UFC: Pros and Cons of 5-Round Non-Title Fights

At UFC 138 fans will witness history being made in the Octagon. For the first time ever, a UFC non-title fight will be five rounds.

It will become the standard for all non-title main events from here on out. While this announcement was met with initial praise from fans, now that we've had time to think about it, a five round fight that doesn't involve a belt isn't always a good thing.

As with anything their is in life, there are pros and cons to each choice.

Con No. 5 Potential for Guys to Train Too Hard

In his recent documentary piece, BJ Penn has stated that he felt he sometimes over trained for his fights. He has said he didn't feel like he'd done things the right way to make his body peak at fight time.

With many fighters not being used to fighting, let alone training for a five-round fight, we could see the possibility for fighters to come into bouts over trained and not at their best.

The coach along with the strength and conditioning trainer will have a tough task ahead of them if their guys have never prepared for a five-round fight.

Con No. 4 Guys Getting Gassed in Fights

If a fighter does over train himself, we are likely to see the ugly results of that play out in the later rounds.

Not that it was a main event, but would anyone like to see something like Ben Rothwell vs. Mark Hunt go five rounds? Yeah, me neither.

The five-round fight will allow the better conditioned athlete to have an advantage, but it may mean the "visual" gap of talent between the two fighters will become even more visible to fans.

Watching a tired fighter attempt to chase down the better conditioned one is not something that fans are going to want to tune into.

Con No. 3 Boring Fights Last Too Long

If we have tired fighters going two extra rounds, that means fans have to sit through two extra rounds of sloppiness and boredom.

Guys with their hands at their waist and breathing heavily isn't the best way to show off the product for the UFC.

The lighter weight fighters shouldn't have a problem with being in shape but what happens when we have a heavyweight fight that goes all five rounds?

Not every heavyweight has a Cain Velasquez gas tank and many of them will gas out, which means a boring fight for fans.

Con No. 2 Fighting on Short Notice

A norm for UFC fights these days is that guys will get injured and people will need to fight on short notice. Normally this isn't a problem for most guys because they've already been training and just need to change things up depending on the other guy's style.

When someone has to pull out of a main event, we could see an entire fight fall by the wayside. We've seen it with UFC 137, where Nick Diaz went from preparing for a five-round title fight, to a three round fight and back to the main event slot.

Dana White will be hard pressed into finding replacement for five round fights on short notice without offering to either switch the fight to a three rounder, or offer more compensation to the fighter.

Con No. 1 Money

It's all about the money!

Longer fights mean longer camps. And longer camps mean fighters are going to begin asking for more money for fights.

Dana White has never been shy about saying his fighters make a lot of money, but when a fighter has asked for more money to step up on short notice, Lyoto Machida's response was that Machida was out of his mind.

When fighters start asking for a bigger piece of the pie for their longer camps will White respond with the same notion?

Pro No. 5 More Fight for Your Buck

Obviously what fans like more than a good fight is more fighting.

Now we will be getting more fighting, which is something that anyone who drops the $50 for a PPV will be happy for.

As long as the UFC doesn't raise PPV prices, who's going to complain about getting more fights for the same price?

Pro No. 4 More Sponsor Money for Fighters

One thing sponsors love is TV time.

A fighter that is now in a five-round fight can offer a sponsor more TV time, which ultimately means more money for fighters.

It's long been speculated that where the fighters make their real money is in their sponsorship dollars. If they're going to be on TV for 10 more minutes, they will be able to not only get more money from their current sponsors, but also make connections with other sponsors as well.

Pro No. 3 Prepares Fighters for Title Fights

The ultimate goal of any MMA competitor is to win a championship. Every fight you take is meant to further you along your path to the title.

Fighting in a five-round fight before they get their title fight will make them better prepared.

If you watched the Junior Dos Santos-Roy Nelson bout, you could see Dos Santos beginning to waver a little towards the end of the fight.

Going the extra rounds would help him prepare to spread out his offense instead of putting everything he has behind every punch.

Just like taking a pre-test before actually taking the exam, practice makes perfect.

Pro No. 2 More Decisive Results

Statistics have shown that five-round fights tend to equal more decisive results.

Only two championship matches have ever ended in a draw: BJ Penn vs. Caol Uno and Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard 2.

With a longer fight, fans will have a clearer picture as to who is the winner. There have been numerous three-round bouts that fans were left wondering "what if."

A perfect example is the BJ Penn vs. Jon Fitch contest from UFC 127. The bout ended in a draw but saw Penn receive a UFC record of strikes in the third round. Fans were left wondering what would have happened if there were another two rounds.

Pro No. 1 Qualifies Title Contenders

Perhaps the best reason to have five-round non title fights is to qualify a challenger. One of the question marks coming into title bouts is, "Can this guy survive going into deep waters?"

We would know a guy is ready for a title fight if he already had a five-round bout under his belt.

The UFC hype machine could take a little breather because they wouldn't have to hype every challenger as a world beater if we saw him prove himself before the title fight.