I’ve been thinking about championships lately.
More specifically, I’ve been thinking about championships and how, given the multiple injuries suffered by UFC title-holders in recent years, we are nearing a time when the Ultimate Fighting Championship should create set-in-stone rules on how to deal with champions who are on the shelf for an extended period of time.
Call it the Dominick Cruz Rule.
It is no fun, the idea of stripping a champion of the belt he fairly won. And I don’t make this suggestion lightly. But Cruz, Cain Velasquez and other injury-prone champions of the past five years have left the UFC scrambling to create main events with either no championship belt at stake or with a meaningless interim title on the line.
I used to think championship fights added an extra bit of pizazz to a fight card. And perhaps a few thousand viewers, too.
But the flyweight division and champion Demetrious Johnson, well, they’ve proven that theory to be a false one. Johnson hasn’t been able to connect with a pay-per-view audience yet, even though he is one of the world’s best fighters and a pure joy to watch in the Octagon. His championship fights don’t have the kind of allure the rest of the champions do.
So I don’t make this suggestion today based on any fancified notion that championship fights add intrigue to all pay-per-view cards. Big title fights help out, yes, but not all title fights are big.
Instead, I’m making this suggestion because I hate the idea of holding up a division for a year or two years or, in some remote cases, even longer while a champion heals. Because as much as I hate the idea of stripping someone of a belt they rightfully won, I hate even more the idea of talented and tough fighters not earning their own opportunities because the champion cannot stay healthy.
Here’s what I came up with: Two rules governing how often a title must be defended. In my perfect world (which exists only in my head), these rules would be written into every UFC fighter’s contract on the chance they do win a championship.
1. If you can’t defend your title once in 18 months, an interim title will be created. Upon your return, you will fight in a title unification bout.
This is self-explanatory. If you are on the shelf and can’t defend your title one time in 18 months, an interim title will be created and two of the division’s top contenders will be matched together to determine the interim champion.
Once you are healthy enough to return to the Octagon, your first fight will be a title unification fight against the interim champion. But if your 18 months without a fight rolls into 24 months, then we move on to the next rule.
2. If you cannot defend your title once in 24 months, you will be stripped of the championship. You will have the option of a title fight in your immediate return, or you may take a “tune-up” fight before doing so.
This is not ideal, and I understand many won’t agree with the notion of completely wresting control of a title away from a champion simply because he can’t stay healthy. But two years away from the Octagon is a long time. And it’s an even longer time for a division to ebb and flow without a championship to strive for.
Velasquez last competed on October 19, 2013. According to my new rules, Velasquez would not have been stripped of his title for being out of action for 12 months. Fabricio Werdum and Mark Hunt would compete for the No. 1 contender spot, but no interim title would be created. But because the UFC needs a selling point for their first trip to Mexico, they created a meaningless interim belt.
If Velasquez can’t return after 18 months—and given his history, there are no guarantees he’ll even see the Octagon in 2015 at all—then you’d move to create an interim title.
These rules aren’t ideal. In a perfect world, we’d have less injuries to all UFC fighters. Not just the champions. But because the UFC engine needs to continually move forward, there needs to be rules in place to govern how often title defenses take place.
As terrible as it must be for a champion to lose his or her belt without actually competing, it is even worse for the rest of the fighters in their division to continually strive for something that will remain just out of their reach as long as the fighters ruling their division remain on the sidelines with injuries.
It is time for the UFC to verbalize some form of these rules so that every fighter on their roster knows what to expect when they win a championship.
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