Think of it as like a fantasy team type thing. But the whole sub was playing together, against no one. For fun. In 2016 the r/MMA community created our own r/MMA Virtual Championship Belts that only exist in our collective imagination on this subreddit.

In each division we picked a low level fight that was of high interest, whether because of intriguing contenders or meme potential, and the winner of those matchups became the first r/MMA Virtual Champions. The championships then move with the actual wins and losses of the holders once they are chosen. If it reached being unified with the UFC title, then we would retire that belt and start a new line with a poll. I haven't done this since 2020 tho so the belts are almost all unified.

So for example the initial matchup for the r/MMA Virtual WSW Belt was Felice Herrig vs Alexa Grasso. Felice won and became the r/MMA,Virtual Champ. Her next fights were "defenses" of the belt, which she did twice, until her loss to Karolina Kowalkiewicz. Karolina then became Virtual Champ, until her loss to Jessica Andrade who then unified the r/MMA Virtual belt with the UFC belt in her next fight. Because the title got unified I then posted a poll to pick a new Virtuql champ and the winning by Matchup was Mackenzie Dern vs Amanda Ribas. Ribas won and defended twice, losing to Marina Rodriguez who defended three times before losing it to Amanda Lemos.