UFC 138 is set for this weekend, but given the lack of media attention that the event is receiving, one has to wonder if a different main event might have helped spark some additional interest in the fight card.
Though the current main event between Chris Leben and Mark Munoz has some intrigue to it, there are plenty of other fights scheduled now that could have probably made for a better main event.
The one that sticks out like a sore thumb, though, is the fight currently scheduled to be the semi-main event for the very first UFC on FOX event next Saturday night, Clay Guida vs. Ben Henderson.
The lightweight contest has all the makings of being one of the best fights of the year. Two highly entertaining fighters will do battle with the winner, very likely earning the next shot at current UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar in 2012.
Henderson has only fought twice in the UFC, but his dominant victory over Mark Bocek and a somewhat surprisingly easy-looking victory over fellow top-five contender Jim Miller has already put him in the driver’s seat for a shot at the title. A former WEC champion, Henderson has been in the spotlight of the main event before and has never failed to put on a show for the fans.
Clay Guida’s story is quite different.
Although he, too, has always been known for putting on highly entertaining fights for the fans, Guida had found himself having trouble breaking into the truly elite level of the lightweight division in the UFC just a couple years ago.
In order to cure those struggles, he decided to make the move to train with perhaps the best fight camp in America today and head trainer Greg Jackson at Jackson’s Submission Fighting.
From that point on, Guida’s career has been going in a dramatically different direction.
Now 4-0 in his past four fights, Guida has his eyes set on the prize that has eluded him throughout his entire five-year UFC career—the UFC light heavyweight championship.
There’s every reason in the world to believe that Clay Guida vs. Ben Henderson could be one of the fights of the year and, unlike the Leben-Munoz fight that will be headlining UFC 138, this fight actually has immediate title implications.
Typically the UFC does an excellent job of getting this type of fight in front of its fans. Unfortunately, this time it seems as if they have dropped the ball in a bad way. Not only is the very important fight between Guida and Henderson not going to be the main event, it is not going to be on the televised UFC on FOX event at all.
UFC President Dana White announced months ago that there would only be one televised fight on the inaugural UFC on FOX card, that being the heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos.
Many of us thought that he might change his opinion given that there is a very realistic possibility that the heavyweight title fight doesn’t even last one round, but it appears that he and the FOX executives are sticking to their guns.
The No. 1 contenders’ fight between Henderson and Guida has been relegated to Facebook duty.
Are you kidding me?!
Sure, plenty of people tune in to watch the fights on Facebook, but it’s hard to get amped up about a fight if you’re watching it on your 12” MacBook Pro when you could be watching it on your 60” Plasma screen with surround sound.
It just doesn’t feel the same, does it?
The opportunity to move this fight to the main event of UFC 138 was there and it just never seemed to happen.
People are going to tune in to watch UFC on FOX: Velasquez vs. dos Santos no matter what, so it’s not like having a fight like Henderson-Guida on Facebook is going to bring in significantly more viewers. However, putting it as the main event, or at least the semi-main event for UFC 138, could’ve done wonders for what is otherwise a relatively weak fight card.
The UFC typically makes pretty good decisions when it comes to the placement of its fights and I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation to all of this, but on the surface it really looks like they missed the mark by not putting Guida vs. Henderson on the UFC 138 fight card.
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