You’d be hard pressed to find a reputable MMA media outlet that doesn’t have Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Gilbert Melendez ranked right at the top. The USA Today/SB Nation, Sherdog, and MMAWeekly rankings all put Gil right at No. 3, behind only Ben Henderson and Frankie Edgar.
So why is he languishing in an organization that struggles to find him top shelf competition when he is already under the Zuffa banner?
Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, bought Strikeforce last year. They pretty much gutted it and brought all the top talent into the UFC. The two biggest stars, Dan Henderson and Nick Diaz, were immediately transferred to the larger stage, and the Zuffa brass have stated their intention of dissolving the heavyweight division shortly after the conclusion of the tournament, which, barring any more unforeseen contingencies, will see a winner crowned in mid-May.
Holding the two chief MMA properties on the American scene, Zuffa has about 90 percent of the best fighters in the world under contract. Some may call that a monopoly, but in professional sports, monopolies are an occupational necessity.
The question stands: Why is Gil Melendez, one of the most talented fighters in the word, dying a slow death in a second-tier promotion that has to import past-their-prime Japanese fighters for him to beat up when he has organizational access to the best in the world?
Gil is 30 years old. He’s in his athletic prime, and yet he fought only once in 2010 and only twice in 2011. He’ll face Josh Thompson—for the third time—on May 19th, and after that there’s pretty much no one left for him to fight. And even though this is a rubber match, the general consensus is that Thompson is on the down slope, while Gil is at the top of his game right now.
Basically, a fortunate scenario exists that allows Strikeforce to sell this fight, and it will be a good fight, but it’s a fight put together through expediency rather than meaning. The reason: they simply have no one else to throw at Gil.
This is the case unless they bring him to the UFC, which they absolutely should do, or send UFC lightweights to him, which, while an option, would only further serve to perpetuate the obvious notion that Strikeforce is not the UFC.
After all, they wouldn’t be sending top-level lightweights who headline pay per view events for “less than” fights on Showtime that hardly anyone watches. They’d send guys on the outs to make “interesting” fights. And there’s not a lot wrong with that. Strikeforce thrived for years by putting on “interesting” matchups.
But this is supposed to be the big time, and Gil Melendez is legit. He should not be chained to a second-tier organization, wasting away his best fighting years while the majority of the world’s top lightweight competition is so readily available to him.
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