Maybe Kelvin Gastelum needed to have the decision made for him. Faced with the dilemma of draining his body or fighting undersized, Gastelum has let the UFC take the lead on his career, and as far as the company is concerned, he’s a middleweight. …
Maybe Kelvin Gastelum needed to have the decision made for him. Faced with the dilemma of draining his body or fighting undersized, Gastelum has let the UFC take the lead on his career, and as far as the company is concerned, he’s a middleweight.
As it turns out, he’s a very good one—a contender, even.
The 25-year-old added yet another star to his resume, crushing Vitor Belfort in the main event of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event in Fortaleza, Brazil.
Starching the legend on his home soil in just three minutes and 52 seconds, Gastelum continues his rise, with three straight wins in the division since dating back to 2015. More notably, he gives the weight class another rare rising young talent.
Most of the division’s top talents—champion Michael Bisping, ex-champs Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold, Anderson Silva—have been big names for years.
Now, with Gastelum and Robert Whittaker, there are finally the beginnings of a youth movement, a most welcome development.
Gastelum’s rise, while not a surprise, comes at least with some reluctance, even now.
Asked in the UFC on FS1 post-fight show whether his streak has caused him to reconsider his hopes of heading back down to 170, the answer was a bit surprising.
“No,” he said. “But if I get offered a fight that interests me, that keeps me moving up the rankings, I will for sure stay, you know?”
Yes, Kelvin. Yes, we get it. The fights need to mean something, but isn’t that exactly what the UFC is doing with you?
Remember, this whole thing wasn’t the result of an evil UFC conspiracy. It was only after multiple weight issues at welterweight that he got pushed up a division by UFC matchmakers.
At just 5’9″, his hesitation is easily understood, however. At that height (and with a 71-inch reach), he is almost always going to be undersized.
So far, though, it hasn’t mattered. In fact, it’s been something of a benefit.
Not only is Gastelum a smaller target, but he is usually going to come with a built-in speed advantage against some of the bigger, more lumbering types that populate the division.
That wasn’t necessarily true against Belfort, who built his legend on blistering hands and violent barrages. Gastelum wasn’t the naturally faster of the two, but he was fast enough to do what he wanted.
About midway through the first, he came forward with a combination, stunning Belfort with a right hook before dropping him with a straight left. Gastelum followed with a hail of ground strikes, but Belfort used his veteran savvy by covering up and managed to return to his feet just moments later.
Undeterred, Gastelum clipped Belfort with a hard left a few seconds later. This time, there was no coming back from Belfort, who went down and took a few ground strikes before ref John McCarthy waved off the fight.
“It took a few shots to find it, but I knew eventually it was going to find its home,” Gastelum said in the UFC on FS1 post-fight show.
Gastelum, sitting at No. 10 in the UFC middleweight rankings, should soon move up a couple of slots and find himself just a couple of wins away from the belt, making his rise both unlikely and fruitful.
The reality was it was not a fight he could afford to lose.
Sure, Belfort is a legend, but at this point of his career, that’s about his best remaining attribute. His reputation. His past. His history of terrorizing opponents.
Beyond that, it has been a slow, steady descent over the last two years, losing three of his last four before Saturday.
Until the day he walks off for good, it seems like Belfort will always carry his early dangerous blitz with him, but these days, if it doesn’t close the show, the drop afterward goes further, faster.
On Saturday night, it never came. His hands looked fast but never reached the target.
Belfort had height, reach and experience on Gastelum, but the young American had too many intangibles that are difficult to overcome for someone old enough to begin campaigning for a “Legends League” seniors division, as Belfort did recently in an interview with MMA Junkie.
Gastelum is durable, aggressive and boasts a nonstop motor. Any of the three traits alone is difficult to deal with; for Belfort, the presence of all three in the same opponent practically represents kryptonite.
For almost the entirety of his career, Belfort has been a front-runner. That’s not a knock on him specifically; you can say the same about most fighters. It’s just he’s never been a guy who has been able to turn things around after falling behind. He’s not the type to make adjustments and rally. Either his power crushes or it doesn’t.
On Saturday, it didn’t.
Belfort was also fighting just weeks away from turning 40. With a career than began over 20 years ago, he’s seen his body go through numerous injuries, a failed drug test and the testosterone replacement therapy era. At some point, it has to flame out.
For him, it was probably easy to explain away a loss to Weidman. It was understandable to get stopped by Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and then Gegard Mousasi. Those are all names who have won championships in major promotions.
But Gastelum? A blown-up welterweight? That one won’t be quite as easy to rationalize.
Except maybe it will be in retrospect. Gastelum continues to move up and to matter in the middleweight division.
Now it’s up to the UFC matchmakers to keep him there. Gastelum floated the idea of fighting Silva in June in a fight that would be on the Spider’s home turf in Rio de Janeiro.
He has that kind of confidence and swagger. It’s almost like he believes this whole middleweight thing is going somewhere. It’s almost like he feels at home.
On Saturday, in Fortaleza, Brazil, the UFC Octagon touches down with an event headlined by an aging veteran and a rising contender. As main-event pairings go, it’s more interesting than it is high stakes.
Vitor Belfort has managed to be relevant …
On Saturday, in Fortaleza, Brazil, the UFC Octagon touches down with an event headlined by an aging veteran and a rising contender. As main-event pairings go, it’s more interesting than it is high stakes.
Vitor Belfort has managed to be relevant in MMA for two decades, but as he reaches his 40th birthday, questions will follow him about how much longer he can hang around the top tier UFC middleweights.
There are already signs he’s slowing down. In each of his last two bouts, he was stopped in one-sided fashion. In his defense, those defeats came to Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Gegard Mousasi, surging contenders with the skills to make anyone look bad.
Still, Belfort is a name Gastelum needs.
Gastelum has always resisted the move to 185 pounds, but a win would make him 3-0 in the division since his weight-cutting problems began, including back-to-back wins over Belfort and Tim Kennedy. Perhaps just as importantly, it might signal to him that middleweight is his true home.
Gastelum has a dilemma, and maybe this helps him discover the solution. Joining me to talk it all out is B/R colleague Chad Dundas.
Mike Chiappetta: Chad, MMA is a strange sport. A lot of weird things happen in it on a regular basis. One of those things is going on under our noses, and that is this: Gastelum is a reluctant middleweight in his own potential rise toward title contention.
All things considered, he’d love to move back down to welterweight. That match is clear. It’s obvious he hasn’t given up on the division, as he said during a January interview with MMA Junkie‘s Fernanda Prates.
It’s just that after multiple misses at making that 171-pound max limit, the UFC no longer trusts him and refuses to book him in welterweight matchups.
I can understand his desire head back there. At just 5’9″ and with a 71-inch reach, according to the promotion’s website, Gastelum—ranked 10th in the division—is the smallest of the UFC’s top 15 middleweights.
Then again, Yoel Romero (5’10”, 73-inch reach) has the most comparable frame in the division, and he seems to be doing OK as its top contender.
Being undersized isn’t always a huge problem, so might this all actually be a blessing in disguise for Gastelum? While the division is bottlenecked, with champ Michael Bisping waiting for the returning Georges St-Pierre later this year, Gastelum has the chance to make some serious noise.
And frankly, Chad, I expect Gastelum to beat Belfort—and to do so convincingly.
Having already been in the cage with notables like Nate Marquardt, Johny Hendricks and Kennedy, Gastelum does not seem likely to be overawed by the big moment. And without having to drain himself with a horrific weight cut, he should have plenty of energy to take over the fight as long as he withstands Belfort’s early barrage.
But does that make him a title threat? I don’t think so. Not yet. There are just too many others to jump in line. There are certain opponents—Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold, for two—who seem too big and others—Souza and Mousasi—who are too technical.
I’m not saying Gastelum couldn’t beat them; I’m just saying that wins over Kennedy and Belfort don’t provide us the information necessary to project the height of his climb.
If I had to guess, though, I’d say no. To me, Gastelum has a few too many liabilities. His height and reach. His inconsistent striking. His lack of a fallback specialty to lean on in hard times. It’s a lot to overcome.
What do you think, Chad? Where do you see Gastelum headed in the middleweight contenders’ race?
Chad: First off, let me say I’m kind of enjoying this odd little game of cat and mouse between Gastelum and the UFC.
The San Jose, California, native looked impressive as recently as December, when he dispatched Kennedy at UFC 206, but he then cast the moment into confusion and doubt by immediately announcing he wanted to head back to 170 pounds. So this pairing with Belfort almost feels like the UFC saying to him, “Oh, you do, do you?
By giving Gastelum a fish as big as Belfort, matchmakers were making him a 185-pound offer he couldn’t refuse. Assuming he wins here, it’ll be fascinating to see whether the promotion has to keep using this carrot-on-a-stick approach to keep him there.
We both say “assuming he wins…” because Gastelum is the biggest favorite on Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 106 card, according to Odds Shark. Belfort is obviously capable of pulling off a surprise—especially in Brazil and especially early in the fight—but I tend to think Gastelum is too smart, well-rounded and durable to fall victim to an early blitz from the former light heavyweight champion.
I think he’ll drag this fight out to the point Belfort starts to fade to either salt away a decision or take him out via late TKO.
And to answer your question, Mike, yeah, I can definitely see Gastelum becoming a contender in this division.
Along with being the smallest guy in the middleweight Top 10, as you noted, he’s also the youngest, at just 25. Aside from the 26-year-old Robert Whittaker, the upper echelon of the 185-pound class is clogged with a lot of fairly old dogs. So long as Gastelum sticks around this weight and keeps improving, he’ll work his way up the ladder sooner or later.
He’s even still young enough to suffer a couple losses along the way and keep himself relevant.
Trouble is, Mike, with Bisping-GSP on deck for later this year, the division finds itself in a state of suspended animation.
Again, so long as this bout plays out according to chalk, what do you see as Gastelum’s immediate future? Can the UFC entice him to remain a middleweight, or will boredom alone chase him back to welterweight?
Mike: It seems like he’s lost the ability to chart his divisional path. In most instances, I can’t stand how much power the UFC wields over its athletes’ career arcs. In this one, though, I can’t really fault it for if not flat out forcing him into a division, at least corralling him into the 185 pen.
After all, the promotion is supposed to be in the business of lining up contenders to compete for the belt, but if Gastelum continually fails to qualify for the class in which he’s trying to conquer, what’s the point?
At least he has a path forward. And as long as he keeps winning, why change it? I guess my previous argument about the division’s top stars being too much for him would be a legitimate reason, but it’s also subjective, and it’s just as easy to point out advantages Gastelum might have in those fights. The youngster has an excellent gas tank, legitimate power and is tough as nails.
Depending on whether he wins and how he wins on Saturday, he might move up the rankings a couple of slots. If he dazzles the fight world with a crushing first-round knockout, would it be impossible to envision him jumping Belfort, Derek Brunson and maybe even Anderson Silva to No. 7? I don’t think it’s inconceivable. And that’s where things get interesting.
If Gastelum wakes up on Monday morning, peeks at those rankings and sees himself among the Mousasis, Weidmans and Rockholds of the world, it wouldn’t be easy to toss away that progress and head back to a division in which your last four fight weeks went like this: canceled because of missed weight, decision win, decision loss, decision loss after missing weight.
For Gastelum, the journey to get to 170 is as dangerous as the fight itself. Why deal with all those extra headaches if the present is going so swimmingly?
If and when Gastelum does hit a roadblock at middleweight, that might signal the moment to take some time away to hire a qualified professional to guide his career back to welterweight in a responsible way.
It’s worth noting that observers to the sport tend to think of these athletes as interchangeable pieces on a chess board. To us, Gastelum can fit either at 170 or 185. In reality, he’s a natural ‘tweener. There’s no easy solution to that problem for him. At some point, though, it will behoove Gastelum to make a commitment—a serious, well-designed one—to one home.
I guess the bigger question is, can he do that?
Because when we talk about Gastelum’s well-known weight-management problems, what we’re talking about is discipline. It seems to me that if that ingredient is missing in one area, it can pervade everything else.
Chad, you seem to be higher on him than me. Do you chalk these problems up to his age? And if so, what do you see him achieving in the next two to three years?
Chad: I honestly don’t know what Gastelum’s major issues have been—either with continually missing the welterweight limit or with committing to being a middleweight. I suspect a great deal of it has to do with the stuff we already mentioned—that he’s a natural ‘tweener and deep down suspects he doesn’t have the physical size to hang with the top dogs at 185 pounds.
Are there motivational issues to go along with that? Commitment issues? Issues with living a mundane, flavor-free life eating kale, brown rice and chicken breasts for every meal? Maybe. And frankly, if Gastelum struggled with that last one, I wouldn’t blame the guy. I would too.
Maybe I just have too much faith in him—maybe I have too much faith in professional fighters in general—but I believe he’ll eventually get it figured out. In fact, I believe it’s possible he already has.
And if I may assume for a moment that Gastelum has cleared things up to the point he can now get on with the business of being his best self, I have no reason to doubt he can be a player at 185 pounds.
Is he going to immediately jump up and beat Romero to become No. 1 contender? Probably not. Then again, if we restricted our discussion of potential middleweight up-and-comers to people we think could beat Romero, we’d end up having a short conversation. Almost nobody fits that description.
But do I think there’s a chance Gastelum could one day fit in alongside other top challengers like Weidman, Souza, Mousasi and Rockhold? Yeah.
All told, Gastelum has amassed a 13-2 record while spending all but the earliest days of his career fighting in the UFC. His pair of losses both came at 170 pounds—one to current champion Tyron Woodley and one to Neil Magny—and both by split decision.
The list of guys he’s most recently defeated—Kennedy, Hendricks, Marquardt and Jake Ellenberger—is also pretty impressive.
The bottom line, for me, is this: I don’t know how good Gastelum can ultimately be. The evidence we have suggests he can be pretty darn successful, if only he figures out two of perhaps the simplest parts of his job: how to make weight and the proper division for competition.
Maybe he goes down as one of those tragic cases who never get their leather together.
But if not? I’ll stand by my assertion he could have a future as bright as nearly anybody else on that middleweight Top 15 list.
One way or another, UFC 209 was supposed to bring closure for Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson. Coming to a draw after 25 minutes in the cage last November, the two spent the past few months sniping at each other over the merits of a rematch until th…
One way or another, UFC 209 was supposed to bring closure for Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson. Coming to a draw after 25 minutes in the cage last November, the two spent the past few months sniping at each other over the merits of a rematch until the UFC made it official.
While an immediate do-over didn’t excite Woodley, he came into the fight with the full knowledge that in the eyes of many MMA observers, he needed a decisive win to put Thompson behind him and legitimize his welterweight title reign.
Well, about that…
It wasn’t exactly mission accomplished for Woodley.
Yes, he achieved his primary objective. He retained his welterweight championship belt. But as UFC announcer Bruce Buffer began reading the judges’ scorecards, no one in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena or watching on pay-per-view could have felt confident in predicting a winner.
As it turned out, it was a scrape job, a pair of 48-47 scores to go with one 47-47 draw.
If there was any silver lining for Woodley, it was his performance in the final moments of the fight, with the result hanging in the balance.
As the clock ticked down past its final minute, Woodley finally breached the distance that had flummoxed him for long, long, long stretches of the match and crash-landed a pair of heavy right hands to Thompson’s head, flooring the challenger before nearly finishing him with a barrage against the cage.
Thompson survived it and got back to his feet before the closing bell, but in a bout with little sustained action, it felt like an eruption, and it sealed the pivotal final round.
“It’s tough when you fight someone a second time,” Woodley said on the Fox Sports 1 post-fight show. “He was keeping me at bay so it was tough to get in. It was really awkward, but it was my first rematch. I was hesitant, but we were both hesitant. The last round i knew I needed to go for the kill, and I got it done.”
Sort of.
To be sure, MMA is a hellaciously difficult endeavor; “chess with blood” is among the most apt descriptions of the sport ever uttered.
Factor in Thompson’s singular style—which is essentially a retrofitting of karate for MMA—and sprinkle in Woodley’s height and reach disadvantages, and the recipe for awkwardness was always there.
This time around, it manifested itself from the beginning, starting with a slog-like first round that featured only 11 combined strikes, according to FightMetricnumbers.
The level of caution set, neither man could break through the other’s invisible forcefield for any length of time, igniting a series of boos that echoed throughout the entirety of the match. As UFC title fights go, it will not go down in the vault of greatness.
“I thought I threw and landed the better strikes, but you can’t leave it in the judges’ hands,” Thompson said.
For the record, Woodley scored his own performance a C-minus.
For the champion, it was a fight with little upside from the beginning. By virtue of a draw, he had technically defended his belt and quickly stated he was ready to move on to something greater. By his reasoning, Thompson had five rounds to wrest the belt from him and hadn’t been able to do so. More than that, Woodley had become the first UFC opponent to outland Thompson over the course of a fight—he did it again Saturday, edging him 70-66, per FightMetric—and he’d been the one to create the closest near-finish, nearly knocking “Wonderboy” out during a fifth-round mauling that surprisingly led to only one 10-8 judges’ scorecard.
While Woodley campaigned for the returning Georges St-Pierre or Nick Diaz—in other words, a money fight—the UFC chose differently.
On the money line, Thompson went off as a slim favorite, with those swinging his way believing he had more room for adjustments with his unorthodox striking style.
That thinking proved somewhat correct, as Woodley’s tentativeness put rounds up for grabs, but Thompson also couldn’t find the moments of aggression he needed to seal the majority.
“I could have thrown a little bit more,” he said on the Fox Sports 1 post-fight show. “Going in, you say, ‘I want to be aggressive, but when you’re out there versus Tyron, he’s so powerful. He’s great in the clinch position and has a great right hand, so you have to be cautious.”
The South Carolinian can take solace in the relative shallowness of the division. A Demian Maia win over Jorge Masvidal will almost certainly result in a Maia title shot. That’s about the closest thing to a guarantee in a wild division, though. Rounding out the top five, Robbie Lawler is coming off a loss, Carlos Condit is semi-retired, and Neil Magny won his last fight, but just prior to that, he was knocked out in the first round by Lorenz Larkin.
So it’s not a long road back to the top for Thompson with another win or two.
Then again, it is a matchup the fight world probably won’t mind waiting for.
After 10 rounds, almost nothing was settled. As MMA goes, that’s a pretty healthy sample size, but after 50 minutes, all we can say is that we may have no clear winner, but we’ve had enough.
Rashad Evans has been around long enough to be considered an MMA elder statement. Long enough that he’s gone from hated to loved to practically pitied, what with his recent in-cage troubles and out-of-cage turmoil. It’s an arc that parallels his rise f…
Rashad Evans has been around long enough to be considered an MMA elder statement. Long enough that he’s gone from hated to loved to practically pitied, what with his recent in-cage troubles and out-of-cage turmoil. It’s an arc that parallels his rise from prospect to champion to aging veteran, yet there is a chance—however slight—that he can add another twist to his winding story.
After years of resisting calls to move down to middleweight, his UFC 209 matchup Saturday with Dan Kelly marks his surrender to what always seemed like an eventuality.
Now at 185 pounds, and against an opponent who wouldn’t have touched Evans in his prime, it’s all or nothing.
This isn’t a must-win fight in any career legacy kind of way. Evans was a champion in the UFC’s glamour division (light heavyweight) and an Ultimate Fighter champion back when such a thing mattered, and he has career wins over all-timers like Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Dan Henderson and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. His position as a UFC great is locked in.
Recent days, however, haven’t been nearly as kind. And the future? Oof, it’s cloudy at best, which explains the stakes of a fight with an opponent who has barely made it on the radar of most fight fans.
“It definitely feels like a second career,” Evans told Fox Sports‘ Damon Martin in a recent interview. “Because it feels like I’m starting all over. Almost every aspect of it. From training situations to just getting cleared to a new weight class, everything feels brand new. I feel like a new kid on the block. It’s refreshing. I’m excited, I’m nervous; I have all those rookie feelings but I know I can do it because I’ve done it before.”
That he has. Still, a second climb will come not just against odds, but his own personal history.
Since beating Phil Davis—the current Bellator light heavyweight champion, by the way—in January 2012, Evans has sputtered to a 2-4 mark, with scattershot performances that have been alternately brilliant (first-round bulldozing of Chael Sonnen) and uninspired (decision loss to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira).
During that time, he’s also had a pair of knee surgeries, left his longtime gym (the Blackzilians) and, most recently, was rejected for fight licenses by two separate commissions due to MRI abnormalities.
In sports, expiration dates only sometimes arrive conspicuously labeled. In MMA, it is often tagged by the deterioration of the chin or an inability to pull the trigger. Those signs often alert us before the athlete himself will accept the reality.
In Evans, the signs are difficult to overlook. Now 37 years old and seven years removed from his UFC title reign, he’s looming dangerously close to the final chapter. If he can’t beat Kelly, well then, the end is nigh.
That possibility does not exist in Evans’ mind, of course. Anyone who has worn that gold shares an impossibly optimistic outlook that everything can turn around any second.
He summited the peak at a time when the light heavyweight division was at its deepest. This climb would be similarly difficult. The middleweight class is packed with both hungry veterans and rising stars all chasing the belt.
And in some ways, Evans can take his motivation from the man at the top of the heap, Michael Bisping, whom he defeated nearly a decade ago.
For a time, Bisping was going to be the best to never get a title shot. But then circumstances changed, and he became the right guy at the right time, and he left-hooked Luke Rockhold into a shocking unconsciousness to become the champion. It was a late-career rise that no one saw coming.
Evans would need to pull that kind of stunner to make it to the top. He would have to leapfrog Kelvin Gastelum and Gegard Mousasi and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Yoel Romero, just to name a few.
That’s more than a tall order; it’s a nearly impossible one.
Every unthinkable success begins with a baby step, however, and in Kelly, he’s facing a manageable first rung up the ladder. The Australian is 12-1 and riding a three-fight win streak, but he’s 39 years old and has never faced anyone with a pedigree in Evans’ sphere. Kelly’s striking is awkward and labored, and what he lacks in technique, he attempts to make up in volume and pace.
For Evans, there is both opportunity and danger in that. A career-long counterstriker, he averages more strikes absorbed per minute (2.26) than landed (2.12) per FightMetric—a rarity for a championship-caliber fighter. In that style, he is often content to bide his time and operate in the openings rather than aggressively create offensive opportunities.
This could be a feast-or-famine approach against Kelly, who is eminently hittable (opponents land 3.99 strikes per minute against him, per FightMetric) and often within range.
In the standup department, either Evans’ power overcomes Kelly’s volume, or he falls behind and doesn’t catch up. The clinch won’t be so easy. Kelly is a four-time Australian Olympic judoka and has unsurprisingly shown strength in the position. He also has five career submissions to his name on the mat.
All that aside, it’s a fight Evans should win, and he knows it.
It was just over a decade ago when he first flashed his dynamic, championship-winning potential for the first time, knocking out Sean Salmon with a shattering head kick, and eight years since he signaled the coming end of Chuck Liddell’s career.
All this time later, time is coming for him, too.
Changing divisions is rarely the lifeline it’s made out to be. For Evans, it won’t define his career, but it will extend it, and for a fighter looking for opportunity, it’s a bridge to…somewhere. For Evans, it is the start of something new and exciting. Let’s hope that in retrospect, it still looks that way.
It’s official, and by now it’s officially sunk in: Georges St-Pierre will be returning to the UFC Octagon. In a year that has so far begun with little of substance to celebrate, the news came as a welcome development.
But now that St-Pierre…
It’s official, and by now it’s officially sunk in: Georges St-Pierre will be returning to the UFC Octagon. In a year that has so far begun with little of substance to celebrate, the news came as a welcome development.
But now that St-Pierre’s flirtations have evolved into a full-blown marriage, it seems time to manage the expectations of his return. St-Pierre isn’t likely to step into the cage until the second half of the year, at which point he’ll be 36 years old. That isn’t ancient, but his age coupled with a layoff that will stretch to nearly four years, seems ominous.
Much has happened in the interim, from title switches within his division to wholesale increases in movement and changes in striking patterns that have altered the styles of many of the sport’s elite.
Can St-Pierre adapt and evolve, or will he be left by the wayside, another cautionary tale of an athlete who wrote a perfect ending only to let it go to waste?
Joining me to discuss St-Pierre’s return to the helter-skelter word of cagefighting is MMA Lead Writer Chad Dundas.
Mike Chiappetta: I have to admit that when St-Pierre first started discussing the possibility of coming back, I was on board. But that was 2015. Yes, he’d already had a long layoff, but it was long enough to recharge his batteries while being short enough to ensure he hadn’t missed the last of his prime years.
These days, I don’t have the same feeling. By attempting to bridge that four-year gap between UFC bouts, he’ll be attempting to do something unprecedented in UFC history. Sure, he can look at Dominick Cruz as inspiration, but when Cruz returned from a nearly three-year sidelining in 2014, he was only 29.
The difference between 29 and 36 in athletes can be massive. This is particularly true as you move towards the lighter weight classes. While Fabricio Werdum won the undisputed UFC heavyweight belt at 37, the oldest man ever to win a welterweight title is current champ Tyron Woodley, who had just turned 34 when he snagged it.
So history is against him.
However, there is some cause for optimism. For one, St-Pierre has stayed in remarkable shape throughout most of his layoff. Sure, he suffered a knee injury shortly after vacating the belt, but anyone who follows him on social media knows he’s spent time traveling around the world training with various fighters and coaches.
This is a man who’s kept his body in motion, so it’s easy to theorize that he won’t be suffering from the same kind of ring rust that afflicts athletes who take blocks of time away from the gym.
Moreover, his shift in priorities may well work in his favor. While he was once obsessed with winning and defending the welterweight belt, St-Pierre seems to have more interest in assembling fights that intrigue him from either business or philosophical points of view. Choosing matchups based upon style pairings or other favorable reasons will offer him more room for error than taking on the best available contender time and time again.
The way that St-Pierre and the UFC leadership navigate his return will be interesting to see, Chad. How do you expect them to go about it? I think we all expect the brass to try to capitalize at the box office and pay-per-view registers first and foremost, but what will that mean in the way they match him up, and will it be good or bad for his win/loss prospects?
Chad Dundas: Obviously, there are a ton of unknowns surrounding St-Pierre’s return. For starters, he’ll step back into a UFC where not only has the athletic landscape greatly changed but also where new ownership appears to be rapidly altering the fight company’s overall value system.
During the years when GSP was in his prime, there was nothing more desirable to be in the UFC than a dominant champion. Nobody played that game better that St-Pierre, keeping the 170-pound title on lock more or less uninterrupted for the better part of seven years. Meanwhile, he used his built-in Canadian fanbase to establish himself as the organization’s biggest pay-per-view draw to boot.
These days, titles seem to mean a whole lot less in the grand scheme of things. Marketability is king, and it’s that fervent following north of the border that has the UFC interested in bringing a 36-year-old version of St-Pierre off the bench and back into the fold.
I think that new focus on big-money matchups will serve St-Pierre well as his second life in fighting begins. In 2013, near the end of his initial run with the company, it seemed as though walking the razor’s edge of being champion had driven him to near madness. Now, those pressures are, if not gone completely, at least changed.
That’s a fairly roundabout way to answer your question, Mike, but it seems unlikely we’ll ever see St-Pierre return to the rat race of the welterweight title picture. He’s already been there and done that and, besides, that’s not really why the UFC is bringing him out of retirement.
As you mentioned, we’re most likely to see St-Pierre set up in a series of superfights. Judging by the things his longtime coach Firas Zahabi told Ariel Helwani on this week’s MMA Hour (via MMAFighting.com), it sounds as though middleweight champion Michael Bisping and lightweight champ Conor McGregor are both in the mix for GSP’s return fight.
A 185-pound superbout against Anderson Silva is also enjoying some renewed interest.
Any of those fights will be fine with me, though I confess I have a slight preference for either Silva or McGregor. Bisping would be fine, but there are so many legitimate contenders for the middleweight crown at the moment, it’d be a shame to see that division put into a further holding pattern.
How about you, Mike? Which path for GSP’s future strikes you as the most likely? And will the former champion be able to hang in the new UFC? Or is his return destined to make us feel as sad as seeing guys like BJ Penn and Fedor Emelianenko try to overstay their welcome?
Mike: Your question puts a lot into context, because it firmly places GSP in a gray area between championship-caliber fighter and elder statesman heading toward the senior’s tour.
His age suggests he’s closer to the latter, although we must firmly acknowledge his dedication to fitness combined with a pull-back from the wear-and-tear of the daily MMA grind over the last few years could make him an outlier.
Still, I think we have to assume he’s not going to return with the same popping jab and explosive power double leg takedown that he rode to legend status. We’ll see flashes of the old GSP for sure, maybe even stretches, but young and schooled opponents won’t be as susceptible to that kind of arsenal as they used to be a few years ago.
The game has changed. Power doubles are still around, but takedown defense has improved enough that someone like Woodley, who has a Division I collegiate wrestling background, has just a 45 percent accuracy rate. And he’s the champion.
But that point may be moot if St-Pierre decides that he is completely disinterested in fighting as a welterweight. If that’s the case, the UFC won’t have him fight contenders.
And that opens up the Bisping fight, or Silva, or maybe Nick or Nate Diaz. And frankly, any of those—particularly the last three—seem like a better use for St-Pierre, and one that more closely aligns with his current physical state.
After a career of fighting the hungriest contenders, St-Pierre can approach these kinds of fights in a different way. It will no longer be about proving who is the best in the world, but about a test of martial arts skill combined with a hint of spectacle. It will simply be more fun.
From an athletic standpoint, perhaps that will open him up a bit more. If there is not so much at stake with every punch, kick and takedown, maybe the game plan won’t be so rigid. At the least, it will signal to fans that it’s OK to temper their expectations of him.
After all, does anyone expect Silva vs. St-Pierre 2017 to be what it might have been eight years ago?
Everyone ages. And even while I expect St-Pierre to age better than most fighters, I am fully prepared to see some withering of his once-brilliant talents. For someone who rarely struck with knockout power over the last half-decade of his career, his margin for error will only decrease further. That means if he’s a half-tick slower on his reaction time, he’s going to get hit. If his double leg takedown has lost a few horsepower, it’s going to get stopped.
And this is what we should expect to see, a fighter who has been compromised by time and injury. There may be bursts of past greatness, but also moments of noticeable erosion. And if he hangs around long enough, yes, even the welterweight G.O.A.T. will end up following the same path as others like Penn.
Am I too doom-and-gloom here, Chad? After all this time away, do you see a realistic road to reclaiming his past form, or is he doomed to repeat the mistakes of other greats who couldn’t say goodbye?
Chad: Anybody who has been around this sport for a while greets news of an all-time-great coming out of retirement with some measure of dread. MMA exacts too great a physical toll on its athletes not to fret about it, especially where it concerns a person as likable at St-Pierre.
Compounding those reservations is the perception that GSP had made a clean break from the sport. He was all the way out, with a good deal of money in the bank and a passable career in movies to buoy him.
So, yeah, it can be troubling if you allow your mind to drift too far down that rabbit hole.
The only thing I would take exception to is that it seems like we’re all judging St-Pierre without actually seeing him compete. I’m trying to keep my mind open until I get some visual evidence to work with.
Mike, you raise some really good questions about whether GSP’s takedowns-and-top-control game will still be effective in the 2017 UFC. That’s one of the reasons why I’m glad it doesn’t seem like he’ll be jumping back into the thick of welterweight competition.
The most likely scenario is that St-Pierre inks a multi-fight deal with the UFC and returns for a series of high-profile bouts against guys like Silva, McGregor, Bisping and Nick Diaz. All those would score big returns for the UFC while—with the possible exception of eating some discombobulating McGregor lefts—putting GSP in comparatively little danger.
With that in mind, maybe I’m in the minority among our colleagues, but I’m actually pretty bullish about St-Pierre’s return. He’s historically been arguably the sport’s best overall athlete, a guy who transformed himself into one of MMA’s most dominant wrestlers while having no competitive background in this sport.
Do I want to see what he has left in the tank? Absolutely. Will I willingly plunk down a chunk of change to watch him fight any of those aforementioned four men? Gladly.
For the UFC, 2017 has gotten off to a wobbly start. Conor McGregor has decided to take some time off and seems more interested in boxing than the UFC, Ronda Rousey was walloped again and vanished, Nick and Nate Diaz show little interest in returning, a…
For the UFC, 2017 has gotten off to a wobbly start. ConorMcGregor has decided to take some time off and seems more interested in boxing than the UFC, Ronda Rousey was walloped again and vanished, Nick and Nate Diaz show little interest in returning, and the events that have taken place have been largely short on sizzle.
You know who’s having a good start to the year, though? Bellator. The world’s No. 2 promotion scored a strong rating with Tito Ortiz vs. ChaelSonnen, finds itself in good position to chip away at the industry goliath by signing away some free-agent talent as well as prospects and arguably has the better event coming up this weekend.
All of which begs the question: Has Bellator suddenly seized the momentum in the head-to-head promotional battle?
Joining me to discuss is my colleague and MMA lead writer Chad Dundas.
Mike Chiappetta: Chad, let’s start with an overall look at the health of both companies. Less than a year ago, the UFC was sold for over $4 billion. If we can call that the company’s all-time high-water mark, a lot has gone wrong since then. Several champions have gone on the shelf, a huge chunk of the employees have been laid off—taking a bit of soul out of the company—and there has been a mass purging of the roster, potentially weakening the depth of cards.
Meanwhile, over at Bellator, all the little moves Scott Coker has made seem to be adding up. Cards seem to be deeper and offer more intrigue. As an example, Bellator recently announced its return to London, England in May. Its main event will feature the promotional debut of Rory MacDonald as he takes on granite-fisted Paul Daley. As our friends across the pond say, that’s a “cracker” of a matchup.
By comparison, when the UFC visits the same city a month prior, they’ll lead with JimiManuwa vs. … Corey Anderson? That, Chad, is not a “cracker.”
To be fair, on an event-by-event basis, the UFC still out-rates Bellator in quality matchups and stakes, but it sure seems like the gap is closing.
The reasons why are numerous.
For one thing, it certainly feels like the UFC puts its promotional muscle behind a very select group of athletes. If none of those athletes are populating a card, it tends to feel rather ordinary. For another, we seem to be in an unprecedented time of inactivity for the UFC’s champions.
There hasn’t been a single reigning champion in action since the turn of the new year, and we won’t see one defending a belt until TyronWoodley squares off again with Stephen Thompson on March 4.
That’s the longest stretch to start the year without a UFC title defense since 2010, when Georges St-Pierre fought Dan Hardy on March 27. However, those were very different times with far fewer events (24 vs. 42 last year) and fewer champions to populate them with (five, as opposed to the current 11).
Whatever the reason, having those stars and technical marvels on the sidelines isn’t helping matters.
In my eyes, Bellator seems to be taking advantage of a tough cycle for the UFC. Whether it can actually seize any market share is another matter, but, other than being a trend worth watching, is there any reason to believe it’s something more?
Chad Dundas: For the most part, Bellator and the UFC are still playing two very different games. The UFC obviously remains the dominant brand and figures to be so—if I may steal a phrase from the company’s own standard fighter contract—in perpetuity.
With its lucrative network television deal, full menu of near monthly pay-per-view events and an overstuffed slate of fight cards going down all over the globe, the UFC is still to MMA what the NFL is to pro football. By contrast, it perennially feels as though Bellator is scrambling just to put together halfway compelling main events here and there.
That said, two things strike me.
First, I’ve long argued it wouldn’t take as many high-profile free-agent acquisitions as people think for Bellator to at least appear as if it’s making up ground on the UFC. Fights like this weekend’s FedorEmelianenko vs. Matt Mitrione and next month’s Daley vs. MacDonald prove it can already put on a comparable—and in some cases better—product a few times a year.
Plucking Ryan Bader off the UFC scrap heap this month gives Coker yet another piece with which to play mix-and-match. That slow trickle of defections will likely continue into the foreseeable future, and every new hire makes the smaller promotion’s portfolio a little stronger.
Second, though, I don’t think “competing with the UFC” even ought to be Bellator’s main goal. At least, not right now.
If I’m Coker, my only immediate directive is to simply keep plugging away. Keep putting on solid fight cards each time out while occasionally popping the TV numbers with a big-name matchup. Keep providing a product that, when fight-friendly eyeballs do land on it, makes people think, “Hey, Bellator is alright. I ought to watch more of this stuff.”
Above all else, continue to show the head honchos at Viacom that Bellator is a modest success. Keep it profitable. Through your consistently reliable work, continue to send regular reminders that this is something the parent company should keep supporting with its dollars.
Because for all the reasons you listed above, Mike, the UFC is in uncharted waters right now. New ownership is just finding its legs. Fighter unions are fomenting. Lawsuits are lurking.
The overwhelming chances are that the world’s largest MMA promotion will bounce back from a rocky start to 2017. It always has before. But if things continue to destabilize, if calamity ever does strike, Coker will want to be waiting with open arms and a fat operating budget, ready to take advantage of whatever situation the market offers.
This weekend clearly offers one more small skirmish in a much larger cold war, when Bellator’s Emelianenko vs. Mitrione and the UFC’s Derrick Lewis vs. Travis Browne offer fans competing heavyweight fights on back-to-back nights.
Mike, if we can take our macro discussion micro for a moment, which 265-pound scrap do you like better. Which company do you think stands the best chance to win the weekend?
Mike: This is why examining the phenomenon more closely is important. Looking at the entirety of the fight world, it does feel like Bellator is gaining ground. But when you put things under the magnifying glass, the evidence might look a little differently.
Cases in point are this weekend’s events.
From a pure entertainment standpoint, these headliners are fairly comparable. In fact, I’m sure many would give the edge to Bellator, largely on the presence of Emelianenko, who somehow manages to keep some semblance of mythology around him despite an uneven recent past. Old legends live on, even if they’re (figuratively) dying right in front of us.
Objectively, though, the Lewis vs. Browne fight has much more meaningful stakes. Lewis, currently ranked eighth, has systematically made his way forward and has the opportunity to vault past another veteran standing in his way. Browne, while facing recent struggles, was ranked in the top five within the last two years. And, at 34, he’s not old enough to write off as a has-been.
The fact is, people tend to judge these promotions on different scales. Over time, we’ve come to expect different levels of quality from the UFC than we do from Bellator. When the latter manages to approach or even meet the market leader, it seems like a monumental development.
In some ways, that’s fair. The UFC has been in business for over two decades; Bellator ran its first event in 2009. In other ways, we cut Bellator a little too much slack. For example, if they can afford to sign Emelianenko, they can probably also afford to spring for a third-party drug testing program like the UFC has done.
But these sliding scales certainly ascribe a lower target for Bellator to reach. The UFC rarely has that luxury. The promotion was roundly roasted for its UFC 208 show last weekend, including by its own president Dana White, who, when asked by the company’s own YouTube channel what the best part of the event was, replied, “the plane ride home” (h/t Bloody Elbow).
Perhaps relatedly, the UFC seems close to finalizing an agreement for the return of St-Pierre, according to MMA Fighting‘s Ariel Helwani. Such a development would be a huge shot of adrenaline for a promotion in need of one.
By contrast, Bellator expectations are much more reasonable. Even when they throw out a rusty ChaelSonnen vs. an old Tito Ortiz, it somehow becomes not just palatable but fun. If the UFC tried to sell us that—as they kind of do when they toss out aging legends like B.J. Penn and Anderson Silva—we are much more likely to wince.
One promotion’s gift is another’s curse.
Is this fair, Chad? Does Bellator deserve to win the weekend even with an inferior main-event matchup, and, if so, what does that say about this ongoing promotional battle?
Chad: A lot of it is a matter of perception. Hardcore fans and media types might prefer the main event of UFC Fight Night 105 based on Lewis’ potential and our hope the next generation of great heavyweights is finally starting to arrive. On the other hand, Bellator 172 is almost certain to score the better Nielsen number.
Who “wins” the weekend in a scenario like that? It depends on how the fights play out, and there’s no way to know that in advance—especially in the unpredictable 265-pound class.
Bellator has been smart carving out this niche for itself. It knows it can’t compete with the UFC’s depth, so it doesn’t even try. Instead it picks its spots, lobbing these theoretically fun, nostalgia-based matchups whenever it can to spike ratings.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously—as evidenced by this recent video about Emelianenko’s somewhat iconic striped sweater—and doesn’t mess around with PPV. Instead, it offers even its best fights on free TV. In doing so, it positions itself as a fresh and fun alternative to the UFC, which by comparison often feels like it only knows one way to promote fights.
The trouble is that Bellator’s senior-circuit attractions don’t always deliver. Sonnen’s bout with Ortiz last month, for example, enjoyed a nice media build but ultimately left consumers unsatisfied. The organization also regularly strays too close to the line between fun and dangerous, as we saw in Kimbo Slice’s disastrous fight against Dada 5000 last February.
This weekend’s pairing of a 40-year-old version of Emelianenko against the flagging but still capable Mitrione may not be patently unsafe—but it might end up being sad. If too many of these turn-back-the-clock fights continue to leave fans feeling gloomy and even dirty for watching, then the strategy becomes unsustainable.
If Fedor looks like a depressing shadow of his former self Saturday and the next night Lewis solidifies his candidacy for a future heavyweight title shot, I think it’ll be clear the UFC got the better of this head-to-head matchup.
And perhaps all this reveals the true big-picture problem for Bellator: It can’t go on promoting old-guy fights forever and yet hasn’t been very successful cultivating its own stars.
There are one or two homegrown Bellator talents who routinely make a dent in the sport’s consciousness—Michael Chandler and Michael Page, for example. But aside from its aging lions and UFC castoffs, most of Bellator’s roster feels pretty anonymous.
There are some good young fighters there (think Douglas Lima, Andrey Koreshkov, Eduardo Dantas or A.J. McKee) but, so far, few move the needle.
Perhaps that’s the ultimate test here. From week to week, Bellator might be able to make life interesting for the UFC, but until the smaller company can sustain enough interest to forge its own drawing cards, the bigger organization will probably always have the upper hand.
Maybe Kelvin Gastelum needed to have the decision made for him. Faced with the dilemma of draining his body or fighting undersized, Gastelum has let the UFC take the lead on his career, and as far as the company is concerned, he’s a middleweight.