UFC Controversy: Excitement vs. Boredom

In a competition where at least three of the weight divisions hold champions that continue to go unchallenged, one tends to wonder: should there be some kind of change to add more competition for the fighters? The upcoming match with BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar seems trite and really doesn't interest me a whole lot, though not because I don't find watching a lightweight championship bout interesting. On the contrary, the Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez fights were great to watch.

I'm not avoiding the fight because Edgar isn't an exceptional fighter; I realize that an 11-1 record is excellent and he certainly deserves a title shot because of it. The reason I've found little interest in the UFC 112 Penn vs. Edgar bout is because I know that Penn will win and, in considering his last two matches, he will probably win quite easily. He made Florian and Sanchez look like they were lost and without a clue, and in my opinion, they're two of the most talented fighters in the division. Why should we think there's any chance that Penn will lose his upcoming match? I know I won't jump to order UFC 112 on Pay-Per-View, and it's out of anticipated boredom.

The whole purpose of fighting in the Octagon is to be the most dominant fighter that one can be. As a result, I don't blame the current lightweight, welterweight and middleweight champions one bit; in fact, I give them loads of credit. For example, nobody can disparage Anderson Silva for being undefeated in the UFC. He has done his job--and well. Finally after beating every true prospect in the middleweight division, Silva moved up to fight Forrest Griffin in the light heavyweight division. People watched with sheer amazement as Silva dropped Griffin without much effort.

Resulting from a lot of anticipation and valid hype, people were curious to see how Silva would perform against a guy that's a lot bigger than anyone else we'd seen him fight in the Octagon. He demolished Griffin, and to keep the ball of entertainment rolling hard, he decided his next fight will be against...another middleweight fighter? Yet another reason I'm not exactly eager to order UFC 112.

When Thales Leites was falling on his back during UFC 97 to simply last the whole duration of the fight with Silva, he certainly showed his weakness as a fighter. More importantly, though, this showed that he was also a product of an occasional weakness in the competition: a lack of challenge. I believe that Silva should never have fought Leites, mainly because entertainment and ratings are major factors of the UFC. Leites realized that nobody had gone the distance with Silva, so he copped out by voluntarily falling on his back to try to tempt the champion to stupidly give up his dominant phase of fighting.

To summarize this tactic in a one word response from a UFC fan: boring! I realize that Silva could have easily put on twenty pounds and fought someone in the light heavyweight division, but can you really blame him? He has become the best at his game, and within the format of the UFC, he has been successful in the exact way that it fosters. There's no actual demand for Silva to move beyond his weight class, which is why there should be strong demand for it.

I believe a solution to this could be to liberate the weight classes a bit. MMA is not boxing, so why adhere to such weight class limits? People flock to MMA because it's not as restricted as boxing--not because they want to see a boring match where an Octagon fighter voluntarily hits the mat in order to simply boast that he survived five rounds with the middleweight champion. I'm not suggesting that Clay Guida should fight Rashad Evans or that Joe "Daddy" Stevenson should battle Thiago Silva, but I do believe that exceptional fighters, such as current lightweight champion BJ Penn, current welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and current middleweight champion Anderson Silva, should be able to fight competitors in the upper weight divisions without the pressure of needing to gain any extra weight before doing so.

Catchweight bouts are very interesting and draw a lot of viewers, and most importantly they can be used to regularly answer any question of who the better fighter is. This worked in the first years of the UFC, and since UFC fans want more fights to be finished, I believe we need should consider comparing weights of competing fighters as a guideline, not a rule established by weight classes.

In considering such instances as Silva's dominating win over light heavyweight fighter Forrest Griffin or as Georges St. Pierre beating the monstrous Thiago Alves like it was a walk in the park, I have often wondered how these two champions would fare against some of the more talented heavyweights. I believe that Penn's boxing and ground game are so sound that he could virtually dominate many of the UFC's middleweight fighters and some light heavyweight fighters.

I don't know whether or not such fights have been offered to these champions, but I hope that more fights of a similar caliber become more frequently pushed. UFC fans want to be entertained, and if that means that the champ gets pummeled in a few fights, so be it. I would rather see my favorite fighters get beat while being challenged than to see them dominate a weight class with fighters that would rather willingly hit the floor than stand with the champion.