Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen: Why UFC Matchmaking Needs To Be Fixed

In-effective match making is a virus in the UFC, and nearly all MMA fans have had a negative reaction to Joe Silva's selections at one time or another.

These matches can be boring, predictable, and at the very least questionable, yet match makers persist in making them and the fans are the ones that lose in the end.

In regards to Anderson Silva, two recent examples include his fights against Demian Maia and Thales Leites.

Maia was a fill-in for Vitor Belfort, but such a matchup for Silva was still boring a predictable. And Silva facing Leites was a joke of a match with Leites obviously wanting to be the first fighter to go all five rounds with "The Spider." 

Now, the UFC is trying to excite fans by giving them Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen.

Fans want Silva to face Georges St. Pierre, in which GSP would truly challenge Silva by taking him to the ground, but Dana White insists that Silva doesn't deserve that fight.

So the fans yet again go without.

Nobody knows the real reason for Dana White not wanting Silva to fight GSP.

The bottom line is that if there is a one or two person match making system, anything goes. What the fans want obviously doesn't matter.

MMA adapted to include this match making system whereas before, often times matches were determined by drawing the fighters' names out of a fish bowl.

In the fish bowl days, there were no weight classes, time limits and not many rules. There was a round robin tournament format by which the winner would fight multiple opponents in one night.

Granted that MMA has come a long way as an organized sport since its Vale Tudo origins, the tournament style format was true to finding the best fighter—even if that meant in one evening.

One things for certain: fans never went without knowing who the ultimate fighter was.

By having a subjective match making system, anything goes.

It's reminiscent of any fascist state of government where the citizens gather by the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) to protest a bill, yet the government does what it pleases regardless of the outcry.

Such executive decisions are often based on money or preserving fighters' reputations by hand-feeding them easy opponents, thus giving the President to claim one fighter or another to be the undisputed champion.

Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney realized how frustrating it was to see good fighters go without good matchups and decided to do something about it.

Bellator is structured as an eight-man tournament style format. Even Roger Huerta, a UFC veteran, has been vocal about why Bellator's tournament style is preferred to the subjective matchmaking of today's MMA since it allows the fighter to determine his destiny .

The four lightweight semifinalists of Bellator Season Two have equal chances of eventually fighting current lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez.

Granted the fighters have to be paired with one of the other semifinalists, each one holds the capability of beating the other respective fighter and making it to the championship.

Thus the fans win in the end because they would know which fighter actually deserves to fight the current champion.

If the UFC, for instance, decided to have a tournament style format, fans would not go without excitement.

Even though there would be a distinct season for MMA, there would also be a lack of boring matches.

Another factor would be a time period where dream matches could be hyped as super fights, such as Silva vs. GSP.

However, the likelihood for the UFC adopting such a format is not good. Rather than simply adopting a tournament format, the UFC could still have a more fan-inclusive way of determining fights.

Perhaps there could actually be a way to vote, or at least poll the fans for which fights they would like to see, thereby influencing the decision of the match makers.

One thing is for certain: something needs to be done.

There is no reason why Silva should not have to fight GSP when one, both fighters are in shape and ready for such a match, two, both fighters are willing to fight one another, and three, the fans want it.

A catch-weight bout between Silva and GSP would not be anathema.

With a fan-inclusive system, the bureaucracy would cease and we would have consistently exciting fights rather than the hit-and-miss scenario that has plagued the UFC for some time now.