Is it too dramatic to say that on Saturday Melvin Guillard and Justin Gaethje will battle over World Series of Fighting’s very soul?
Yeah, OK, that’s probably a little bit over the top.
Still, when Gaethje defends his lightweight title against the longtime UFC veteran this weekend—on a night when America’s three largest MMA promotions all simultaneously vie for our affections—the stakes will seem fairly high.
If Gaethje wins, it’ll constitute a nice feather in the cap of WSOF’s highest-profile champion. As arguably the mid-major company’s only real homegrown star, it’ll advance his undefeated professional record to 13-0 and provide further justification of the flattering things people are already writing about him.
Easy to see how WSOF benefits from that outcome. One of the best things the organization and Gaethje have going for them is that right now he’s a completely unknown product. Just like Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler in Bellator a few years ago, we have no reliable way to suss out how good he might really be, and so as long as he keeps winning we’re all content to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Who knows, maybe the 27-year-old phenom from Grudge Training Center really is one of the best 155-pounders in the world.
That ambiguity keeps Gaethje’s career interesting and alive with possibility. We want to see what happens next with him, and that gives WSOF a foothold in MMA’s most compelling weight class. If he defeats The Young Assassin, promoters can hold up Gaethje as an elite talent who would likely hold his own, even in the shark tank of UFC competition.
Meanwhile, a victory by Guillard wouldn’t be a disaster but would come with clear drawbacks.
On the positive end, it would give WSOF a champion at 155 pounds who is recognizable to most MMA fans. In that regard, Guillard would fit in nicely alongside current welterweight champ Rousimar Palhares and whoever emerges from David Branch’s fight against Yushin Okami with the middleweight strap on Saturday.
Yet a Guillard win would also further the perception that WSOF is merely surviving on the UFC’s scraps. He made his home almost exclusively in the Octagon from 2005-14, appearing in some 22 fights there before a 2-5-1 slump doomed him to the chopping block. He’d join other UFC washouts like Jon Fitch and Jake Shields in making WSOF look less like viable alternative programming and more like a slightly more generic version of the UFC.
In addition, it’s not like Guillard appears particularly dedicated to making WSOF his home. In fact, he hasn’t had many nice things to say about anyone of late.
The former contestant from season two of The Ultimate Fighter has decried the UFC’s overstuffed live event schedule and expanding roster, which he—correctly—notes have both undermined what it means to be a UFC fighter. In conversation with MMAMania’s Alex Schlinsky this month, Guillard even lumped members of his own fight team in alongside those he appears to believe don’t really deserve to be in the big show.
Every time you turn around there is a different guy in the UFC,” Guillard said. “I train at American Top Team in Coconut Creek and there are a bunch of guys right now that are on my team, and some of them I know and some I don’t, but every time I ask them when is your next fight, they say ‘Oh, the next UFC card’ and I say ‘Really? Okay.’ But you look at these guys and you’ve never even heard of them before making it to the UFC. It is getting a little weird man.
That would be a pretty good talking point for Guillard and for WSOF, too, were he not also occasionally saying less-than-complementary things about his new workplace.
“I’m an A list fighter, fighting in the B league,” he told Schlinsky of his impending bout against Gaethje.
So at least we know his confidence hasn’t been affected.
Still, that doesn’t exactly make Guillard sound like the guy you want as your champion.
Better to stick with Gaethje, who has the potential to take you farther and—hopefully—more he’s willing to give.
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