Jake Ellenberger is currently No. 3 in B/R’s ranking of top welterweights in MMA. Only Carlos Condit and George St. Pierre are above him.
This coming Friday, he will take on No. 8 ranked fighter Martin Kampmann as part of The Ultimate Fighter 15 Finale, at the Palms Casino Resort in Paradise, Nevada.
A win over Kampmann will be just the latest scalp for the Nebraska native, whose list of top-ranked UFC welterweights he’s already beaten includes Jake Shields and Diego Sanchez.
This already puts him on a run straight for a title shot, but whether he gets that shot depends on where he sits in the mix as the year is played out, as those ahead of the queue clamour for their shot at GSP’s belt.
We already know that the welterweight champion’s next opponent will be Carlos Condit. That’s an obligation the UFC owes the man after promising him a shot a year ago, taking it away from him, and then making him fight Nick Diaz to get that shot back.
And then there’s Nick Diaz himself. He was brought over from Strikeforce specifically to fight GSP and was regarded as the second-best welterweight in MMA.
His dismantling of BJ Penn proved his worth, but, Nick Diaz being Nick Diaz, he managed to mess it up by failing to turn up to press conferences, losing to Condit and then failing a drug test. That failure has earned him a 12-month suspension, so we shouldn’t see him return to the Octagon until at least the summer of 2013.
That leaves Johny Hendricks as the only other viable welterweight standing in the way of Ellenberger and a title shot.
Hendricks has impressed recently with a stunning knockout of the impossible-to-finish Jon Fitch. He followed that with a win over solid competitor Josh Koscheck.
But that win was a closely fought split decision which many gave to Koscheck. He fought an equally unconvincing win against Mike Pierce in their fight last year, before bursting on the scene with a 12-second knockout of Fitch.
Having amassed six fights unbeaten compared to Hendricks’ four, Ellenberger is already in a more deserving position of the next shot at GSP after Condit. His last two fights have earned him Knockout of the Night and Fight of the Night respectively, and a convincing win over Kampmann will only solidify his claim on the belt.
With Diaz out, Hendricks says he wants to wait until after the GSP/Condit match, expected in November, before stepping in the cage himself for the championship.
That decision means he won’t be fighting again until next year and will be relying on his past performances to make his case for a title shot. Whether he gets that shot, without fighting another fight for it, will depend on how well Ellenberger does on Friday.
If Ellenberger wins, and emphatically so, he will be deserving of the next title shot.
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