Johnson had 11 title defenses when he left UFC. Jones holds the record at 13 and Anderson is in 3rd place at 10 and GSP has 9.
Jones number is lower than it would be if he didn’t get stripped after that legal issues after the first DC fight, piss hot vs DC in their rematch, piss hot after the OSP fight or if he didn’t relinquish the belt and sit out three years before going to HW.
Jones was really 14-0 when he won the belt and he should be 29-0 right now if he didn’t piss hot so just with the number of fights he has had he could have 15 title defenses right now and say he didn’t sit out three years and stayed at LHW, Jones could possibly have 20 or 22 UFC title defenses in the record books at the moment.
We will never know how many fighters like Fedor or Penn could have had with the landscape being then what it is now in the world of MMA and we will never know what numbers Khabib or GSP could have reached if they didn’t retire at just 32 years old.
Looking at Johnson, he left UFC with 11 defences and is 5-1 in MMA since then and 1-0 in mixed rules fights. If Johnson didn’t leave, winning the belt back for Cejudo and defending vs TJ, Figueiredo, Moreno, Kara-France, Pantoja, etc… would have been the challenge at hand. If Horiguchi didn’t leave the promotion that could have been another rematch he would have had to deal with. If Pettis and Askarov didn’t leave the promotion those are other potential challenges and of course Benavidez was still around but Johnson was already 2-0 vs him.
Where we are right now Jones is about to go for 14 official UFC title defenses and Johnson will retire at only 11.
The whole topic of the title defense record has a lot of what ifs when you look at how things went with Fedor, Penn, GSP, Khabib, Jones and Johnson.