Some things take a long time to come to grips with: Boston winning the World Series, Matt Serra defeating GSP, a certain ex-wife's now obvious signs of lesbianism, and what the repercussions would have been if Brock Lensar had defeated Frank Mir.
While it has probably been discussed before, a trend seems to pop up in mixed martial arts, and the UFC in particular, in which a fight is set up that sounds like a good match and then the winner gets a title shot, or is at least picked to be next in line for the title shot.
More often than not, the predicted winner does what he is supposed to do and moves forward down the road towards the championship belt. However, the other side of the coin just doesn't seem to get explored. What if the other guy wins?
A few months back Brock Lesnar made his UFC debut and quickly lost to Frank Mir via knee bar. The results of which were that Mir, a former UFC heavyweight champ, became next in line for the UFC title and is going to be a coach on the next season of The Ultimate Fighter.
If Lesnar won, would he have gotten a title shot after just two professional fights? One wouldn't think so. Or, at least, one would hope not.
Mir was a great fighter and seems to be on the comeback trail, however, why does beating a man who has only had one prior MMA fight constitute a title shot? Especially when the result wouldn't go the other way?
It has happened before. Let's say that Lyoto Machida gets a shot at Forrest Griffin for the light heavyweight belt. He just beat Tito Ortiz, but does that mean that Tito would have gotten a title shot if he had actually sunk in that triangle choke? One can almost hear Dana White vomit at the thought.
Kenny Florian recently defeated Joe Lauzon, setting up a number one contender match against Roger Huerta. Does that mean that if Lauzon had pulled something off that he would potentially be the next in the line for a title shot after such a brief career in the UFC? Is Lauzon anywhere near the level of a Roger Huerta?
Jon Fitch had to go on an unrivaled win streak to get his chance at the belt.
There is just one argument: Forrest Griffin. He defeated Shogun, who was already picked to be number one contender, and instead of the UFC not giving Griffin his due credit, they gave him the title shot. And he took home the gold, no matter what anyone thinks should have happened.
Perhaps in the end, what the UFC needs is to set up number one contender matches like the one next week between Huerta and Florian. At least then there would be no speculation as to who is deserving of a title shot.
Not to say that Lesnar won't ever be champ, but he isn't there yet and Mir is being overly compensated for Lesnar's mistake.
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21 days ago
An interesting what if, but no one can ever know the answer.
21 days ago
Personally I think Mir deserves the shot, nobody beat him for the title when he was champion, he was stripped after the accident so if I was the boss I would have made the same decision but if he did win I would make his first defence against someone he lost after making his comeback from the accidnet and seeing as Brandon Vera dropped in weight the first defence fight would be against Marcio Cruz 2-2 in the UFC, giving mir a chance to avenge the loss and cruz a chance at the belt even if its not deserved like many say Mir. altho Mir is much more deserving of the shot then cruz would be.
21 days ago
The only problem is that if you wait for 2 "Number One" contenders, the champ rarely has to defend the title. It takes far longer to set up the matches. I still believe that Mir should've had to face Werdum for the title shot, but things take too long. While this is all happening, what would Nogueira have been doing?
20 days ago
A lot of who gets the title shots comes down to marketability. The only other truly worthy contender in the division is Fabricio Werdum and do you think ZUFFA would do a season of the Ultimate Fighter with two Brazilians as coaches?
from 20 days ago
I suppose if all the contenders were Brazilian, or at least fluent in Portuguese.
from 20 days ago
Exactly Dom.
Unfortunately, due to this, I don't see Machida getting a title shot any time soon.
20 days ago
Jon, I like almost all your articles so don't be offended on what I about to write. But we can't be wondering "what if" on fights. What happened, happened. What if Royce submitted Hughes? What if Timmy knocked Fedor out cold? What if Couture had won against Chucky all 3 times? Right now Mr. Lesnar is questionably popular, and if he did win, he would be the talk of every MMA fan alive, no doubt. But he lost due to his inexperience. Knee bar? He was thinking. What the hell is this? How do I tap? Did anybody watch the guy tap? I did. It looked awkard, like he never did it before. He will get better but I don't think enough to ever take the belt. I could be wrong though.
from 20 days ago
I take no offense. Let me explain:
My intent wasn't so much to say "what if" in regards to where the likes of Lesnar would stand after winning as much as it was to point on the imbalance in rewards for the winners of certain fights. Set-up fights are made with the intent for a fighter to get ready for a bigger fight, but if they lose, the winner doesn't seem to reap the same rewards.
I am questioning the unfair balance here, not so much speculating what would happen next. Sorry about the confusion.
20 days ago
Does anyone know the actual reason why the UFC has no ranking system? It doesn't seem to make sense to me. I know Dana's weary of anything that even smells like it came from boxing, but it seems like they just give whoever a title shot.
I wonder what they tell guys who keep winning like Machida.
Do they say "hey good job beating Tito but he's only #6 in WAMMA rankings, so this makes you no better than #5 now"
or do they say "your the number one contender but nobody wants to see you fight, boost your popularity some and knock somebody out so we can give you a title shot"
from 20 days ago
Because it's impossible to make everybody happy. If they had "official rankings", people would be constantly whining, not only about their opponents, but their pay.
Hell, how did they give Forrest a title shot before Jardine? Makes no sense to me, but the UFC can do whatever they want because they've been smart about it.
from 20 days ago
I think it's closer to the latter. Dana will always want his league to show the fights he wants the fans to see, not random matchups based on rankings. I don't think WAMMA comes into his mind at all.
from 20 days ago
I was being sarcastic about WAMMA. Of course he doesn't care about WAMMA. Im just not sure that not having rankings works. Instead of constant bickering over who is what ranking, instead, we have no clue.
20 days ago
Heres an even better "what if"
What if Referee Steve Mazzagatti didnt stop the fight when Lesnar was hammer fisting the daylights out of Mir and barely got him in the back of the head. He didnt heven give a warning and it was Mirs fault, he was squirming like a little worm. I think it was rediculous. He even took a point away.
I like Frank Mir and I thought if he did win it would be by some kind of leg lock. I just think Mazzagatti was way out of line.
I also agree with J.Michael, the one thing that seperates MMA from boxing is if Mayweather & Coto fought in the UFC we would have seen this fight.
from 20 days ago
Why do people always complain about that call? They need to understand that when a fighter has the punching power of Lesnar, they are given less leeway, for an illegal blow could easily end the fight.
from 20 days ago
An illegal blow to the back of the head could end a career, or a life. Here we can do a what if for you then...what if Lesnar was allowed to do what he wanted, and didn't have to abide by the rules...I guess he would be as good as you are giving him credit for.
20 days ago
In defense of the UFC (ouch that hurts to write) Dana White has always said he wants to give the fans exciting fights. In reality, thats all the UFC owes us as fans. The UFC is the biggest organization in MMA but don't forget that their main purpose for existing is to make money, not rank fighters. Requiring them to organize fights by having fighters fight strictly on their ranking numbers (which are subjective as well) would ruin one of the greatest things about MMA. The unpredictability.
Serra beating GSP was unpredicted. Gonzaga kicking CroCops head off, unpredicted. Griffin beating Rua was unpredicted and exciting as hell. I'll take good matchups over rank-by-rank fighting any day of the week.
Getting back to your Lesnar-Mir analysis remember that Lesnar was one or two punches away from either knocking Mir out or stopping the fight. The depth in the UFC's HW division is shallow and Nogueira needs to defend his belt eventually (remember he only gets a paycheck if he fights, not if he sits on the shelf). Mir can be marketed as an ex-champion who beat the "impressive" Lesnar and people will remember his name. Werdum beat Gonzaga who hasn't looked impressive since KO'ing CroCop so having him add some fights to his UFC resume before giving him a title shot makes sense as well. Plus having the coaches fight for a belt at the end of TUF seems to be a good formula for marketing PPV events that might not attract as many viewers. I agree that some of these fights seem to have obvious intentions of moving certain fighters up the ladder while giving them exposure but I don't think it hurts the sport of MMA.
19 days ago
as a sox fan i have to say that when the sox won i was unsure of what to do. I imagine all cubs fans will know what im talking about when their time comes.
15 days ago
The truth is we won't see rankings because that takes away the ability to pin top ranked guys against underdogs. Forrest Griffin vs Shogun or Rampage would have been years away if we saw rankings. To be quite honest, we may see Machida in a title fight soon. All he has to do is beat Thiago Silva. As some of you may know, I'm a huge Silva fan, and I said a few months back Silva will be champ soon. Well, Dana is already speculating that the winner of that fight will face Griffin. How is that though when Rashad and Liddell seem to be the next contender? Tough call all the way around. Lesnar v Mir wouldn't have happened either if we go by rankings. So it's a pros and cons thing. I couldn't tell you which way, b/c I think rankings are good and bad. To be quite honest, if Lesnar won, he didn't deserve a shot right away. But with guys like Florian, Huerta, and so forth, they do deserve it. Good article Jon. Keep the tough stuff coming.
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