(And the Lord sayeth, “You can not defeat me, Lucifer, for I am willing to die in here.”)
Tonight’s UFC 170 card poses a lot of intriguing questions: Is Ronda Rousey‘s striking *really* “the best in the game?” Can a last second injury in your co-main event be used as a legal justification for homicide? What is a Yosdenis Cedeno, exactly?
Here to “intelligently” “debate” at least one of those questions are CagePotato staff writers Jared Jones and Seth Falvo, so join them after the jump to get the inside scoop on all things UFC 170-related.
So what happens if Sara McMann actually wins on Saturday night?
JJ: Simple: Dana White dissolves the women’s bantamweight division, cancels TUF 20, and bans any MMA outlet that dares question his decision. MWAHAHAHAHA!!
Seriously though, there is no scenario in which a Rousey loss doesn’t equal an immediate rematch. I don’t care if McMann takes Rousey down in the first 5 seconds, annihilates her with ground-n-pound and then armbars her, we are getting an immediate rematch. This whole “WMMA in the UFC” thing all hinges on Rousey being the champ, right? Because I’m pretty sure that Dana White has been completely transparent about that fact since Day 1.
SF: If McMann wins, we’re getting three things: A rematch, an extremely exaggerated (if not completely fabricated) story about the personal demons that Ronda Rousey was fighting before UFC 170, and we’re all getting blamed for them in some way, shape or form. The rematch will serve as the co-main event of UFC 173: Weidman vs. Belfort, which will get moved to Brazil for some reason. Hey, it’ll be a strange UFC if McMann wins, I says.
Be honest: As Random as Cormier vs. Cummins is, isn’t it still the best we could ask for on such short notice?
SF: You know what, I’m going to take the extremely unpopular stance and say that yes, it is. On paper, it’s a squash match between the number one contender and some random guy from Twitter, yes, but aren’t those fights usually fun? Of course they are. Besides, no matter who wins this fight, the UFC can still continue their whole “XX is the future of the division!” campaign, right? That’s a lot more than we would have been able to say if Cormier vs. Sonnen was booked…
JJ: I’ll give you that Cormier vs. Cummins is a better fight than Cormier vs. Sonnen, but the best we could ask for? Nah, son.
Call me crazy, but I stand firmly in the Chael Sonnen, “Any unbooked LHW who didn’t jump at this opportunity is a coward” camp. The only thing any UFC fighter had to lose by accepting a short notice bout with Cormier was a few brain cells, and if they’re afraid of that, then brother, they’re in the wrong business (but I DO SO RESPECT THESE BRAVE WARRIOR FIGHTERS YOU GUYZ!!).
While I loved the idea of giving Cummins a shot at his “Rocky” moment when the fight was first announced – the unpredictability of MMA, after all, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the sport – I also fell back on the idea that there were plenty of unbooked, proven UFC fighters who had a lot more to offer Cormier than a story about that time they made him cry in training camp. In short, I agreed with Ben Askren’s take on the situation and felt weird inside because of it.
Upon looking over the UFC’s current list of light heavyweight fighters, however, I found that nearly everyone in the division either has a fight booked already, are coming off a loss (or multiple losses), are injured or retired, or just signed with the promotion. In fact, there is literally one guy who doesn’t fit into any of the above categories: Rafael Cavalcante. The former Strikeforce champion just steamrolled Igor Pokrajac at Fight Night 32, isn’t injured, and would make for a much more compelling reason to drop $50 on a PPV than some fabricated grudge match between an Olympian and a barista.
I give all the respect in the world to Cummins for accepting the fight, but have you even *seen* any of his fights? Dude is going to be ground into dog food inside of 3 minutes.
You have $20, and you need some horrific gambling advice. Go!
JJ: As one of our readers pointed out in the Gambling Enabler, a ten dollar bet on a McMann – Cummins – Maia parlay nets you over $1000 ($1,639 to be exact). I’ll double down on that bet and make a cool…uh…$4000.
SF: Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I prefer my terrible gambling advice to come from a real hack journalist, and not just some random guy from the comments section. Now then, if you’re looking for some horrific advice, then I’d suggest a Rousey/Cormier parlay. You’ll start sweating bullets if either fight makes it past the first minute, and your twenty dollars will only return a whopping $5.71 in profit from BetUS.com. Talk about not being worth the (almost non-existent) risk.
Now, if your idea of horrific gambling advice involved asking me for genuine advice as a way to mock me, then know that I decided to parlay my grad school alma mater UL-Lafayette’s men’s basketball team covering the spread against Troy (which they did) with Rory MacDonald defeating Demian Maia. I will use my winnings to put a picture of me holding my thumbs up on the trunks of a Hip Show competitor, “Ravishing” Rick Rude style.
Take your best guess as to what the PPV numbers for UFC 170 will look like.
JJ: Without launching into the same discussion about oversaturation, quantity over quality and “garbage-asses” that we’ve all had a thousand times, I will say that UFC 170 is a “tough sell” to both casual and hardcore MMA fans. While the UFC of days past would have taken the best matchups from Fight Night 36 (mainly, Machida vs. Mousasi) and UFC 170 and combined them into one stacked card actually worthy of my purchase, we are living in the era of “World Fucking Domination,” which this weekend will equate to less than 300,000 PPV buys. Ronda Rousey may be the quote unquote “ biggest star the UFC has ever had,” but UFC 170 will offer evidence to the contrary.
Seriously though, how great would it be if UFC 170 had Lyoto Machida, Gegard Mousasi, and Jacare Souza to support it? Maybe then the UFC wouldn’t have to shop for fighters at the Starbucks drive-thru to justify charging us $50 for a garbage-ass (sorry, I had to) pay-per-view. One can only dream…(*gazes out window and tosses back whiskey*)
SF: So, remember when “I predict a card with a title fight and three Olympians will draw less than 500k buys” would have actually sounded stupid? And not in a “Well no shit, dumbass” sort of way, but in a “You must be high out of your damn mind” way? Oh man, those were the days when…hang on… (*swings open front door and yells at hoodlums skateboarding on MY sidewalk*)
If only to keep this column from being us agreeing with each other while occasionally hi-fiving, I’ll say that this card draws more than 300k buys. But not more than 350k buys, because what sort of contrarian asshole do you think I am?
Demian Maia and Rory MacDonald are both coming off “disappointing” performances against Jake Shields and Robbie Lawler, respectively. Who gets back in the win column on Saturday?
SF: Maia had this locked up the second I bet money on MacDonald, because I am not allowed to have nice things.
JJ: Although Maia has looked outstanding at welterweight, save his most recent fight with Shields, I gotta go with the “future of the welterweight division” in this one. We (the “MMA media”) have been riding MacDonald’s jock ever since he entered the UFC, and the pressure on “Ares” to finally achieve his potential is more intense than ever. Against a high-profile fighter and former middleweight title challenger like Maia, methinks MacDonald is going to show the flashes of brilliance he did against Condit and Penn and remind us all why he’s still an elite member of the division with plenty of years ahead of him. Rory might not send Maia into a full-on tailspin in the opening frame like Nate Marquardt did, but he’ll get the job done.
Make one wild prediction for the UFC 170 undercard.
JJ: All 6 fights go to decision, and all but 2 of them are completely forgotten about as soon as the judges scores are announced. I know, it’s not exactly a “wild” prediction given the past couple events, but when more people on the undercard *don’t* have a Wikipedia page than those who do, you can probably expect more of the same sloppy sparring matches we’ve been treated to in recent weeks.
SF: We’re talking about the undercard now? Take it away, Green Bastard…
My wild prediction is that someone might actually disagree with me. Someone who isn’t related to either fighter. Wild, huh?