ironworks
10-13-2014, 07:49 PM
Feed Source: Bleacher Report MMA
The last three UFC events have been chock-full of interesting stories, but the triumphant returns of Dominick Cruz and Cat Zingano were by far the most inspirational.
Cruz, who had three years of his athletic prime stolen by a variety of injuries, came back and mauled Top 10 staple Takeya Mizugaki with scary ease. Zingano, who had suffered through a personally and professionally trying 18 months, battled back from an early deficit opposite Amanda Nunes to score a third-round knockout victory.
An uplifting footnote is one thing. However, the UFC is prepared to raise the stakes by giving Cruz and Zingano the opportunity to star in a Cinderella story for the ages by offering them title shots.
The opportunities are well deserved, and should either earn the belt (or, in Cruz's case, re-earn), it will easily rank among the top feel-good stories in recent MMA history. It will be a tale worth telling your future grandkids about.
But the UFC is foolish to give that a chance of happening.
The "injury bug" has become something of a running joke among MMA fans, and for good reason. If the current schedule holds, only 15 title defenses will have occurred in 2014. Part of that is because of blockbuster fights like Chris Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort, Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes and Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier being pushed back for months. A bigger part, however, is numerous champions being, for lack of a better term, injury prone.
Almost every other sports organization weighs an athlete's injury history at every level. Contract negotiations with individual players. The piece-by-piece building of a team. Game-day roster decisions. There isn't a single step where caution is thrown to the wind, and the risks are ignored.
Unless, of course, you're the UFC's matchmakers.
The result? Numerous belts left collecting months' worth of dust on mantles. It's a losing situation for every party outside the champions, as fans are stuck with uninteresting events, potential contenders are left twiddling their thumbs, and the UFC takes hit after hit to its bottom line. All that stems from an active ignorance about fighters' injury histories.
Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, for example, was shelved for a year with a shoulder injury after defeating Brock Lesnar, and Velasquez injured his knee ahead of a long-awaited title defense opposite Junior Dos Santos, which he lost.
That, however, did not stop the UFC from tripping over itself to put together a rematch.
Chris Weidman, many forget, only found himself with a shot at Anderson Silva after pulling out of a UFC 155 fight with Tim Boetsch. It shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone, then, that bouts at UFC 173 and 181 would be pushed back such that Weidman would only defend his belt once in 2014. As a result, Vitor Belfort, Luke Rockhold, Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza and Yoel Romero would be locked in an awkward limbo.
Just look at lightweight champion Anthony Pettis, who hasn't been seen since beating Benson Henderson in August 2013.
Despite spending most of 2012 recovering from injuries, Pettis was hustled into that title fight and had just weeks earlier withdrawn from a fight with Jose Aldo due to a knee injury. To say the warning signs were there in regards to Pettis being a less-than-active champion would be a huge understatement. In fact, win or lose, the safe assumption entering fight night was that Pettis would be spending most of 2014 wearing a cast.
It's possible the UFC was hoping that slotting Pettis into UFC 164, which was in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was going to be a decent short-term cash grab. Judging by the half-capacity crowd and low buyrates, however, the gamble gave the UFC little return. Even if it was a modest improvement over the original main event of Henderson vs. TJ Grant, any gain was almost certainly wiped out from 16 months without a lightweight championship bout.
Had the UFC opted to replace Grant with Josh Thomson (whose resume was already good enough for a title shot), the belt would have likely been defended at least twice already in 2014. Fighters like Donald Cerrone and Rafael dos Anjos wouldn't be left with no viable opponents for climbing the ranks. Most of all, maybe—just maybe—a more fluid lightweight division would have helped to make cards like UFC 177, 179 and 180 feel slightly less underwhelming.
The difference a couple missing champions make in terms of card quality is profound, which brings us back to Cruz and Zingano. The UFC already has four champions that are safe bets to tweak, tear or pull something for any given fight, but it is setting itself up to add not one but two more champions to that tally.
Peering into the crystal ball, can anybody honestly say that they would be surprised if Cruz or Zingano were forced to ride the pine for the better part of 2015? Does anybody believe that they are truly, completely past the injuries that kept them out for so long? So then why should the UFC actively try and make next year even worse than this one?
The UFC has an admirable number of options for big fights in both bantamweight divisions, and intriguing challenges for champions and contenders alike. Why not have T.J. Dillashaw try and avenge his 2013 loss to Raphael Assuncao (who happens to be on a seven-fight winning streak) and put Cruz against Urijah Faber or Renan Barao? In the women's division, why not have Ronda Rousey face Bethe Correia in a potentially blockbuster grudge match and put Zingano against Jessica Andrade, Holly Holm or Sarah Kaufman?
None of this is to say that fighters like Cruz and Zingano should be blacklisted from title shots, either. The UFC simply shouldn't be so willing to set itself up for long-term disaster on the flimsy hope of short-term payoffs. If Cruz and Zingano show that their recent injuries are truly behind them, then there is no reason not to give them a chance for the belt.
Right now, though? Right now should be a time for strengthening the foundation—for the UFC, Cruz and Zingano alike.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
The last three UFC events have been chock-full of interesting stories, but the triumphant returns of Dominick Cruz and Cat Zingano were by far the most inspirational.
Cruz, who had three years of his athletic prime stolen by a variety of injuries, came back and mauled Top 10 staple Takeya Mizugaki with scary ease. Zingano, who had suffered through a personally and professionally trying 18 months, battled back from an early deficit opposite Amanda Nunes to score a third-round knockout victory.
An uplifting footnote is one thing. However, the UFC is prepared to raise the stakes by giving Cruz and Zingano the opportunity to star in a Cinderella story for the ages by offering them title shots.
The opportunities are well deserved, and should either earn the belt (or, in Cruz's case, re-earn), it will easily rank among the top feel-good stories in recent MMA history. It will be a tale worth telling your future grandkids about.
But the UFC is foolish to give that a chance of happening.
The "injury bug" has become something of a running joke among MMA fans, and for good reason. If the current schedule holds, only 15 title defenses will have occurred in 2014. Part of that is because of blockbuster fights like Chris Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort, Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes and Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier being pushed back for months. A bigger part, however, is numerous champions being, for lack of a better term, injury prone.
Almost every other sports organization weighs an athlete's injury history at every level. Contract negotiations with individual players. The piece-by-piece building of a team. Game-day roster decisions. There isn't a single step where caution is thrown to the wind, and the risks are ignored.
Unless, of course, you're the UFC's matchmakers.
The result? Numerous belts left collecting months' worth of dust on mantles. It's a losing situation for every party outside the champions, as fans are stuck with uninteresting events, potential contenders are left twiddling their thumbs, and the UFC takes hit after hit to its bottom line. All that stems from an active ignorance about fighters' injury histories.
Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, for example, was shelved for a year with a shoulder injury after defeating Brock Lesnar, and Velasquez injured his knee ahead of a long-awaited title defense opposite Junior Dos Santos, which he lost.
That, however, did not stop the UFC from tripping over itself to put together a rematch.
Chris Weidman, many forget, only found himself with a shot at Anderson Silva after pulling out of a UFC 155 fight with Tim Boetsch. It shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone, then, that bouts at UFC 173 and 181 would be pushed back such that Weidman would only defend his belt once in 2014. As a result, Vitor Belfort, Luke Rockhold, Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza and Yoel Romero would be locked in an awkward limbo.
Just look at lightweight champion Anthony Pettis, who hasn't been seen since beating Benson Henderson in August 2013.
Despite spending most of 2012 recovering from injuries, Pettis was hustled into that title fight and had just weeks earlier withdrawn from a fight with Jose Aldo due to a knee injury. To say the warning signs were there in regards to Pettis being a less-than-active champion would be a huge understatement. In fact, win or lose, the safe assumption entering fight night was that Pettis would be spending most of 2014 wearing a cast.
It's possible the UFC was hoping that slotting Pettis into UFC 164, which was in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was going to be a decent short-term cash grab. Judging by the half-capacity crowd and low buyrates, however, the gamble gave the UFC little return. Even if it was a modest improvement over the original main event of Henderson vs. TJ Grant, any gain was almost certainly wiped out from 16 months without a lightweight championship bout.
Had the UFC opted to replace Grant with Josh Thomson (whose resume was already good enough for a title shot), the belt would have likely been defended at least twice already in 2014. Fighters like Donald Cerrone and Rafael dos Anjos wouldn't be left with no viable opponents for climbing the ranks. Most of all, maybe—just maybe—a more fluid lightweight division would have helped to make cards like UFC 177, 179 and 180 feel slightly less underwhelming.
The difference a couple missing champions make in terms of card quality is profound, which brings us back to Cruz and Zingano. The UFC already has four champions that are safe bets to tweak, tear or pull something for any given fight, but it is setting itself up to add not one but two more champions to that tally.
Peering into the crystal ball, can anybody honestly say that they would be surprised if Cruz or Zingano were forced to ride the pine for the better part of 2015? Does anybody believe that they are truly, completely past the injuries that kept them out for so long? So then why should the UFC actively try and make next year even worse than this one?
The UFC has an admirable number of options for big fights in both bantamweight divisions, and intriguing challenges for champions and contenders alike. Why not have T.J. Dillashaw try and avenge his 2013 loss to Raphael Assuncao (who happens to be on a seven-fight winning streak) and put Cruz against Urijah Faber or Renan Barao? In the women's division, why not have Ronda Rousey face Bethe Correia in a potentially blockbuster grudge match and put Zingano against Jessica Andrade, Holly Holm or Sarah Kaufman?
None of this is to say that fighters like Cruz and Zingano should be blacklisted from title shots, either. The UFC simply shouldn't be so willing to set itself up for long-term disaster on the flimsy hope of short-term payoffs. If Cruz and Zingano show that their recent injuries are truly behind them, then there is no reason not to give them a chance for the belt.
Right now, though? Right now should be a time for strengthening the foundation—for the UFC, Cruz and Zingano alike.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com