George Sotiropoulos was in must-win mode at UFC 132 against Rafael dos Anjos. He was coming off a crushing unanimous decision loss to Dennis Siver in February and needed a win if he had any hopes of keeping his name in the crowded lightweight title picture.
So when the bell rang, Sotiropoulos, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and wrestling expert, should have been attacking and trying to get the fight to the ground. Instead, dos Anjos caught him with a big sweeping right hand to the jaw and he collapsed like he was dead.
And that is the end of Sotiropoulos as a contender in the lightweight division. There are few weight classes in MMA that are as crowded near the top as the 155-pound division and every win is so critical and every loss is so crippling. When you lose two fights back-to-back, you have a lot of work to do in order to even get back on the totem pole, let alone a shot at the title.
It doesn’t help Sotiropoulos’ case that another lightweight, Melvin Guillard, made such a strong impression on everyone with his lightning quick knockout of Shane Roller right after Sotiropoulos was knocked out.
There are at least seven guys that are ahead of him in the division (Guillard, Gray Maynard, Jim Miller, Clay Guida, Ben Henderson, Anthony Pettis, Dennis Siver) and it’s going to take a long time for everything in the division to sort itself out.
Sotiropoulos will have to go back to fighting some lesser known guys or mediocre guys for the time being until he proves that he can still go with the cream of the lightweight crop.
At age 33, Sotiropoulos’ prime years are slipping away from him. The first loss against Siver wasn’t a career killer, but this loss coupled with that one makes Sotiropoulos look more and more like a placeholder in UFC and not a real contender.