The 185-pound weight class has basically come full circle for the UFC. It was ruled by legend Evan Tanner for a while, until Rich Franklin bumped him off and then held the belt for a time. Then he ran into the greatest unarmed killing machine ever…
The 185-pound weight class has basically come full circle for the UFC.
It was ruled by legend Evan Tanner for a while, until Rich Franklin bumped him off and then held the belt for a time.
Then he ran into the greatest unarmed killing machine ever conceived in Anderson Silva, who took that belt and has had it ever since.
There have been ups and downs, contenders and pretenders and a division with potential and a division cleaned out during Silva’s six-year reign.
But now, perhaps as much as at any time in history, the top 10 of the division is full of new faces and interesting styles to mix in with (and probably lose to, if we’re being honest) The Spider.
Coming off of UFC 152, here are the top 10 middleweights in the UFC.
Note: With his announced move to 205 pounds, ChaelSonnen is removed from the rankings. Having most recently fought at 205 pounds, VitorBelfort is removed from rankings.
Jon Jones hasn’t made many friends in the past month. Not that he really had a lot to begin with, considering many fans couldn’t tolerate his sanctimony and general attitude towards his own excellence. But excellence it is, and as such thos…
Jon Jones hasn’t made many friends in the past month. Not that he really had a lot to begin with, considering many fans couldn’t tolerate his sanctimony and general attitude towards his own excellence.
But excellence it is, and as such those fans just plain have to live with Jones standing at his pulpit for now. He’s going to be around for a while, and based on the current crop of contenders, he’s likely going to hold the title for a while, too.
All one can do is accept it and stay away from his interviews and Twitter jabbering, both of which are pretty much this in either verbal or written form.
Jones does, however, have numerous strengths as well. He’s an imposing wrestler and a remarkable athlete, and his range and unorthodox striking throw opponents for a loop. It’s not the most powerful out there, but it gets the job done.
And then there’s that ground and pound. He’ll sit in someone’s guard all day and rain down elbows that have the force of leverage behind them in a way MMA has never seen. He doesn’t elbow to cut, he elbows to smash.
Yes, in the cage the strengths of the champion are numerous.
Away from it is where he’s weak, however.
As people have been quick to point out, the slightest jab ruffles the feathers of the young champ, to the point that he goes into a spiral of self-defense and excuses, each one building on the last.
He is, simply put, a guy who just doesn’t know when to shut up.
When he’s not trying to explain why he’s right and the world is wrong, he shifts gears from petulant to pompous, speaking of his time in the sport as a business, a source of income, a way to put food on the table and not understanding that nobody wants to hear it.
He’s certainly not a laid-off Michigan auto worker or a single mom working three jobs to feed the kids.
Sports is a business, but any man with the disposable income to wreck Bentleys at his leisure obviously doesn’t understand what financial hardships actually mean.
The reality is that what MMA has here is a real physical talent. He’s one of the sport’s first truly great athletes, not one of its great fighters. He demolishes the best 205-pounders the world has to offer, and he does it with almost frightening ease. That’s where his strength lies.
Outside of the cage, though, there may be no one weaker.
He’s obnoxious and abrasive, and what’s more is that he genuinely doesn’t see how anyone wouldn’t like him. He’s an obvious PR nightmare and a guy who believes he’ll change the sport by wearing a Nike swoosh and fighting with Dana White over his right shoulder to turn down fights. Therein lies his weakness.
Regardless, though, if you like violence, then he’s your guy. Strengths and weaknesses considered, he provides it with more consistency than anyone else in the sport not named Anderson Silva.
At the end of the day, that’s really the name of the game. Too bad he forgets that so often.
You know what’s interesting? People are still complaining about the cancellation of UFC 151. They’re trying to point fingers and cast blame, finding arguments anywhere they can about what went wrong and why it did. Some of that is due to th…
You know what’s interesting? People are still complaining about the cancellation of UFC 151. They’re trying to point fingers and cast blame, finding arguments anywhere they can about what went wrong and why it did.
Some of that is due to the fact that Jon Jones, one of the more at-fault parties in the whole mess, just doesn’t know when to shut up.
Some of it is because Dan Henderson and ChaelSonnen are so popular that people are simply loath to miss them getting a shot at gold.
Some of it is because people just love to complain, and will take any chance they can to enjoy a protracted campaign of hating on anyone or anything that opens up the opportunity.
But you know what most people don’t seem to be complaining about? The fact that VitorBelfort, an aging middleweight who hasn’t seen 205-pound action since 2007, randomly jumped the queue for a crack at Jones in a couple of weeks at UFC 152.
Why is that? Because the matchup is oddly compelling.
In Belfort the UFC is promoting the last generation’s version of Jones. He was the best fighter in the world at 19, a former tournament champion from days of yore. Now, he’s a grizzled veteran, a top-5 middleweight who still shows flashes of the old Vitor—which is, ironically, the young Vitor—and who can put guys away in a flash with his flurries and killer instinct.
Jones is the new breed. He’s a guy that most would argue is largely indestructible. Not only does he not lose, he never looks challenged. He hulks over his 205-pound adversaries with a freakish build and dominates them with absurd athleticism. He’s no joy to listen to, but he’s a joy to watch.
The one issue he has though, is that he’s not a fighter. He’s said so much in any one of his insufferable interviews.
He’s an athlete and a businessman. He fights because he’s good at it, fights so he can get his own line of Nike apparel, buy Bentleys, and generally live a life of leisure. The thing about athletes and businessmen, though, is that they rarely like to get punched in the face.
Jones is no different.
The only time he’s ever really been ruffled was against LyotoMachida, who worked angles and distance to pepper the champ and actually take a round from him. That fight obviously ended up in Jones’ favour, but he definitely didn’t have the easy enjoyment of fight night that he’s accustomed to. Even his statements in the press conference that he found out he “could take a hit” were uttered with decidedly less confidence than a man who believed what he was saying would normally exude.
With Belfort, there’s a very good chance he’ll be hit again. Probably harder than Machida hit him too, given how The Phenom tends to blitz and swing for the fences. How well Jones is equipped to handle that is still a relative mystery, because he’s never dealt with someone so quick and so powerful.
Make no mistake, this is not to say that you should go bet your house on VitorBelfort come September 22. You shouldn’t.
Jones has been a dominant light heavyweight champion; Belfort has been a solid middleweight contender at the same time.
That said, there’s a lot more to this scrap than meets the eye. The absurd Vegas odds are insulting to a man who was winning titles when his opponent was finking on pot smokers behind the school gym. If Belfort comes with his head on straight and a commitment to trying to knock Jones out or die trying, this game gets a whole lot more interesting.
At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about? Interesting fights?
Controversy be damned, that’s what people want to see. Who cares how we got here? Jones-Belfort is the ultimate in making the best of a bad situation.
There certainly isn’t any shortage of people who’ll complain about The Ultimate Fighter. It’s stale, they’ll say. Quality of fights has dipped, they’ll say. No one cares about fighters on a reality show, they’ll say….
There certainly isn’t any shortage of people who’ll complain about The Ultimate Fighter.
It’s stale, they’ll say.
Quality of fights has dipped, they’ll say.
No one cares about fighters on a reality show, they’ll say.
Friday night is a death knell for anything on television, much less anything targeted at males 18-34, they’ll say.
And you know what? They’re mostly right. At least they have been for the past couple of years.
But you know what else? Given how the show’s sixteenth season is shaping up, it might be one for the ages and the exact thing that rejuvenates the franchise.
It’s no secret that many UFC fans are straying. There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which is the fact that the promotion is inundating the market with quantity over quality, in hopes of filling the ludicrous number of cards d…
There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which is the fact that the promotion is inundating the market with quantity over quality, in hopes of filling the ludicrous number of cards demanded of them between pay-per-view and the still-fresh FOX partnership.
Many fans love the idea of more cards. Bully for them.
The fact is that more cards, given the limited number of fighters on the roster – much less fighters that people will actually go out of their way to watch, or pay to watch, for that matter – is not the ideal. Not yet.
So what is? What is the right number of cards for the UFC to put off in a calendar year?
Taking a look at the calendar in 2012, the UFC will have gone to pay-per-view 13 times (minus UFC 151, which would have made it 14). The main FOX network will have had four shows, FX had seven between “UFC on FX” and TUF finales, and FUEL TV had six shows (these numbers all exclude prelim specials, just for sake of ease).
That’s 31 shows. As people say on that stupid game on the new Price is Right starring the insufferable Drew Carey: “that’s too much!”
There simply isn’t enough talent, even with everyone fighting as much as they physically can and never getting injured, to make that schedule viable.
When you factor in that everyone doesn’t fight as much as they can, and guys do get injured, you end up being expected to pay $55 for Jay Hieron in a co-main event.
For this new era of the UFC to work and for the sport to grow at a reasonable pace, there needs to be some reining in of things.
A monthly pay-per-view is, at most, what the promotion should be offering. It wasn’t long ago that the idea of trying to sell Wanderlei Silva vs. Rich Franklin II for $55 would have been laughable. The first time they fought, when they were both younger and better, it was free. This year, the UFC tried to sell it and it didn’t have another worthwhile fight on the card.
They had to outright cancel an event when injury and matchup refusals stymied UFC 151, something they’d never done in the history of Zuffa. And that’s to say nothing of the semi-cancelled UFC 145, which was to take place in Montreal in March but was moved to Atlanta for a few different reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the promotion outright couldn’t produce a main event for the card.
Dana White and company postured it as a move and promised a card in Montreal by year’s end, but for those who already had flights and/or hotels booked, it was a cancellation in the same vein as 151 a few months later.
They should take that as a sign that they need to slow the pace. If you can’t even build cards to sell, or can only build cards to sell knowing that no one is going to buy them, you’re overreaching.
FOX shows are at the perfect number, one per quarter. The only issue is the quality of the matchups, and the lazy attempts to make pointless matchups meaningful by declaring them to be title eliminators.
Either give fans big fights, or market the fights you’re giving them for what they are. Doing things like claiming Brandon Vera is a real-life Rocky only a win away from a title shot when he was a hot Thiago Silva urine sample away from unemployment a year ago is lunacy, and it offends the fans who know better.
To their credit though, the UFC seems to have righted the ship with UFC on FOX 5, which stands to be an epic showcase of what makes the sport so great.
FX is also in a reasonable range for total events, as doing four shows plus the two TUF finales would be perfect. The issue in 2012 came from pacing, as there would be no event on FX for months, then multiple events within a few weeks of one another. Space them out, pad the TUF finales a little more instead of trying to make extra cards where there aren’t any, and things would be much smoother.
FUEL TV is an interesting piece of the puzzle, as some of the most entertaining shows have taken place there even if most people aren’t watching them. Six shows is about right for them, provided they can be filled with up-and-coming talent and a main event that could establish future contenders.
What the promotion has done by headlining the likes of Alex Gustafsson, Chan Sung Jung, and Stefan Struve there is perfect, and shows that they’re starting to lock in what they have on that particular network.
Realistically, as impatient and frustrated as many fans have become, finding the right pitch for events can’t be easy for the UFC. They’ve never had such a broad footprint, and they’re struggling to find the right fit.
Trimming a little fat here and there, probably down from 31 events to 27 or 28, would make a massive difference.
Just look at how the loss of UFC 151 reverberated throughout the fall schedule – a vanilla UFC 152 got better, UFC on FX 5 got better, and other guys are still unbooked and now available to take short notice fights if they’re needed. Three or four less events would probably make 2013 look a lot more like 2008-2011, when the UFC was doing Saturday night entertainment better than anyone since Lorne Michaels.
The UFC has shown many things in its existence, not the least of which is resilience. It’s a sound company run by smart people, and it will rebound from a forgettable 2012. If fans can sit around and proselytize on the state of the union and the future of the sport in this new era, rest assured the guys in the front office are doing it too.
Less is more, folks. That won’t be the case forever, but it’s the reality we live in today.
Many UFC fans haven’t been happy in 2012. Too many events, too many injuries, too much of an expectation from the company that their fans will follow them to the ends of the Earth. Sure, some are vehemently supporting the aggressive expansion of …
Many UFC fans haven’t been happy in 2012.
Too many events, too many injuries, too much of an expectation from the company that their fans will follow them to the ends of the Earth.
Sure, some are vehemently supporting the aggressive expansion of the promotion. They’ll say that real MMA fans just want more free fights, that fights every weekend – NO WAIT! EVERYNIGHT! – is the perfect world to live in.
And perhaps it is. When the UFC is able to do it properly.
But for a host of reasons they can’t do it properly just yet and they’re losing some fans as a result. They probably wouldn’t admit it, but they’re not stupid enough to be ignorant to it either.
So what can they do to recapture them?
The answer, surprisingly, is before us already. It just needs to go on a little bit longer and the ship will likely be righted be early 2013.
That answer? Less events, more fights that matter, and greater accessibility to them.
Jon Jones quickly became the most loathed man in MMA (a title he was in the running for anyway) when the cancellation of UFC 151 became official a couple of weeks back. He also inadvertently gave straying fans something to cheer about in the process: a UFC 152 worth the money being asked by Zuffa.
Sure his fight with Vitor Belfort is weird matchmaking and not exactly one that people were begging for, but is it not likely to be entertaining?
Jones doesn’t love getting hit, and Belfort loves to hit people.
Jones doesn’t get hit often, and Belfort hits people at his leisure.
Jones is the new breed, Belfort once was.
Add in the inaugural flyweight title bout and a middleweight title eliminator, and you have a card that harkens back to the promotion’s pay-per-view prime of 2008-2011.
A few weeks later Jose Aldo headlines another card in Brazil, UFC 153. Originally it was supposed to be Erik Koch donating his body for that one, but an injury saw Frankie Edgar replace him.
Wait. What? Frankie Edgar? Wasn’t that a fantasy superfight that people clamoured for like eight months ago?
Now you’ve got it. You’ve also got Rampage Jackson against hot prospect Glover Teixeira, Erick Silva and Jon Fitch, and names like Rick Story, Demian Maia, and Phil Davis rounding out the card.
Again, worth the money.
GSP returns to headline UFC 154 in a welterweight title unification bout against Carlos Condit, and only a couple of week after that UFC on FOX 5 will likely provide the greatest night of free MMA that television has ever seen.
Benson Henderson defends lightweight gold against Nate Diaz.
Rory MacDonald finally gets his fight with BJ Penn.
Shogun Rua welcomes Alexander Gustafsson to the top of the 205-pound division.
Brendan Schaub and Lavar Johnson will exchange shots for a few minutes until one (probably Schaub) is out cold.
They’re also using the UFC on FUEL TV event series to expand globally with less relevant, free fights and are only holding one show on FX between now and the end of the year.
That’s a remarkable run for the company. A run that absolutely has to get the attention of fans who have suddenly been reminded how much they love baseball and video games in the time it’s taken the UFC to stumble from the annals of “must-watch” sports action.
What they’ve started to do – less events (though it was only one, and it was purely by circumstance) and a greater focus on smarter matchmaking, as well as more meaningful matchmaking, is how people will come back to them.
Putting big fights on free television – actual big fights, like title fights, instead of a regular free TV headliner with a lame, completely revocable “winner gets a title shot” caveat attached – is going to help as well.
The UFC is adapting to what fans want and what they want has developed from what they’ve come to expect from the promotion, which built its name on guaranteeing an entertaining night of action every time out.
For the first time in a long time, it looks like they’re able to make that claim again. Now that they can, look for them to also claim to be the fastest growing sport in the world again as well.
Jon Jones