The UFC’s middleweight division just can’t catch a break. Earlier this year it was announced that former welterweight king Georges St-Pierre had signed a new multi-fight deal with the UFC in order to come out of retirement and return to mixed martial arts (MMA) competition. Initial plans had St-Pierre making his 185-pound debut and challenging […]
The UFC’s middleweight division just can’t catch a break.
Earlier this year it was announced that former welterweight king Georges St-Pierre had signed a new multi-fight deal with the UFC in order to come out of retirement and return to mixed martial arts (MMA) competition. Initial plans had St-Pierre making his 185-pound debut and challenging champ Michael Bisping for the strap.
Those plans changed, however, after “Rush” claimed he wouldn’t be able to fight until after October and UFC President Dana White called the bout off. Although the fight was announced for some time, no date or venue was given for it.
Kyle Terada – USA TODAY Sports
After plans for the superfight seemingly fell though, “The Count” stated he’d need some time off to heal a lingering injury that has been nagging him. Enter Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker. The pair went head-to-head in the main event of the UFC 213 pay-per-view (PPV) to crown an interim 185-pound champ that would welcome Bisping back to unify their titles upon the Englishman’s return.
Whittaker would win that fight via unanimous decision and faced off against Bisping inside the ring after the bout’s conclusion. Just when everything seemed all clear for the middleweight title picture, things took another wild turn when “The Reaper” announced to The Daily Telegraph that a grade two medial ligament injury to his left knee he suffered against Romero could sideline him until 2018 (quotes via MMA Fighting):
“The injury itself, it’s not really my job to understand,” Whittaker said. “All I can say is that it’s a serious grade two medial and hurt like hell when it happened. Doctors always think the end of the world, right? If it was up to them I’d be in a wheelchair.”
Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
With the fact that Whittaker won’t be able to fight again for a significant amount of time, this could mean that the UFC’s original plans to pair St-Pierre and Bisping together are back on.
When July 8’s UFC 213 from Las Vegas lost its Amanda Nunes vs. Valentina Shevchenko main event the day of the fight, it seemed like the International Fight Week-ending card that with much of the wind taken out of its sails, was doomed to bring in a low pay-per-view buyrate . And according to recently […]
When July 8’s UFC 213 from Las Vegas lost its Amanda Nunes vs. Valentina Shevchenko main event the day of the fight, it seemed like the International Fight Week-ending card that with much of the wind taken out of its sails, was doomed to bring in a low pay-per-view buyrate .
And according to recently released estimates, that’s true. A report from MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer put the usually successful midsummer card’s buys at a measly 125,000-150,000, continuing a trend of lackluster-at-best sales for the UFC in the new WME-IMG era. There has yet to be a single UFC pay-per-view event that drew a significant amount of buzz and buys yet this year, compared to last year when numerous cards surpassed the coveted one million-plus buy threshold.
It’s hard to argue that UFC 213 should have or could have done much better, however, as the card lost its original Cody Garbrandt vs. TJ Dillashaw bantamweight tile headliner, and an anticipated contest between Robbie Lawler and Donald Cerrone was moved to UFC 214 on July 29. The late replacement Robert Whittaker vs. Yoel Romero fight for the interim middleweight title was a great fight to be certain; but at that point many fans – and all casual ones – had clearly been turned off by the dissipating event.
The low numbers put the card on par with the worst-selling UFC pay-per-views of all-time, joining the cards that dominant but low-selling flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson headlined. Obviously UFC 213 was never going to outsell last year’s UFC 200, even though that historical event also lost its main event right before it was scheduled to take place. Nunes headlined the card opposite former women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate, but the real attraction seemed to be Brock Lesnar’s return against Mark Hunt.
Last year seems like ancient history for the UFC, however, and the while the promotion is expected to bounce back with big numbers at next week’s UFC 214 from Anaheim, which features the long-overdue Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones rematch, is on point to be by far the best pay-per-view of this year with three title fights. And of course Conor McGregor will box Floyd Mayweather in their monstrous August 26 showdown that is expected to bring upwards of five million buys and countless eyeballs to MMA. It’s not solely a UFC fight though, as SHOWTIME Sports is producing the majority of it.
Regardless of the outcome, this cant be what WME-IMG envisioned when they paid $4.2 billion for the promotion during the height of McGregor and Ronda Rousey’s drawing power.
2017 is quickly getting away from the new owners, and even with a potential blockbuster like UFC 214 waiting in the immediate future, they’re going to need something special to bring the overall year out of the slums and back into the penthouse the UFC enjoyed last year.
And as recent trends in MMA has shown, that will probably be up to the return – or lack of – from one infamous Irishman. Megastars tend to sell huge these days, and the rest of the roster seems to draw increasingly concerning and dismal buyrates.
On Saturday, July 8, Robert “The Reaper” Whittaker put on a brilliant performance in the main event of UFC 213, winning the interim middleweight title against longtime contender Yoel Romero by unanimous decision. Whittaker and Romero closed out the depleted International Fight Week-ending card with an instant classic, and to hardcore fans, that more than […]
On Saturday, July 8, Robert “The Reaper” Whittaker put on a brilliant performance in the main event of UFC 213, winning the interim middleweight title against longtime contender Yoel Romero by unanimous decision.
Whittaker and Romero closed out the depleted International Fight Week-ending card with an instant classic, and to hardcore fans, that more than made up for the scrapped main event between Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko.
With the victory, “The Reaper” won himself a guaranteed shot at middleweight champion Michael Bisping and shook up the division to its core. And let’s be honest, because after all, the UFC 185-pound landscape, although deeply talented with top contenders, has been in shambles ever since “The Count” shocked the mixed martial arts (MMA) world when he knocked out Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 in June of last year.
The weight class that had been dominated for so long by Anderson “The Spider” Silva had a very clear structure for many years, one that went like this: become a contender, fight Silva, lose, get back in line.
Then one bad decision by Silva to clown the entire fight and one perfectly-timed left hook by Chris Weidman changed everything, and made Weidman the undisputed champion. It looked like Weidman, an All-American wrestler and crisp striker, would stay on top for a while; after all, he beat one of the all-time greats twice.
But his reign ended when he threw an ill-advised wheel kick at Rockhold and got his face smashed in. And we know how Rockhold lost the belt, which brings us back to Bisping.
Bisping is not a popular champion. He has never faced the top three contenders in the division and was the benefactor of good timing in his title shot against Rockhold after Weidman was forced to withdraw from their scheduled rematch with a neck injury.
His on-camera personality is brash and rude, even taunting Rockhold after knocking him out. His antics, like throwing the middleweight belt at Whittaker’s feet on Saturday night, reminds some UFC fans too much of pro-wrestling.
While some fans may argue that his personality comes from the desire to sell more pay-per-views (PPV), the main issue with Bisping so far has been his dodging of top contenders. His only title defense came against an aging Dan Henderson, who was ranked number 14 in the division at that time, in a very close fight at UFC 204 last October that almost saw Bisping knocked out twice.
Since then, the only other fight Bisping was going to take was against Georges St. Pierre, the welterweight legend somehow fighting for the middleweight title and pole-vaulting every contender waiting for their title shot. The fight with St. Pierre fell through, Bisping injured his knee, and the middleweight division was at a standstill.
Then, through the underbrush came “The Reaper.”
For a while, Whittaker had been a sleeper in the middleweight division who showed a lot of promise but wasn’t quite yet championship caliber. He had a fun fight with Derek Brunson last year, but hadn’t really broken through the top five contenders.
However, on April 15, the 26-year-old Australian destroyed Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, a perennial contender and one of the best in the division, with savage striking that left “Jacare” splayed on the canvas by the second round.
Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
The knockout propelled “Bobby Knuckles” to number three in the division and set up a clash with Romero, one of the scariest fighters on the UFC roster. Fast-forward three months later, and Romero has his first loss in the UFC and Whittaker is the new interim champ.
As of today, he’s guaranteed a crack at ‘The Count’ in order to unify the two middleweight belts. If Whittaker looks any bit as good as he did against Romero, Bisping could be in deep trouble.
If the UFC overlooks Whittaker and schedules Bisping for some other opponent such as St-Pierre, the backlash would be swift and fierce, but that is (hopefully) unlikely. If Whittaker beats Bisping and becomes the champion, the middleweight division could finally be untangled, as “Bobby Knuckles” has shown no hesitation when accepting fights. With no lack of contenders in the division, middleweight could turn into the division to watch, and Whittaker could be one of the best champions to watch.
The match ups for “The Reaper” are mouth-watering, but it all depends on the UFC, and – here’s the hard part – on Bisping, who may stand in the way of an exciting new prospect in the promotion. But if he owns up to his allegiance to defending the belt, “The Reaper” could come calling for the polarizing champ from across the Pond.
The feud between Middleweight contender Yoel “Soldier of God” Romero and champion Michael “The Count” Bisping has spilled out of the Octagon and into social media. The Cuban and British citizens have now involved their national flags as means to insult each other. The first offense came at the hands of Bisping, who tore up […]
The feud between Middleweight contender Yoel “Soldier of God” Romero and champion Michael “The Count” Bisping has spilled out of the Octagon and into social media. The Cuban and British citizens have now involved their national flags as means to insult each other.
The first offense came at the hands of Bisping, who tore up the Cuban flag and threw it at Romero after the Cuban’s UFC 213 loss against Robert Whittaker. See here via Twitter:
Needless to say, Romero did not take the disrespect lightly, and was swift to make a video burning a picture of Bisping with the UK flag. See here via Instagram:
Although the message of hostility was clear, Bisping laughed off on an Instagram post of his own, where he posted screenshots of the video with nothing but emojis as the caption. (Via Instagram):
The beef between the UK and Cuba seemed to be over after a lackluster response of three laughing face emojis, but “Sodier of God” was not done with Bisping or the Union Jack. In a profanity-filled, high-production value Instagram video, Romero called out Bisping and challenged him to fight in London or Manchester. See the video here (Via Instagram):
It seems that Romero is campaigning for a fight against Bisping, an unlikely reality since he just lost the Interim belt to Whittaker. For Romero, a lot of things need to happen for him to ever see “The Count” in the Octagon, including Bisping accepting a fight with him, something that has never happened.
The Middleweights has become the division to watch. The feud between Romero and Bisping, the new exciting, young Interim champion and a roster full of killers promises great match-ups. Romero took his first loss but he expressed that he is not done in the UFC, but Bisping’s future is uncertain.
Michael Bisping has revealed nixed plans for him to coach the upcoming season of “The Ultimate Fighter” (TUF). Eddie Alvarez and Justin Gaethje are set to be the next opposing coaches on TUF, but that wasn’t the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) original plan. Reigning middleweight champion Bisping claims he was offered a spot to coach […]
Michael Bisping has revealed nixed plans for him to coach the upcoming season of “The Ultimate Fighter” (TUF). Eddie Alvarez and Justin Gaethje are set to be the next opposing coaches on TUF, but that wasn’t the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) original plan. Reigning middleweight champion Bisping claims he was offered a spot to coach […]
With every decision comes a consequence and for those fighters who took part in battle at UFC 213, it’s their time to faces those consequences in the form of medical suspensions. The event was headlined by an interim UFC Middleweight Championship bout between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker Rounding out the main card was Fabricio […]
With every decision comes a consequence and for those fighters who took part in battle at UFC 213, it’s their time to faces those consequences in the form of medical suspensions.
The event was headlined by an interim UFC Middleweight Championship bout between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker Rounding out the main card was Fabricio Werdum vs. Alistair Overeem in a heavyweight bout, Daniel Omielanczuk vs. Curtis Blaydes in a heavyweight bout and Jim Miller vs. Anthony Pettis in a lightweight bout.
Some of the more notable suspensions include Whittaker being suspended until 01/04/18 unless cleared by an orthopedic doctor before then after he undergoes MRI of his left knee. Blaydes, Pettis, and Browne are also out until 01/04/18.
Here are the entire medical suspensions:
Robert Whittaker: Requires MRI of left knee, if positive then must have clearance by orthopedic doctor or no contest until 01/04/18; minimum suspension until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
Curtis Blaydes: Requires right tibia/fibula and left chest rib series x-rayed, if positive then must be cleared by doctor or no contest until 01/04/18; minimum suspension until 08/08, no contest until 07/30
Anthony Pettis: Requires right hand x-rayed, if positive then must have orthopedic clearance or no contest until 01/04; minimum suspension until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Travis Browne: Requires left foot x-rayed, if positive then must have orthopedic clearance or no contest until 01/04; minimum suspension until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
James Bochnovic: Suspended until 09/07, no contact until 08/23
Yoel Romero: Requires left eyebrow and right scalp lacerations cleared by doctor or no contest until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Fabricio Werdum: Suspended until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Jim Miller: Suspended until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Brian Camozzi: Suspend until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Thiago Santos: Requires laceration above right eye cleared by doctor or no contest until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Jordan Mein: Requires laceration above left eye cleared by doctor or no contest until 08/23, no contact until 08/08
Daniel Omielanczuk: Suspended until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
Alexey Oleinik:Suspended until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
Gerald Meerschaert: Suspended until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
Belal Muhammad: Suspended until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
Douglas Silva De Andrade: Suspended until 08/08, no contact until 07/30
