisping rolled to survive, and locked a rear-naked choke. Bisping, who had built a career on refusing to yield, refused to tap — and went to sleep. Technical submission, 4:23 of the third round.
"I took this fight to challenge myself and I am honored to be champion once again," St-Pierre said. He had become the fourth two-division champion in UFC history, joining Randy Couture, B.J. Penn and Conor McGregor, and his 13th straight win tied Bisping's own record of 20 UFC victories. It was also, though nobody announced it that night, his last fight: he vacated the middleweight title within weeks, citing ulcerative colitis, and retired for good in 2019. The greatest welterweight of all time had come back for exactly one night, taken a second crown at a higher weight, and closed the book himself. Bisping, characteristically, was back in a cage 21 days later.
2017 — The grudge: Dillashaw survives Garbrandt and takes his belt back
The co-main event was the most personal title fight of its year. Cody Garbrandt had taken the bantamweight title from Dominick Cruz the previous December with a performance that looked like the start of an era. T.J. Dillashaw, the champion before Cruz, was Garbrandt's former training partner at Team Alpha Male — and Dillashaw's departure from that team had curdled into a genuine feud, sharpened by a season of The Ultimate Fighter spent coaching against each other.
It nearly ended in the first round. Garbrandt, who refused to touch gloves after a tense staredown, dropped him in the closing seconds and swarmed for the finish; the horn may have saved the challenger. The two had taken turns hurting each other, and in the second round the turn came back around: Dillashaw put Garbrandt down and poured on punches until the stoppage at 2:41, reclaiming the title and becoming a two-time bantamweight champion. The feud did not end at the Garden — but its defining image, the old teammate rising from a knockdown to take the belt, belongs to November 4.
2017 — The shock: Namajunas ends the Jędrzejczyk era in three minutes
The first title fight of the night was supposed to be the formality. Joanna Jędrzejczyk was undefeated, had defended the strawweight title five times, and stood one win from tying Ronda Rousey's record of six consecutive title defenses. Rose Namajunas, who had lost the division's inaugural title fight three years earlier and rebuilt piece by piece, was the challenger the champion expected to style on.
Namajunas dropped her in the first round. Then, as Jędrzejczyk rose and tried to reassert the order of things, Namajunas dropped her again — a left hand this time — and finished her on the ground at 3:03 of the first round. The first defeat of Jędrzejczyk's career was not a decision or a war. It was a three-minute dismantling by a 25-year-old who had told anyone who would listen, in the quietest voice on the card, that she was going to do exactly that.
Namajunas earned a Performance of the Night bonus for the finish, which was the least surprising award of the evening.
Consider what the win actually broke. Jędrzejczyk's five defenses had been built on volume, spite and an aura that opponents were beaten before the first exchange; she had not merely won her fights, she had diminished the women in them. Namajunas undid all of it with two punches' worth of timing — the aura first, then the champion. The strawweight division has had several champions since; it has never quite had another reign like the one that ended that night, or another changing of the guard so abrupt.
The rest of the night
Underneath the title fights, Stephen Thompson outpointed Jorge Masvidal, Paulo Costa stopped Johny Hendricks in two rounds, and short-notice replacement Ovince Saint Preux knocked out Corey Anderson with a third-round head kick. James Vick finished Joseph Duffy at 4:59 of the second round — one second from the horn — and Mark Godbeer won by disqualification after Walt Harris kicked him during a referee's timeout called for a groin strike. Even the card's footnotes had teeth. Even the prelims made history of a sort: Curtis Blaydes's win over Alexey Oleynik turned on an illegal kick that barely grazed an ear, a doctor's stoppage, and the New York commission turning to instant replay — an early landmark for replay in the sport.
Also on this day
- 2023 — Jailton Almeida defeated Derrick Lewis by unanimous decision in São Paulo.
Three title fights, three new champions, one returning king who never fought again. Cards are supposed to build to their main event; UFC 217 built to it three times. The years since have only raised its standing — it is now routinely named among the greatest cards the UFC has ever staged, and November 4 is the reason this series treats some dates as features rather than entries.
