UFC 136 will soon be upon us, but what matters most isn’t the lightweight title fight between champion Frankie Edgar and challenger Gray Maynard. Instead, what matters most is the legacy Jose Aldo and the fate of the featherweight division.
World Extreme Cagefighting was formed in 2001 and lived a mediocre existence until it was purchased by Zuffa—the company that owns the UFC—in 2006.
Soon after that point, the WEC underwent a renaissance. Zuffa shifted the promotion’s focus to the lighter weight classes, specifically the featherweight and bantamweight divisions, which were absent in the UFC.
These weight classes and the fighters in them put on amazing fights for fans and their popularity soared. The peak of this was Anthony Pettis’ “showtime kick” against Ben Henderson for the WEC lightweight title.
Zuffa eventually determined that the time was right to merge the WEC lightweight roster with that of the UFC and bring on the two new weight classes: the bantamweights and featherweights were UFC-bound and the champions of the corresponding divisions were essentially rebranded to UFC champions.
Fans were thrilled to see the first title defense of one former WEC champion in particular—the Brazilian terror that was Jose Aldo.
Aldo made quite a name for himself in the WEC by going undefeated in his run with the organization, as well as capturing their featherweight title and outclassing all of his opponents, even the highly-touted Urijah Faber.
Surely, Aldo would be able to make short work of unheralded challenger Mark Hominick, or so the community’s “wisdom” dictated.
Aldo performed well against Hominick, but he was not the phenom he was made out to be: he was even almost finished in the last round!
Perhaps the champ had one bad night, but when the history (albeit brief) of the featherweight division is examined, a disturbing trend emerges: The champion, who everyone thinks is unbeatable, is only unbeatable as long as the weight class doesn’t undergo significant growth.
For example, Urijah Faber was a god among men at featherweight for quite some time. However, once the weight class became popular and more fighters entered it, his stranglehold over the division evaporated.
Simply put, a journeyman and UFC washout in Mike Brown was able to convincingly beat Faber. How could this be? Because Brown was fighting in a division (lightweight) that had a much deeper talent pool and was therefore fighting better fighters.
Faber, on the other hand, was fighting in a much smaller talent pool; he was a big fish in a small pond while Brown was a big fish in an ocean.
What does this have to do with Jose Aldo?
Aldo is set to defend his title against perennial contender Kenny Florian, a man who tried and failed at weight classes from middleweight to lightweight (where he most notably lost to B.J. Penn, Gray Maynard and Sean Sherk in high-stakes fights) at UFC 136.
If Aldo suffers a loss to a fighter who is known to be only above average (and perhaps cynics would call him a glorified gatekeeper), then it proves that Aldo was not one of the pound for pound best at all; he was just an overrated fighter who was beating up on other overrated fighters in an overrated division.
His reputation will suffer and the Aldo hype-train will produce a wreck almost more spectacular than that of the former “greatest of all time,” Fedor Emelianenko.
If Florian wins, lightweight fighters will no doubt take note of his success and will begin flooding the division. Eventually, featherweight will be a home for second-rate lightweight fighters who couldn’t cut it against the elite lightweights.
Thus, not only is Aldo’s reputation and legacy at stake in his fight against Florian—so to is the very fate of the featherweight division.
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