In this life you get out what you put in, right? That seems like Day One karmic thought.
If you’re willing to put in work, you’ll get results. As you get results, you’ll see opportunities increase and positive outcomes will flow from that until you’re on top of the world in all the manners you seek.
If you agree with that notion, take a look at UFC on FOX 21 and reconsider. The top of that card cares not for your understandings of karma or of balancing work and rewards.
In the main event, Demain Maia, he of the late-career resurgence built on mauling people with unmatched jiu-jitsu prowess, will battle Carlos Condit in a fight that might guarantee a title shot, but might not.
Maia has been out there for years now hitting takedowns, controlling, choking and squeezing until people’s faces explode. His success has been amassed with very little resistance, to the tune of five straight wins and an 8-2 run at welterweight dating back to 2012.
But no one’s really paying attention. At least no one who matters, like Dana White or Joe Silva.
Maia is respected but not beloved for his approach, largely because it’s technical and masterful but rarely enthralling to an untrained eye. A casual fan sees a mild Brazilian hugging an opponent and dragging him to the mat, dominating him positionally on the way to a decision or submission, and it simply doesn’t resonate the way a Robbie Lawler head kick or a Nick Diaz punching flurry does.
The result is that Maia hasn’t lost since early 2014 but doesn’t seem to be any closer to a title fight now than he was when he dropped to welterweight in the first place. Everyone knows what he’s doing is remarkable, but no one cares enough to push him into a championship chase.
Contrast that against the work of co-main eventer Anthony Pettis, who fights Charles Oliveira shortly before Maia hits the cage. Pettis is dropping a weight class after losing three straight fights at 155 pounds, where he was once champion. As recently as 2014 Pettis looked unbeatable. He plugged ample holes in his wrestling game to provide for a safe space in which his flashy striking could be maximally effective.
At least that’s what it looked like.
His second title defense, against Rafael dos Anjos, revealed a harsh truth about Pettis in the form of his distaste for the utter grind of it all. Dos Anjos mauled him, wrestling him against the cage and wearing him down to a nub before taking his title in a fairly shocking unanimous decision.
Not long after, Eddie Alvarez replicated the plan to beat Pettis. Then Edson Barboza simply outgunned him in a standup battle, something no one ever thought would happen to him, sending him toppling into irrelevance and a new weight class.
But here he is right alongside Maia at the top of a pretty solid Fox card, despite not matching up even remotely in terms of his recent merits.
It all makes one wonder about the idea of winning and losing in the UFC and what it provides a fighter at the end of the day. Is the sport at a point where winning ugly is not that much better than losing pretty, if it’s better at all? Does entertainment really supersede sport for the UFC?
Probably so.
It’s not any secret that the promotion exists to make money. After all, this is an entity that’s given you a pointless Nate Diaz/Conor McGregor rematch and a steroid-exempted Brock Lesnar in the past six weeks; anyone still crying meritocracy after that can ask Tyron Woodley how played out that whole notion is for more.
Yet in a situation such as UFC on FOX 21, where the stakes aren’t so big, the money to be made is not so far beyond ignoring and where Maia has so bluntly earned his placement at the top of the card while Pettis has so bluntly floundered his way to similar exposure, is it not a little disheartening to see these two treated with the same pomp and circumstance?
Also probably so.
This isn’t an indictment of the UFC’s matchmaking policies, because this isn’t even in the top-100 most egregious choices they’ve ever made. It’s not to discredit Pettis, a great talent with Wheaties box good looks and championship skills that have simply gone AWOL for the past few fights.
It’s just to draw some attention to the relative absurdity of the game at times, where a man who has been utterly unstoppable for years and has really only ever lost against the elite of the elite is talked about in the same vein as a man who isn’t yet 30 and has already been repeatedly exposed to the point that a weight class reinvention was needed.
MMA is a weird sport, and it definitely does not much care for your understandings of karma, work and rewards. You’ll see that much on the marquee in Vancouver this weekend.
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