The mindset of this new era's UFC champions - is it what makes MMA interesting or more of a circus?

[Unheralded Truth]

Read through my points below, sorted in ascending order, and you will probably see the pretty comical pattern as of now. I mean, there's no bad blood really between two dominant guys or anything:

LW champ Makhachev wants to defend the belt against one actual LW fighter (the same one he already beat to win the belt), then move up to WW just to fight for that belt instead.

WW champ Edwards will call out Sean vs DDP winner should he win over Colby, though. Looking to fight for the MW belt rather than defend something at WW. And Colby will look for some kind of bullshit
fight like Poirier with a win, rather than taking on guys like Rakhmonov and Belal in his own division.

MW title challenger du Plessis has said there's not much interesting him at MW, so he's looking to quickly fight at LHW for the belt instead. He wants one MW title defense and will chase Pereira afterwards.

LHW champ Pereira himself is mostly interested in a rematch with MW Adesanya though, but has also said that a defense over Ankalaev/Hill may lead to a call out of the HW champ for a real challenge.

HW champ Jones won't fight anybody but an old Miocic who's been out of competition for three years, though. It's apparently a fight that "must happen". So in the meantime Aspinall takes on the contenders.

Thoughts?

 

[chinarice]

UFC brought this on themselves by letting these guys jump into titleshots a weightclass up without beating anyone in the weightclass. The 2 division champ thing needs to just stop unless you have at least 4 or 5 title defenses. If they want it any sooner, vacate the belt and have at it.

Let the damn divisions move on. It's ridiculous at this point.

 

[ferrisjso]

Its horrible for the sport. Its essentially a shortcut for a title reign. These fights shouldn't be outlawed but they should mainly happen in an AS v GSP scenario with 2 dominant champs ruling a cleaned out division. Instead it tends to usually be the opposite new champs looking to take advantage of cinderella champs in a neighbouring class.


As much as I despise Dana as a human one thing I've always respected him for is his insistence that the UFC avoid the problems that plague boxing . Well this is ground zero for that. If Dana cares about this issue at all no champ will ever be allowed to fight for a third belt.

 

[Fedor>Cain]

Its horrible for the sport. Its essentially a shortcut for a title reign. These fights shouldn't be outlawed but they should mainly happen in an AS v GSP scenario with 2 dominant champs ruling a cleaned out division. Instead it tends to usually be the opposite new champs looking to take advantage of cinderella champs in a neighbouring class.


As much as I despise Dana as a human one thing I've always respected him for is his insistence that the UFC avoid the problems that plague boxing . Well this is ground zero for that. If Dana cares about this issue at all no champ will ever be allowed to fight for a third belt.

Gonna disagree. I don't think this is a problem for boxing either. The issue that boxing has is that everybody is afraid to lose a fight and the fighters are scattered across different promoters who only want to keep the fights within their own promotions. Why co-promote with another promoter unless it's a mega fight? The promoters want their guys to only fight each other since they make all the money lol.

UFC is fortunate that they don't have a ton of competition for top level fighters. A champion going up in weight to fight another champ will always be fine by me if it's the smaller champ calling out a bigger one. That's fair game to me.

If it's a heavier champ calling for the guy a division down, then that's stupid unless they are trying to fight somebody like Jones or GSP that's had the belt for eternity in their class.

 

[DarthChen731]

Only reason I don't like it at times is because it can hold up legitimate title fights within the divisions, but if there are no clear contenders I don't really have a problem. Like, who did the Islam/Volk fights hold back? And don't say Gamrot because a loss, split decision, and injury win don't smell like title shot to me.

So yeah if there's no clear contenders in the 2 divisions sure go ahead. FW is close to cleared out, MW only has DDP clear in line, LHW is a disaster, HW is a KO merry go round. If conditions make it so that the next division up/down have a need for a challenger and no one within is deserving then why not let it rip?



Also, every sport has it's eras. I guess rn we're in an era of weight hopping. W/e, it'll subside eventually. I'd rather people go up in weight and not kill themselves cutting weight anyways.

 

[The Boomerang]

For years fans wanted fighters to be more willing to go between weight classes

Now that it happing they hate it
lol


I personally don’t care about rankings or belts, just want to see interesting fights

 

[ferrisjso]

Gonna disagree. I don't think this is a problem for boxing either. The issue that boxing has is that everybody is afraid to lose a fight and the fighters are scattered across different promoters who only want to keep the fights within their own promotions. Why co-promote with another promoter unless it's a mega fight? The promoters want their guys to only fight each other since they make all the money lol.

UFC is fortunate that they don't have a ton of competition for top level fighters. A champion going up in weight to fight another champ will always be fine by me if it's the smaller champ calling out a bigger one. That's fair game to me.

If it's a heavier champ calling for the guy a division down, then that's stupid unless they are trying to fight somebody like Jones or GSP that's had the belt for eternity in their class.

Boxing has multiple problems. Theres not just 1 problem. Fighters playing musical chairs with divisions is a problem.

This logic doesn't apply to HW because HWs are worse than LHWs and probably MWs.

 

[GrantB13]

For years fans wanted fighters to be more willing to go between weight classes

Now that it happing they hate it
lol


I personally don’t care about rankings or belts, just want to see interesting fights

I wanted a glass of Pepsi at the restaurant but then the waiter forcefed a pitcher of soda down my throat. That's what this is.

 

[jko1355]

The fighters are just playing copy cat of Conor because they believe it will springboard them to huge PPV numbers and success... this almost never works but I don't fault them for doing it... MMA fighters in general aren't the most brilliant guys.

I think the real issue is the UFC allowing it too often... the divisions are becoming a mess and there is no consistency for fans to follow.

 

[leatherf4ce]

For years fans wanted fighters to be more willing to go between weight classes

Now that it happing they hate it
lol


I personally don’t care about rankings or belts, just want to see interesting fights

When folks were talking about this, it was the likes of Anderson/GSP. It wasn't just anyone going anywhere. And that fight actually made sense because they were both dominant champions in their weight class. Having Conor beat Aldo was an insane win. That didn't justify Conor just moving up and fighting Alvarez. Alvarez and Conor weren't dominant in their weight classes. Conor didn't even have a title defense (if I recall correctly, neither did Alvarez, but I could be wrong). So calling him "Champ-Champ" wouldn't have been the same as a fight like Anderson/GSP would've been. Not only did both guys clean out their divisions, but one of them winning would've displayed a true champion fighting the best of the best. Conor and Alvarez was such a weak display to be holding two belts up like the same journey was taken. It was against the LW's weakest champ at the time. Then having every fighter just holding off to fight all over the place and no longer having structure has made it less enjoyable.

So even for your approach of just liking interesting fights, it's becoming less and less of them because every fighter is holding off for a specific opponent and it's just bogging everything down.

 

[Masturbin]

We have clowns it's true and perhaps the worst line up of recent champs in the modern era with bums like Hill, Old Glover and Strickland

However we have guys like Volk who are the perfect example of champ mentality.

 

[The Boomerang]

When folks were talking about this, it was the likes of Anderson/GSP. It wasn't just anyone going anywhere. And that fight actually made sense because they were both dominant champions in their weight class. Having Conor beat Aldo was an insane win. That didn't justify Conor just moving up and fighting Alvarez. Then having every fighter just holding off to fight all over the place and no longer having structure has made it less enjoyable.

So even for your approach of just liking interesting fights, it's becoming less and less of them because every fighter is holding off for a specific opponent and it's just bogging everything down.

Nah fans have been wanting it for years
Be it for super fights between champions or coz someone is a “weight bully”

Fans basically don’t know what they want

 

[leatherf4ce]

Nah fans have been wanting it for years
Be it for super fights between champions or coz someone is a “weight bully”

Fans basically don’t know what they want

Super fights is one thing, but to have an untested champ abandon post to fight another untested champ, that's not so "super". That's just careless jumping around.

 

[ColombianFist]

It's a shitshow right now.

No one wants to defend, everyone who is a champ wants the dual champ crap and lets the division stall and on top of that, allows the interim crap to run rampant because No 1 contender status is useless.

Mcg and Dana let that happen and look at the atate of 85% of the champs right now.

 

[ryun253]

UFC not giving new belts is making champs want to go for double champ status to collect more belts, jk. double champ stuff is pretty annoying though

 

[Barteh]

Boxing has multiple problems. Theres not just 1 problem. Fighters playing musical chairs with divisions is a problem.

This logic doesn't apply to HW because HWs are worse than LHWs and probably MWs.

What? HWs are objectively the best fighters in the world. If fighters would disagree with that the smaller ones would all move up to HW to show they're better.

 

[Gamer2k4]

I'd call it a responsibility, not a liability, but otherwise my vote's for #2.

 

[Ozze]

It was already bad when every contender was like "I'm gonna be a different champion and defend the belt and clean the division!" and as soon as they became champ they turned into 1,5 year fighting divas. Then it was all about the "money fights" and now this double champ shit.

You have guys that are not even champions talking about it, it's ridiculous.

The UFC should implement some "defend your belt 5 times" rule before going for a champ-champ status.
Put a big ass prize in it if the reason for the champ-champ is money. If you defend 5 times, you can challenge the champ above for a 2 million paycheck.

 

[nostradumbass]

It depends on who it is and what matchups are available. Leon is obviously a case of him wanting to avoid tough matchups so he doesn't lose his belt. He's not a dominant champ, and has a majority decision, a hail mary kick in a fight he was seconds away from losing, and barely made it out against unranked Nate Diaz, and his last win before that was 2019. I don't think he'd be a heavy favorite against anybody in the top 10 at WW.

If Dricus wins, he's probably right that MW doesn't have many or any interesting matchups after Khamzat.

Same with Pereira. After Ankalaev, I guess there's Hill that doesn't really seem all that interesting.

Jones was pretty blatantly trying to skip the younger, better guys on win streaks and hand pick a senior citizen coming off a KO loss and several years off so he can take the easier fight and retire.

Islam's only hold up is that there are WWs waiting for a shot. At LW he's a huge favorite against everybody and is already having to rematch guys because nobody can put a win streak together.