UFC 86: A Case Study in Questionable Matchmaking?

I give Joe Silva, the UFC’s matchmaker, a lot of credit for the great fights that he has set up over the past several years. His job is quite a bit more difficult than it looks, and it takes a lot of work to arrange match-ups that both fighters agree to, which fit the vision that the UFC has for each weight class.

Dana White also has a say in deciding what fights happen or don’t happen. And I recognize the complications that can arise when preparing a bout. But there are a couple of match-ups on the UFC 86 card that really have me scratching my head.

The two fights that I am referring to are Patrick Cote vs. Ricardo Almeida and Josh Koscheck vs. Chris Lytle. I want to examine the careers of these fighters and explain why these might not be the wisest fights to set up at this time (though there may have been extraneous circumstances that pushed the UFC to create such match-ups).

Patrick Cote began his UFC career with four straight losses (not counting his exhibition victories on The Ultimate Fighter 4). He won his first pay-per-view fight at UFC 67 against Scott Smith, which was over two years after making his debut at UFC 50 against Tito Ortiz.

Cote was quite literally fighting for his UFC career against Scott Smith, as he could not afford a fifth straight loss. It was a conservative match, as Cote picked up the decision victory in a less-than-exciting affair. The Quebec-born fighter was not living up to the hype that hailed him as the next great combatant to come from Canada.

Cote finally showed flashes of his potential with back-to-back knockout victories over Kendall Grove and Drew McFedries. With the UFC middleweight division in dire need of viable contenders, it seemed that Cote needed only one more victory to earn a title shot. I figured that the UFC would give him a striker for another highlight reel knockout.

But the UFC gave him Ricardo Almeida, a fighter with amazing jiu-jitsu and good wrestling. He holds wins over Nate Marquardt, Kazuo Misaki, and Ryo Chonan. Almeida, a veteran of the now defunct PRIDE FC organization, stopped competing four years ago in order to focus on the jiu-jitsu school that he runs. His comeback victory occurred at UFC 81 over Rob Yundt.

Almeida poses a stylistic problem for Cote, whose strength never was the ground game. Many MMA pundits believe this fight might resemble Cote’s fight with Travis Lutter, when the former was submitted in two minutes. Current UFC 86 commercials say that the winner will receive a title fight against the champion Anderson Silva.

But if Almeida beats Cote, will he be ready to take on the middleweight champion after only two fights back from his lengthy hiatus? And what will happen to Cote’s career if he loses? It was thought that Yushin Okami would get the next title shot. Does the UFC fear that Okami and his occasionally “boring” style pose a threat to Silva, and this is why they are reluctant to give him a title shot?

Of course, I want to see the best fighters against each other, and I’m not very fond of the idea of protecting champions or certain prospects. But if the UFC wanted to push Cote, I thought they would have matched him up with someone like Kampmann, MacDonald, or Bisping, who are dangerous fighters but less of a threat to Cote than Almeida is, from a stylistic point of view.

And that brings me to the second really bizarre match-up on the card: Chris Lytle vs. Josh Koscheck. Now, I like both of these fighters, and they are especially tough with plenty of heart. But one of them will suffer a seemingly unnecessary loss that will really hamper his career. I thought that the UFC would want both of these guys to win their next fight.

Chris Lytle has had a lot of decision fights in his long career (including a snooze-fest to Matt Serra, which cost Lytle a shot at GSP), and he is perceived to be less than exciting by many fans. After his loss to Matt Hughes at UFC 68, Lytle vowed to be more aggressive and work on finishing fights, since he really needed to pick up a few victories in electrifying fashion.

After a high-paced fight with Thiago Alves which he lost by cut stoppage (and was winning in my opinion), Lytle knocked out Kyle Bradley in 33 seconds at UFC 81 in a tremendous showing of aggressiveness and urgency. Just when it seemed like Lytle had changed his style to make himself a more exciting fighter, they put him against Josh Koscheck, another fighter who needs a win to stay afloat in the welterweight division.

Koscheck was viewed as a dominant but sometimes boring wrestler early on his career. He has been working hard on his striking and recently scored a t.k.o. victory over Dustin Hazelett at UFC 82. But I don’t think his striking ability is up to par with Lytle’s, and he may resort to using his wrestling skills to grind out a decision, since Lytle is very difficult to stop on the ground or on the feet.

Koscheck is vying for a title shot in the welterweight division, and could be one or two more victories away from receiving one. However, he maybe should have been given someone who isn’t so difficult to finish or a much better striker than himself for his next fight, especially since he wants some more flashy victories under his belt.

Neither Koscheck nor Lytle can really afford a loss at this point, much like Cote. I wonder if other match-ups weren’t considered first, or if the UFC has a certain reason for setting up these fights that I don’t know about.

Like I said, I want to see the top guys in each weight class fight to decide who's the best, but there also needs to be some logic behind each match-up. With the current careers of these four fighters and what they have at stake, I can’t quite understand why these specific opponents were chosen for each fighter.

Am I perhaps missing something in the UFC’s grand scheme of things? I think that Lytle against someone like Chris Wilson and Koscheck versus Akihiro Gono or Roan Carneiro would have been more appropriate match-ups, and just as competitive.

As MMA fans, I think we have a certain right to critique the UFC, provided we have justified reasons for doing so. But we should be supportive too. I don’t know if creating these match-ups was the most sagacious decision the UFC has ever made, but I will watch them anyways, even though I don’t want to see any of these four fighters lose a seemingly unnecessary match-up.

But then again, who am I to judge the decisions of Joe Silva and Dana White? I’m just an aspiring writer and university student who would be very grateful if either of them bothered to read my work.