MMA: UFC 133's Rashad Evans and His Missed Title Shot

To wait or not to wait—that is the question for the upper-echelon fighters in MMA. If you have been promised a title shot, but face a lengthy layoff, what do you do?

Do you sit on the sidelines and patiently wait your turn? Or do you roll the dice, take a fight with a fellow top contender, and risk losing your coveted title shot?

There seems to be no right answer for MMA fans.

Choose to put your career on hold to wait for the champion, and fans complain about how you should be fighting as much as possible to maximize the short window that is your athletic career. Take a fight in the interim and lose, and fans chastise you for risking a guaranteed title shot when it wasn't necessary to do so.

There have been a few fighters in the past year who have been in this quagmire and have taken completely different paths in their quest to become UFC champion.

Everyone knows the story with Rashad Evans.

He beat Quinton Jackson last May to earn the right to fight Shogun Rua next for the Light-Heavyweight title. Unfortunately, Shogun injured his knee in his title victory over Machida and needed surgery before he could defend his title.

Rather than stay active, Rashad chose to wait for Rua—much to the disdain of UFC president Dana White. After 10 months of waiting, Rashad was set to fight Shogun to reclaim his title when he injured his own knee just weeks before the fight and was forced to pull out.

Evans’ former teammate, Jon Jones, took his spot and beat Rua for the championship—causing a rift between the former friends.

Now, Rampage Jackson—the man Evans beat to earn his title shot—has cut to the front of the line. Evans will face an undefeated Phil Davis next month in an attempt to re-earn his No. 1 contenders spot.

Anthony Pettis was promised the winner of the January Frankie Edgar/Gray Maynard fight to unify the UFC and WEC titles. Unfortunately, Edgar and Maynard fought to a draw and were set to a re-match to provide a definitive outcome.

Rather than wait, Pettis tried to capitalize on his momentum and risked his title shot by accepting a fight with fan-favorite Clay Guida. As we all know, Guida out-wrestled Pettis to win a decision and effectively killed Pettis’ claim as No. 1 contender.

Although Pettis was praised for staying active and taking on a tough competitor in Guida, some think he should have waited for his guaranteed title shot.

If Pettis had opted to wait for Edgar and Maynard to settle the score, he would have had to wait even longer. Both Frankie and Gray got injured and pulled out of their May fight, meaning that Pettis would have waited well over a year before fighting the winner.

Chad Mendes is another recent example of a fighter who decided not to wait for the champion.

When news broke that Jose Aldo would not be ready to fight in September as planned, the 26-year-old Mendes decided to take a fight with fellow contender Rani Yahya. Mendes vs. Yahya will happen in a few months, so we will have to wait to see if Mendes loses his title shot or not.

If Mendes had chosen to wait for Aldo to recover, it would have been approximately 10 months since his last fight. For a young, relatively inexperienced fighter, inactivity is never a good thing.

Lastly, we have Carlos Condit.

Condit punched (and kneed) his ticket to face the winner of GSP and Diaz, which will take place Halloween weekend. If Condit decided to wait, he would be facing another long layoff between fights. He just returned from a nine-month layoff when he fought Kim (he had injured his knee training for a fight against Chris Lytle), and another layoff would mean only fighting twice in two years.

That is usually not a good idea for a fighter in his prime (Condit is only 27). Luckily for fans, “The Natural Born Killer” has no interest in waiting for the St.Pierre-Diaz winner to emerge; he wants to fight again.

However, with all of the top fighters already booked or rehabbing injuries, the list of fighters for Condit to face is not long.

Deciding on whether to risk a promised title shot by fighting before the champion is healthy is not a simple black-and-white decision. Injuries, timing and fighter availability blur this sensitive topic into a murky gray area.

We can only hope that fighters are able to weigh the pros and cons of each side and make a choice that best suits their careers.