Friday was not a good day for Tim Kennedy.
When he woke up in the morning, Kennedy was scheduled to face Lyoto Machida, himself freshly removed from the light heavyweight division.
Machida is heading down to middleweight, and judging by recent photos that have surfaced on this magical thing we call the Internet, the plan appears to be working. Instead of a little softness around the edges, Machida is ripped, looking like a super athlete for the first time in his career.
But as these things so often go, an injury suffered in training forced Michael Bisping to remove himself from his bout with Mark Munoz, leaving Machida to step out of the Kennedy bout and into the Munoz fight.
In Machida‘s place? We have no idea at the moment, but that hasn’t stopped Kennedy from taking to Twitter to call out every other UFC fighter he can think of.
Here’s a brief sampling:
Kennedy mocks Chris Camozzi‘s hair. Them’s fighting words, of course, especially since Camozzi‘s hair is perfectly normal and fine.
Kennedy’s next “victim” was Cung Le:
And finally—and I say “finally” in the loosest sense of the world, since Kennedy seems intent on continuing his call-outs until he finally receives an opponent—Kennedy started looking outside of his own weight class. Way outside of his current weight class.
As you may have surmised by all of this so far, Kennedy is mostly joking.
But his larger point remains, and it is this: He was set for a nice little middleweight clash with one of the more recognizable fighters in the division, and now he has nothing. At least not yet, anyway. Camozzi volunteered to take the fight against Kennedy, and there may be others who do the same.
But it’s likely none of them will be intriguing to the fans (unless Kennedy’s new opponent is Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza), and wins over them won’t help Kennedy move any closer to a title shot (unless, of course, it’s a win over Souza).
Kennedy was one of the bright shining jewels of Zuffa’s purchase of Strikeforce. His UFC debut, a win over Gracie back in July at UFC 162, wasn’t what the doctor ordered in terms of thrills per minute, but it gave Kennedy a win in his UFC debut. That’s an important thing.
So what’s next for Kennedy now that Machida is out of the picture? I doubt they pull Kennedy from the card entirely, because he’s fighting on a show dedicated to the troops and Kennedy is a soldier. The only problem with the scenario is that most of the top-10 fighters are already spoken for, and all have opponents except the ones who are injured.
Which is why Francis Carmont, if he’s available to return so quickly from his win over Costa Philippou, makes all the sense in the world as Kennedy’s opponent for Fight for the Troops 3. Carmont has an ever-improving ground game and matches up well skill-wise with Kennedy. Sure, it’s not going to be a Fight of the Night contender, but both men are rankings in my top 10, and the winner has a chance to move up the ladder.
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