Jose Aldo was supposed to fight Erik Koch at UFC 149. He was only supposed to fight Koch because Hatsu Hioki turned down the title shot.Aside from Hioki, other top fighters in the featherweight division—Chan Sung Jung and Dustin Poirier—wer…
Jose Aldo was supposed to fight Erik Koch at UFC 149. He was only supposed to fight Koch because Hatsu Hioki turned down the title shot.
Aside from Hioki, other top fighters in the featherweight division—Chan Sung Jung and Dustin Poirier—were booked to fight each other.
That meant the only top featherweight left with even a slight claim to being the No. 1 contender was Koch.
However, now that an injury to Aldo has postponed the fight, Koch should not keep his status as the No. 1 contender.
Hioki has since lost to Ricardo Lamas, and he has lost his claim to a title shot. Meanwhile, Lamas has won three fights in a row—the other two being fights against Cub Swanson and Matt Grice.
Also, Poirier and Jung faced off, and Jung earned a fourth-round D’arce choke submission in a fight-of-the-night performance.
There are plenty of available contenders now, and just because Koch was scheduled for the title shot doesn’t mean he deserves it.
Koch does have a solid record. He is 13-1, and the only loss came to former title challenger Chad Mendes. However, his best win is against either Jonathan Brookins or Raphael Assuncao, depending on who you ask.
Neither of those fighters are near being top-10 fighters, and Assuncao has even dropped to bantamweight since that loss.
Koch has zero wins over current top-10 fighters, and doesn’t deserve a shot at the undisputed No. 1 featherweight.
Tim McTiernan is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. For the latest news on everything MMA, follow him on Twitter @TimMcTiernan.
Casual fans love few things more than heavyweight fights. If they cannot have a heavyweight fight, they will settle on a light heavyweight fight. There is no getting around this. Fans love to see big dudes punch each other in the same way they want to …
Casual fans love few things more than heavyweight fights. If they cannot have a heavyweight fight, they will settle on a light heavyweight fight.
There is no getting around this. Fans love to see big dudes punch each other in the same way they want to see Godzilla throw King Kong through the Sears Tower. In recent years many have extrapolated from this that, since fans love to see big guys fight, they must then not care as much about seeing smaller guys fight. This idea, however, is not entirely accurate.
It is important to point out that recent buyrates certainly seem to indicate that bigger is better. The two highest-selling cards of 2012 so far have been UFC 145, which featured a light heavyweight title bout with Jon Jones and Rashad Evans (which garnered 700,000 buys), and the all-heavyweight UFC 146 (which drew 560,000 buys).
Cards headlined by smaller fighters have not had nearly as much success. Just take a look at UFC 136.
The event featured two title bouts, with Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard III for the lightweight belt and Jose Aldo vs. Kenny Florian competing for the top spot in the featherweight division. On top of that, it had two likely-top-contender bouts in Chael Sonnen vs. Brian Stann and Joe Lauzon vs. Melvin Guillard. Also? Nam Phan vs. Leonard Garcia II.
Five exciting fights. One of the most stacked cards in UFC history. It drew 225,000 buys, not even one third of UFC 145.
That hurts.
UFC 136 was no anomaly, either. UFC 142, headlined by Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes, drew only 235,000 buys. UFC 125, headlined by Edgar vs. Maynard II, had just 270,000 buys. Because of this pattern, the UFC has had very little faith in the drawing power of anybody smaller than a welterweight.
They had a Dominick Cruz title bout relegated to cable TV.
They are yet to have part of their flyweight championship tournament on pay-per-view.
Twice, they had Jose Aldo defend his belt in a co-main event before making him a featured fighter. His first time headlining a card was the aforementioned UFC 142.
While all that sounds very, very bad this is likely only a temporary problem. Why?
Well, the main thing is that there have been highly successful lightweights in the past. BJ Penn headlined UFC 84 against Sean Sherk and drew 475,000 buys. A year and a half later, BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez had top billing at UFC 107 and attracted 620,000 buys.
It is frequently said that the UFC’s lightweight division is staggeringly deep. This is entirely true and, unfortunately for the UFC, that means that no lightweight fighter has strung together enough wins to be an especially great draw.
Frankie Edgar was on the right track. While he generated lukewarm interest in his first two times as a card’s main man, he had a solid turnout for UFC 144, which scored 375,000 buys. It is possible, however, that this number got a boost from the hype surrounding the UFC’s return to Japan. Regardless, the UFC may be back to square one, since Edgar lost his fight there to Ben Henderson.
While it is possible that fans just want to see dominant champions, what of Cruz and Aldo? The featherweight and bantamweight champs are two of the best fighters in MMA today, and have had very little difficulty keeping their belts.
That is difficult to peg, but there are a few possible explanations.
Cruz and Aldo have a combined five UFC fights. Even though few would deny that they are top-five pound-for-pound fighters, both of them rose to fame in the WEC promotion. Back footage of WEC events, unfortunately, is unavailable for any sort of UFC Unleashed-type show, meaning a strong majority of new or casual fans have never seen bouts like Jose Aldo vs. Urijah Faber or Dominick Cruz vs. Brian Bowles.
On top of that, the WEC was never a consistent draw on Versus TV. Ratings for events were occasionally amazing (especially surrounding Urijah Faber) but even high-profile events like WEC 50, headlined by Cruz vs. Benavidez II, drew just 316,000 viewers.
Furthermore, Cruz and Aldo also only have one finish between them in the UFC (Aldo beat Chad Mendes with a scary knee at UFC 142). While neither fighter is boring by any means, nothing turns a fighter’s status around like a highlight reel knockout. Even though Aldo ended his most recent fight with a fantastic KO, it did not generate the buzz that Barboza vs. Etim or Silva vs. Belfort did.
Similarly, neither fighter has really gotten much publicity with the UFC until very recently. Dominick Cruz had a great deal of spotlight on him, courtesy of his time coaching The Ultimate Fighter: Live, but the hype surrounding his rubber match with Urijah Faber died when he suffered a knee injury that will keep him from competing for a long while. Aldo, meanwhile, remains in relative obscurity in the states, and promotional opportunities will continue to elude him until he learns to speak English.
Last but not least, neither has had anything out of the cage to be interested in. The featherweight champ has no serious threats to his throne, and nobody has called him out in any particularly interesting way. The same was true for Cruz until Urijah Faber became a full-blown rival (which, again, is now on indefinite hold).
BJ Penn was an absolutely dominant lightweight champion, but he had more than his fair share of rivals. Anderson Silva, obviously, has Chael Sonnen. GSP had his foils. Aldo and Cruz, though, have not had an opponent to get excited in years and that has been a serious problem for the UFC.
Whether it is one of these things, specifically, or a combination of all of the above, the problem is not a complete disinterest in fighters who weigh under 170 lbs. The top fighters in the lightweight, featherweight and bantamweight divisions are simply yet to grow roots in fans’ wallets. This will change one day. Maybe not this year. Maybe not even with these fighters.
The thing is, aficionados love to see great fights. If somebody puts together enough of them, they will take notice regardless of their weight class.
With the zombie apocalypse in full effect, Chan Sung Jung, the “Korean Zombie,” is ready to oust Jose Aldo and take over the featherweight division.The popular South Korean star has been nothing short of amazing in three spectacular wins over Dustin Po…
With the zombie apocalypse in full effect, Chan Sung Jung, the “Korean Zombie,” is ready to oust Jose Aldo and take over the featherweight division.
The popular South Korean star has been nothing short of amazing in three spectacular wins over Dustin Poirier, Mark Hominick and Leonard Garcia.
It has been entertaining to watch Jung blossom into a featherweight contender.
Against Garcia, he earned submission of the year at the World MMA Awards by locking in the first-ever twister submission in UFC history.
At UFC 140, he silenced his boxing critics with a seven-second knockout of Hominick, a former UFC title contender.
Perhaps Jung’s best performance was his Round 4 submission victory over Poirier, in May.
Poirier, who was seen as a legit threat to Aldo’s reign, was completely handled in a bout that represented a true coming-out party for the Korean Zombie.
With the win over Poirier, Jung is riding a tidal wave of confidence, and despite possibly being another fight away from a title shot, he already has his eyes set on Aldo.
In a post on Twitter, Jung called out one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world:
I want Jose Aldo. I will end his reign as a Champion.
It doesn’t get much bigger than the UFC bringing events to Brazil.Don’t get me wrong, I love Las Vegas and events here in America, as well as in Canada, but no MMA crowd gets you pumped for a fight like Brazil does.UFC 147 might not have been the succe…
It doesn’t get much bigger than the UFC bringing events to Brazil.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Las Vegas and events here in America, as well as in Canada, but no MMA crowd gets you pumped for a fight like Brazil does.
UFC 147 might not have been the success that UFC thought it would be around January, but still, as expected, the Brazilian crowd was crazy and exciting just like they would’ve been if the card was stacked from top to bottom.
Wanderlei Silva vs. Rich Franklin wasn’t quite the Silva-Sonnen rematch the UFC was hoping to have in Brazil for the event, but still, Wanderlei and Franklin put on a show.
The UFC plans to host many more events in Brazil, including one already announced for sometime in last-quarter 2012. With that said, here are 10 major fights the UFC could bring to Brazil.
Honestly, if you are in a business like professional fighting, you know you are going to get a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. You have to accept the challenges given to you,.
Honestly, if you are in a business like professional fighting, you know you are going to get a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. You have to accept the challenges given to you, and try to overcome the hardships to reign as the best. This is not the way Hatsu Hioki apparently sees his professional career. He is the top-ranked Japanese fighter in the world, a well-traveled athlete, and was 2-0 in the octagon. In the featherweight division of the UFC, Jose Aldo is undoubtedly one of the greatest mma fighters in the world. He is a tough contender, so it is understandable for any man to be distressed to even stand by him, let alone fight with him in the octagon. Unless of course that is your professional career.
So goes the story for Hioki who turned down a title shot with Aldo in April. Apparently, he truly felt like he was not ready to fight the champion. He believed he needed more octagon time, and more experience in the cage to put on the best performance for Aldo. Honestly though, all that would happen, best case scenario, would be Hioki would fight one or two top contenders in the featherweight division, beat them, and then once again have a chance to fight Aldo. It was an extremely poor decision on his part.
So he instead accepted a fight with Ricardo Lamas for UFC on FX 4. So on June 22 what happened? He lost. The idea of himself not being good enough to fight the champion now played into his mental game of fighting period. If you tell yourself you cannot win, you start to believe that you actually cannot win. I believe this was Hioki’s main downfall for his loss to Lamas. Maybe he truly wasn’t ready for a shot at the title, but as a professional athlete he never should have declined the offer. We can all remember in 2003 when Pete Spratt declined a title fight against then welterweight champion Matt Hughes. Now the title of refusing a title shot has been given to Hioki. If you are going to be in a business like professional mma fighting, you must always believe in yourself. This immensely improves your physical and mental game. Learn the lesson from Hioki: Always take a title shot when offered.
With major injuries plaguing UFC 147, 148 and 149, the summer has become a graveyard of exciting fights that could have been. When world title fights are being cancelled and postponed on a horrifyingly consistent basis, it’s easy to lose sight of the w…
With major injuries plaguing UFC 147, 148 and 149, the summer has become a graveyard of exciting fights that could have been. When world title fights are being cancelled and postponed on a horrifyingly consistent basis, it’s easy to lose sight of the whole picture.
Top names like Vitor Belfort, Jose Aldo and Dominick Cruz have fallen to the wayside, as have pivotal matchups that had fans on the edge of their seats. Those injuries blurred the vision of fight fans and we have largely ignored a tragic injustice.
The Ultimate Fighter has proven to be a successful vehicle for winners and losers alike. Tournaments are a popular format that fans can keep track of. They build anticipation for future bouts and give bragging rights to the eventual winner.
The title of “TUF winner” is a marketing tool that has permitted humdrum and irrelevant matchups like Mac Danzig vs Efrain Escudero and Amir Sadollah vs anyone to somehow grab the interest of fans who would otherwise sit apathetically.
Although the coaches’ fights have been plagued by injuries that postponed or cancelled the highly anticipated matchups, never in the history of The Ultimate Fighter has a finalist been injured between the time he earned his spot in the finals and the time that the fight was originally scheduled to take place.
Until now.
Daniel Sarafian was not only a promising fighter, but he was also the favorite to win the tournament. When UFC.com reported on Monday that the Team Belfort fighter would have to bow out, it simply became a footnote in regards to the recent plague of injuries that has ravaged the main card of the summer’s biggest events. However, a bigger story is being overlooked.
When a fighter earns a title shot and has to bow out due to injury, it is common that someone else will replace him in the championship bout and he gets his shot after recovering. With the TUF plaque, there is no defense of the title. It’s a one-time thing that is non-transferrable down the line.
How can you crown either Cezar “Mutante” Ferreira or Sergio Maraes as The Ultimate Fighter when the rightful finalist has not been defeated? For the sake of preserving the prestige of TUF, shouldn’t the finals have been postponed until Mutante and Sarafian were both available to do battle? If successful on Saturday night, can anyone call Maraes the true tournament winner after his incredible KO loss to Sarafian?
Sure, top fighters like Matt Hamill have been injured on the road to the finals and replaced along the way, but this marks the first time that a fighter has already seen his ticket to the final punched and then been forced out.
For the sake of Daniel Sarafian, I hope that the UFC awards him the same contract as the winners of the show. He deserves better than to miss out on the six-figure contract that comes along with a tournament win.
Author’s Note: Before you comment about Jesse Taylor being a rightful finalist, save your breath. He was removed from the Season 7 competition due to behavioral issues that required disciplinary action. Sarafian is in a completely different boat and has done nothing wrong that justifies him missing out on this golden opportunity.
Jose Aldo was supposed to fight Erik Koch at UFC 149. He was only supposed to fight Koch because Hatsu Hioki turned down the title shot.