Olympic Gold Medalist & Two-Division UFC Champion

Henry Cejudo's Rolex Submariner — Triple C on the Wrist of a True Triple C

Olympic gold medallist. UFC Flyweight Champion. UFC Bantamweight Champion. Henry Cejudo grew up moving more than forty times as a child of undocumented immigrants, lost his Olympic gold in a wildfire, and still became the most decorated combat athlete alive. The Rolex Submariner on his wrist is the tool watch for a man who has never stopped going deeper.

Henry Cejudo — Rolex Submariner. Source: @tntsportsufc / Instagram

The Submariner — Cerachrom bezel, Oystersteel, tool watch built for depth

Henry Carlos Cejudo was born on February 9, 1987, in Los Angeles, California, to parents who had crossed the border from Mexico as undocumented immigrants. His father was in and out of prison and was eventually deported, later dying in Mexico. His mother raised seven children on welfare and unstable work, moving the family more than forty times across the American Southwest — a childhood defined by scarcity, constant relocation, and an older brother, Angel, who was an undefeated four-time Arizona state wrestling champion with a record of 150 wins and zero losses. Henry watched Angel, and understood exactly what was possible if you committed everything.

He began wrestling at age seven. By high school — competing first in Arizona, then in Colorado after moving to the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs — he had become a four-time state champion, the first high-schooler to win the US Nationals since USA Wrestling became the sport's national governing body in 1983, and the ASICS National High School Wrestler of the Year in 2006. At nineteen, he placed fifth at the Junior World Championships. At twenty, he took silver. At twenty-one, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he won gold — the youngest American to become an Olympic wrestling champion in history, a record that stood for eight years.

In 2009, he added the World Wrestling Championship title, becoming the first American wrestler to win both Olympic gold and World Championship gold in the same weight class. He also collected three Pan American Championship golds (2006, 2007, 2008) and a Pan American Games title in 2007. Then, in 2012, after failing to make the Olympic team a second time, he put his wrestling shoes in the middle of the mat — the traditional signal of retirement — and walked away.

He announced his MMA debut in January 2013. In ten months he compiled a 6–0 record. In 2014 he signed with the UFC, where the climb took patience and a brutal early loss to Demetrious Johnson in 2016. He studied that loss for two years, found the angles, and in August 2018 returned to upset Johnson — who had held the flyweight title for twelve consecutive defences and was widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter on earth. Cejudo won by split decision. He was the UFC Flyweight Champion.

He defended against T.J. Dillashaw in January 2019, stopping the bantamweight champion in 32 seconds. Then he moved up a weight class himself and, in June 2019, defeated Marlon Moraes by TKO to claim the UFC Bantamweight Championship — becoming just the fourth fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two weight classes simultaneously. He defended the bantamweight belt in May 2020 against Dominick Cruz, won, and announced his retirement at the post-fight press conference. He was thirty-three and had done everything there was to do.

"He moved forty times as a child, lost his Olympic gold in a wildfire, and still became the only person in history to hold an Olympic gold medal and two UFC championship belts. The Submariner goes exactly that deep."

The Gold That Melted — and the Gold That Didn't

In 2017, Cejudo escaped a California wildfire by jumping from the second floor of a hotel at 4:30 a.m. His original Beijing Olympic gold medal did not make it out. The fire reached approximately 2,000 degrees — hot enough to melt gold. He had spent a decade wearing that medal around his neck before fights, a habit that became part of his identity, a physical reminder of what the journey had cost and what it had produced. After the fire, he looked for replacements. A fan eventually gave him a replica. A second medal he wore — which read "XX Olympiad" — was traced to the 1972 Munich Games. He wore both anyway.

There's something fitting about Cejudo wearing a Rolex Submariner. Gold melts. Oystersteel doesn't. The Submariner was designed from the beginning for the kind of environments where most equipment fails — pressure, salt, darkness, extremes of temperature. It was made for people who go further than comfortable and need the instrument on their wrist to keep up. Cejudo spent his entire life in exactly those conditions, first in wrestling rooms at the US Olympic Training Center before he was old enough to vote, then in octagon floors in front of millions, absorbing shots and returning them with the technical precision of a man who learned to impose his will before he learned to drive.

Triple C — The Only One

Cejudo's nickname "Triple C" — standing for Cejudo, Champ, Champ — is accurate in the most literal sense. He is the only human being in history to simultaneously hold an Olympic gold medal in wrestling and two UFC championship belts in different weight classes. No combat athlete before him had done it. The crossover requires not just two different skill sets but two entirely different competitive contexts — the discipline of Olympic amateur sport and the chaos of professional mixed martial arts — and Cejudo mastered both.

He announced his final retirement after a UFC 298 loss in late 2025 and has since moved into coaching and media. But the record stands permanently. Three titles across two sports. Forty-plus childhood addresses. An Olympic medal lost to fire and never officially replaced. A Rolex Submariner on the wrist — a tool watch for a man who treated his entire life as a tool, to be picked up and used and never put down until the work was done.

And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.