#13: Rafael dos Anjos
Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
In general, a common thread among all-time greats tends to be a sense of risk-aversion; both in terms of fighting-style and the fights they take, the greatest often tend to be more conservative, especially after their spot in all-time-elite company is established. Jose Aldo's wild and brutal WEC run was very different from his more methodical UFC-championship shutouts; Georges St-Pierre specifically wanted Michael Bisping (an uncommonly battleworn and aging champion) for his middleweight title bid, and didn't look to unify against Robert Whittaker after winning that belt; Jon Jones has taken to taking natural middleweights to 5-round decisions, instead of moving to heavyweight after cleaning 205 out. The exciting "anyone, anytime" fighter tends to be a journeyman or a gatekeeper (like Donald Cerrone or Michael Johnson, past brief top-5 stints), just by virtue of MMA being a highly volatile sport where everyone eventually finds a bad matchup without either luck or planning.
What makes Rafael dos Anjos such an anomaly is that he's outside that trend; the great Brazilian's career has been defined by taking any fight, no matter the style and no matter the name, across weight-classes and beyond rankings, and being skilled enough to stay near the top of deep divisions with a style that has changed but never decreased in intensity.
Combined with one of the most surprising mid-career technical renaissances that any fighter has ever shown, RDA has a heavily contextual case for being an all-time great (without a long dominant reign nor an impressive numerical record), but a fantastic one nonetheless.
Early Struggles
Even at the beginning of his UFC tenure, dos Anjos was thrown into a shark tank; the man known regionally as “Jeguinho” started 4-4 with the promotion, facing Jeremy Stephens (a mainstay of the 145/155 top 10) in his UFC debut as well as tough gatekeepers Clay Guida and Gleison Tibau afterwards,. His wins in-between made it clear he was better than his record, though, and he eventually gained some momentum with a five-fight winstreak as he continued to improve his striking (starting in the UFC as a near-pure grappler); the man who ended that run was Khabib Nurmagomedov, who not only went on to become an all-time great lightweight himself, but also turned out to be one of the few archetypes that has consistently troubled dos Anjos.
The Champ
Dos Anjos pressed on, and by Nurmagomedov’s subsequent bout two years later, dos Anjos had won five times, building one of the most dominant title runs in 155 history in the process; with Kings MMA and Rafael Cordeiro by his side, dos Anjos’ game had come together rapidly, and he found his niche as one of the most punishing and sound pressure fighters in MMA. Becoming the first man to knock out the great Benson Henderson should’ve opened eyes to his drastic improvement, but it mostly didn’t; beating Nate Diaz’s legs until they were purple should’ve brought attention to that, but it didn’t; dos Anjos entered his Dallas bout against Anthony Pettis a massive underdog, a quiet man with a spotty record against one of the most impressive and flashy champions in all of sport.
What ended up happening at UFC 185 can best be described as utter ruination; even Pettis himself remembers that fight as one that affected his confidence in the cage for years to come, as dos Anjos walked Pettis down and beat the brakes off him for 25 grueling minutes. It wasn’t necessarily an aesthetically pleasing performance by dos Anjos, but the situation demanded it be so; Pettis’s kicking arsenal was the best part of his game by some distance, and while dos Anjos outkicked him, he also prioritized pushing Pettis back and roughing him up in the pocket. As it turned out, Pettis was the perfect stage for dos Anjos’ improvements in all respects: without counters educated enough to keep dos Anjos away (as dos Anjos shoulder-rolled or slipped the few that came back), and without the smart footwork to alleviate the pressure. Dos Anjos’s left body-kick did a lot of work to help push Pettis back, his right-hook cut off Pettis’s other route off the fence, Pettis met with sound counterpunching and defense as he tried to gain ground, and RDA was relentless in flurrying on the inside to gain takedown entries; on the ground, dos Anjos cut through Pettis’s guard with relative ease, despite the danger that most face against one of the most aggressive guard players in MMA to this day. As of 2019, even as Pettis seems on the decline (and figured out, largely due to UFC 185), the sheer domination of dos Anjos’ win is nearly unparalleled among Pettis’s opponents, perhaps excepting Max Holloway.
Nine months later, as dos Anjos swarmed a surging Donald Cerrone for a 66-second finish, it seemed like the respect he’d earned (as an all-time great lightweight, and an all-time skilled fighter) would be realized. He even had the most sought-after fight in MMA lined up; Conor McGregor had knocked Jose Aldo out and was coming for another belt, and that meant a bout against RDA at UFC 196.
Disappointment, Decline and Resurgence
There’s no telling how the McGregor fight would’ve gone for dos Anjos (had he not been forced out by injury), but it’s fairly clear given dos Anjos’ subsequent problems with making 155 that he would’ve been fairly compromised had it gone on. Combined with losing his lightweight belt in an upset to Eddie Alvarez (a fighter uniquely capable in dealing with swarming pressure-fighters) as well as his loss to top contender Tony Ferguson afterwards, RDA’s increasingly brutal weight cut was a fairly clear sign that his days at 155 were done; he’d made huge athletic developments during his title run, and cutting to lightweight was simply unsustainable. It ended with one of the most unlucky injuries in modern MMA and two losses, but dos Anjos’ legacy as a lightweight was secure nevertheless as a genuine destroyer with one of the best title wins MMA had ever seen; at 170, a division that wasn’t necessarily as deep but filled with a different sort of fighter, dos Anjos’ role in a fight was a bit different.
170 couldn’t have gone much better early for RDA; his bout with Tarec Saffiedine was a less action-packed win than RDA tended to get at 155, but he still looked very good (countering Saffiedine well to force him back, and smashing his body throughout, including with a revamped and phenomenal clinch), and the fight against Neil Magny was a total mismatch in dos Anjos’ favor. The Robbie Lawler fight showed the best dos Anjos to date, but also showed inklings of what turned out to trouble him as he progressed further; RDA manhandled the former middleweight in the clinch and hobbled Lawler (ranked 19th greatest of all time in The Fight Site top 20) with kicks and boxed with him as well, capped by his 23-second flurry as he pushed Lawler back, drew his defense to the head, and ripped vicious hooks to the body.
That said, RDA didn’t really show the stopping power that most welterweights seemed to have, and the knee injury sustained by Lawler midway cast some serious doubt on how much that win really meant. Where Lawler was pushing dos Anjos back early (even though he was losing in the process, in the clinch and in the open), the knee injury meant that he needed to be against the fence just to stay upright, and dos Anjos hacksawed him in the pocket and the clinch as a result. It was a tremendous performance nevertheless, one that set dos Anjos up for a bout against Tyron Woodley (in retrospect, a bout he was extremely well-equipped to win), but he instead found himself facing one Colby Covington.
Dos Anjos’ fight for the interim title was where his biggest issues came back to light, both in general and as a welterweight; it was an extremely ugly performance from Covington that this writer believes the Brazilian definitely should’ve won on the scorecards, but it also showed that dos Anjos’ most persistently troubling factors were still there and exacerbated at a higher weight-class. Covington was not only the sort of relentless wrestler that consistently gave dos Anjos his worst showings, he was also committed to inexorably moving forward, and dos Anjos didn't have the power to back him off nor the footwork on the outside to avoid the clinch.
While dos Anjos outstruck him in the open and was dominant in the clinch from a damage perspective, Covington maintained the front foot for long enough that the optics favored the American. Clearly, for all of dos Anjos' massive improvements, he had trouble dealing with the same fundamental style matchup that lost him the Nurmagomedov fight, and the fact that it hinged on superior physicality meant that 170 only made it worse. However, the fact that he came away from that sort of matchup with what should’ve been a win (making him a beltholder in two divisions but for judging ineptitude) only amplifies RDA’s legacy further; dos Anjos didn’t figure out how to slow down and pressure Covington, but he made it costly for Covington to clinch and wrestle while keeping him to basically no meaningful work in those areas, and few (if any) two-division champions would’ve been more deserving than a man who came up with no favors in both divisions.
Off that bitter L on his record, though, dos Anjos’ role became that of the prospect-tester. Whether it was a dark-horse that no one else wanted a piece of or a top lightweight moving up, dos Anjos was the man to keep the gate to the top three. This was not only a testament to his skill (as someone who’s so clearly elite that beating him makes any prospect elite), but also to his willingness to take any fight. Kamaru Usman’s rise was consistently stifled by top-fighters being unwilling to face him, and Leon Edwards struggled to get a fight in the top 10 despite dominant wins outside it, but dos Anjos was the man to accept their challenge.
Unfortunately, the issues shown in the Covington fight were only compounded by the division (or at least dos Anjos’ opponents) growing bigger and bigger; where he wasn’t at a particularly meaningful athletic disparity against Colby Covington, Usman and Edwards downright dwarfed him. Not only did this further amplify his problems against pressure-wrestling (the Usman fight was the most anyone has dominated dos Anjos), it also left him in an awkward position in regards to the process he wants to impose. The most obvious spot of struggle was the clinch; dos Anjos’ bouts against Colby Covington and Kevin Lee showed off his damaging game in-close even with his back to the fence, to the point where the clinchwork exhausted Lee and led to the finish, but facing huge and savvy clinchers left dos Anjos without much success in navigating their strength and their frame. An attrition fighter even at 155, dos Anjos at 170 had trouble convincing his opponents to take the back foot with his counters, and finding moments of success didn’t turn into fight-changing salvos due to his lack of real fight-changing power at 170 against opponents with massive athletic advantages.
Most of that came to a head against Leon Edwards, a fight much closer than the scorecards (and even public opinion) indicate.
The range differential gave dos Anjos trouble with boxing in the open, Edwards’ skill in the clinch was compounded by his length and his height (which gave RDA’s collar-tie game fits as Edwards bodylocked and broke with elbows) to such an extent that Edwards could safely grab clinches whenever he found himself on the fence, and while dos Anjos figured out how to pressure without clinching—to arguably win round 4 and definitely win round 5–he clearly had no chance at a late finish regardless of how much he tried. Even Edwards acknowledged post-fight that one of the keys to beating dos Anjos was safely taking the early rounds; he wasn’t going to be taken out by dos Anjos late without dos Anjos starting to wear at him early, so even dos Anjos’ adaptation was for naught.
Dos Anjos is still competing at the time of writing, as a top 5 welterweight whose last performance was inspiring even in a loss; where welterweights often held in higher regard (such as Stephen Thompson and Tyron Woodley) have proven to be more beatable than they appeared, dos Anjos faced a talented and intelligent and young opponent who had a huge size advantage and still came away with a respectable performance.
Even against Usman, who went on to completely embarrass Tyron Woodley in one of the most one-sided title wins ever, dos Anjos held his own early (despite a massive athleticism difference, dos Anjos being in the later years of his career, undersized for the division, and in the small cage).
It really makes more sense to view dos Anjos’ run at 170 in a similar sense as that of Frankie Edgar’s at 155, or much of Kazushi Sakuraba’s career: too small for the weight class, his performances (already impressive) become even more worthy of praise.
A fighter like dos Anjos is genuinely rare, and that’s a fact that has been obscured by his lack of marketability; someone like Donald Cerrone has made a character and a legacy out of fighting anyone and everyone, and dos Anjos has done the same with an inarguably higher level of competition without much fanfare.
When he retires, he’ll unquestionably be in the UFC Hall of Fame, if for nothing other than being the ideal company man: taking any opponent and bringing a fight out of them that’s main-event caliber in every single way.
In any legitimate Hall of Fame at least, dos Anjos would be a first-ballot pick, for “carving out one of the strongest resumés in UFC history across two of its historically deepest divisions, without any favours from the promotion and flatly refusing to avoid difficult matchups or high-risk up-and-comers” (Daire Nugent), all with a genuinely fantastic mid-career reinvention. By any reasonable metric, dos Anjos is an all-time talent, and an all-time great.