UFC veteran and top middleweight contender Jared Cannonier has just been promoted to brown belt in BJJ courtesy of The MMA Lab. Cannonier started out his professional MMA career all the way back in 2011 and he hit the ground running, as he quickly racked up 7 wins in his first 3 years competing. That earned him the Alaska Fighting Championship Heavyweight title, but also a chance to compete for the UFC in the same division. He went 1-1 at heavyweight but he made a decision that changed the course of his career, when he started dropping down in weight classes.
Cannonier competed at light-heavyweight for a year and a half, going 2-3 in that space of time but against some truly impressive competition. In hindsight Cannonier was given some very difficult fights during his time as a light-heavyweight, and he moved down even further to middleweight afterward. Two of his losses at light-heavyweight actually came against the eventual champions of that division, Glover Teixeira and Jan Blachowicz. He clearly found the perfect place to compete for his size, as Cannonier managed to go 5-1 in the middleweight division and earn a title-shot against Israel Adesanya.
Although Cannonier wasn’t able to take home the title, he took Adesanya all the way to the end of their five-round fight at UFC 276. Since then, he’s bounced back with a pair of wins over fellow top competitors and finds himself sitting comfortably within the top five of the middleweight rankings. Although Cannonier hasn’t been known for his submission skills in particular over the course of his career, he’s a skilled grappler and his own right and it’ll be interesting to see what changes he’s made as he continues on his journey toward a second title-shot.
The MMA Lab announced the news that UFC veteran Jared Cannonier had been promoted to brown belt in BJJ in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
