Years ago in the lead-up to UFC 123, talking about the elusiveness of Lyoto Machida was all the rage.
He was fighting Rampage Jackson that night, and Jackson, a legend in a number of ways both in and out of the cage, cleverly stated “it’s called Ultimate Fighting, not Ultimate Elusive Guy” when queried on how he’d deal with the Brazilian’s craftiness.
If one paraphrased Jackson nowadays, they might come up with something along the lines of “it’s called Ultimate Fighting, not Ultimate Talking,” because there’s been far more talking than fighting going on among the biggest names at 145 and 155 pounds recently.
Truthfully, it’s all getting to be a bit much.
The biggest perpetrator is Jose Aldo, a featherweight titleholder who has been oblivious to North American media for years until recently. In 2016, however, a year that saw him go without the belt he’d held and proudly defended for nearly five years, he suddenly became as vocal as anyone.
There were shots fired at Conor McGregor, the man who took that belt. Lots of them.
There were threats of retirement and a pursuit of a career beyond MMA.
There was a recanting of that threat and a nonsensical interim title fight with Frankie Edgar designed to prop up a lagging UFC 200.
There were the utterly impossible claims that he was the featherweight champion even after McGregor beat him for the mantle with absolutely no controversy associated.
Now there’s the (apparently failed) attempt to pick an event and date to fight and another attempt to frame every relevant athlete in two weight classes as being afraid to fight him.
Not a bad run for a guy who hasn’t been heard from for his entire career, but he’s not the only one at fault here.
With WME-IMG willing to throw interim titles around as enthusiastically as one might throw salt on an icy driveway come wintertime and social media giving fighters the chance to jockey for positioning whenever a thought enters their head, others have joined the fracas.
Tony Ferguson called for a fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov but then balked at the notion once the contractual terms weren’t to his liking.
Nurmagomedov has been his own vocal critic of UFC matchmaking and title queues, but when he was allegedly offered a fight with Aldo for an interim lightweight title—because the only thing more sensible than one fake title for Aldo would be two fake titles for Aldo—he headed to Instagram to inform the world that he would only fight Ferguson.
Nate Diaz is swirling around out there somewhere, probably enjoying being richer than he’s ever been and making that money last in the downtrodden economy of his beloved hometown of Stockton, California, but he says he won’t even answer the phone for less than $20 million.
Max Holloway is in the mix as well if the UFC still cares about Aldo as a featherweight champion and doesn’t hurry him into the already bizarre lightweight interim title picture, as Holloway won another interim title at 145 pounds earlier this month and is now in need of a unification bout.
He’s said he doesn’t trust Aldo not to pull out and doesn’t want to give up his Christmas break to risk it, plus his leg looks like a balloon animal right now, so he’s probably making the most sense out of anyone at this point.
So what we have on our hands here is a bunch of guys talking and nobody fighting. Everyone is trying to pick their opponents and, increasingly, even trying to pick their titles.
Some of it is the vacuum McGregor created when he became champion of both weight classes, and some of it is that these guys are waking up to the idea that hardball might be more likely to get them what they want, so long as they don’t misalign their own perceived value to the UFC with their actual value. After all, the promotion has already proved it will quickly pivot to something new if you’re not worth it.
Sitting here and watching these champions, “champions” and contenders throwing stones through the media and other online outlets is fine to an extent, but it’s getting tiresome at this point. The athletes are there, the titles are there and the fans are there to watch it all unfold.
Unfortunately, all the talk is emerging as a new variety of elusiveness in MMA, and we all know how to feel about that.
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