Joseph Benavidez has had a mixed bag of good and bad luck in being a top-five competitor consistently in the eight years since the UFC first established the flyweight division.
For almost that entire period, he would have been among the top three in the division. It’s a level of longevity at the top that not a lot of fighters can match. But the bad luck is even being in that position, he hadn’t had a title shot in more than six years.
The good luck is that there is such a division, which the UFC was in the process of eliminating.