Which outcome at UFC 321 provides the brighter future for the heavyweight division? Is Henry Cejudo showing us how not to go about things in an MMA career? And what’s the ideal next move for UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria?
All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @benfowlkesmma.
@MMAbandwagon: I love me some Tommy Gashands, but think of the possibilities that open with a Gane win. Alex moves up, fights another kickboxer turned MMA champ. Is this the best route to Triple Champ status for Poatan? Who needs Jon when Alex is the biggest draw in the business?
Here’s my question to your question: What would the current iteration of the UFC heavyweight title mean if Ciryl Gane were to win it right now? He’s currently 0-2 in UFC title fights. Both guys who beat him are, effectively, no longer active UFC heavyweights. He mounted almost zero resistance in his last heavyweight title fight, in which it took Jon Jones just over two minutes to submit him.
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So if Gane were to beat Tom Aspinall next weekend, would that make him the world’s best heavyweight in our eyes? Or would it just make him seem like the best we can do at the moment?
I don’t disagree that Gane would be a more favorable opponent for Alex Pereira. I also don’t disagree that it would be rad to see Pereira become a three-division champ. But in order for that accomplishment to feel like more than just MMA arbitrage, we need him to go up and beat someone who seems like the world’s best heavyweight. Aspinall has that aura right now, in part because Jones avoided him like he was AP calculus.
This is why the MMA world needs Aspinall to win at UFC 321. We need him to slap that veneer of legitimacy onto the UFC heavyweight title. And then, if Pereira were to move up and challenge him, it would genuinely feel like some truly epic champ vs. champ stuff.
@EyeofMihawk: We got a slew of fight announcements yesterday. Which are you most excited for, and why is it Pantoja-Van? This is either the start of a truly remarkable title reign, or the last challenge before Pantoja, like Merab, has cleaned out his division and enters the rematch zone.
Alexandre Pantoja vs. Joshua Van definitely seems like the one with the greatest potential for furious, competitive action. There’s just no way that ends up being a bad or a boring fight. But as far as big-picture stuff, I think Merab Dvalishvili turning right around and defending his title again is the kind of feat that could cement Fighter of the Year honors for him. This will be his fourth (!!!) title fight this year. How often do you see a champ whose work rate — both in the fights and on the UFC schedule — is so ridiculously high?
@JohnRayMMA: More of a general question, why are we so quick to crown people GOAT of a division? Merab, Volk, Izzy, Pantoja, Usman, and even Poatan by some. None of them are GOATs over their divisions yet in my opinion
Because that’s the kind of sport this is. It’s all built around being the very best. That’s why being the champion of a division means so much and being the No. 3-ranked contender means relatively little. We are always trying to find The One. We also have very short memories in this sport, so whoever looked awesome the most recently seems to us like the best.
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The other thing that makes it tricky is just how much MMA fighters as a whole have improved in such a short time, mostly because it’s still such a young sport. For example, take Israel Adesanya. I’m guessing you don’t want to call him the GOAT at middleweight because you’re reserving that title for Anderson Silva. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I’d also argue that Adesanya faced an overall higher quality of opponent in his title fights than Silva did. So yeah, Silva looked like he was fighting from five seconds into the future in some of those fights. But he did it against guys that 2019 Adesanya would have sailed through.
@GabeDert: So Henry cejudo is coming back….now….
Is he one of the best examples of what not to do with your mma career?
I really don’t know what Henry Cejudo is hoping to get out of these fights anymore. When I talked to him before that fight with Song Yadong, he sounded way more enthusiastic about the various rental properties he owns than he did about anything having to do with MMA. Which is understandable! He’s 38 years old now and probably has a much brighter future as a landlord and business-owner or whatever than he does as a fighter. But as he was reminded in that fight in February, this is not a sport you want to hang around in if you’re anything less than all-in, because bad stuff can happen to you any given night.
The other thing Cejudo said to me before that fight was that he doesn’t ever regret vacating the title and walking away when he did. He was burnt out, he said, and needed to get away from the sport. To which I say, fair enough. It may have seemed to us like it was all a negotiating ploy gone hilariously wrong, but he insisted it was genuine and very needed.
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Where he really made a mistake was in deciding to come back. If Cejudo had stayed gone after beating Dominick Cruz in 2020, I think we might remember him now as one of the greatest all-around combat sports athletes of all time. I mean, an Olympic gold medal followed by UFC titles in two different weight classes before retiring with the belt? Tough to beat that. And all of that is still true of him. It’s just that he helped us forget it by coming back and losing three straight in a string of uninspired performances. And he’s apparently still not done yet.
@jasonwajung: Do we ever see fair revenue splits in MMA? Those similar to other major sporting leagues?
Look, I don’t want to be the cynical pessimist who says never, ever. But at this point I don’t see how you get there from here. The UFC (and especially its parent company, TKO Group Holdings) is so entrenched. It has all the athletic commissions eating of its hand. It has the coziest of relationships with a U.S. president who is, let’s say, not overly burdened by any ethics concerns that would stop him from doing favors for the friends who treated his appearances at UFC events like Roman triumphs. So what path could fighters take now to get a fair revenue split?
They have never gotten close to any meaningful organizing effort among themselves. They tried the antitrust route and ended up taking a payoff that resulted in no contractual changes. Granted, there are still other antitrust suits that could potentially challenge the UFC’s business model, but it feels like we’re never more than a presidential phone call away from making those go away. I would love to see fighters get a fair slice of the pie, but if anything it seems like combat sports as a whole are moving in the opposite direction. At least for now.
@braiiinnnnn: idk if this is even a question but how stupid would it be if they made gaethje vs ilia instead of paddy vs ilia
You almost can’t make a bad title fight featuring Ilia Topuria right now. I agree that Paddy Pimblett has more of a personal history to promote, but Justin Gaethje is a guaranteed good time — especially when you consider how his style would match up with Topuria’s.
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The real question for me is whether either of them has a solid chance of beating the lightweight champ. I say no, not really. And it’s not because they’re bad. It’s just because Topuria is so good. In order to see him get a real challenge, I think we’ll have to wait for Islam Makhachev to come home to lightweight.
