Happy Thanksgiving! Why not whet your appetite with this week’s Twitter Mailbag, which looks at athletic commissions run amok, fighters running for new contracts, and even some holiday feasting etiquette.
Got a question of your own? Tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA.
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Bad. Especially when you add in Yoel Romero, who received a token 60-day suspension for jumping out of the cage after his win at UFC 205. Clearly, the New York State Athletic Commission has gotten a little suspension-happy, which is not a great look when your state only recently overcame the rampant corruption that kept MMA out for so long in the first place.
Missing weight is a fineable offense. It is worthy of derision and public mockery. It’s unprofessional. But it shouldn’t get you suspended in addition to all that. There’s just no reason for it.
What, you think that there aren’t enough compelling reasons for a fighter to want to be on weight? You need to add the pressure of temporarily taking away his ability to make a living? If you’re trying to convince fighters to either damage their health further by continuing a weight cut that isn’t going well, or else avoid your state altogether, then fine, good idea. Otherwise? Knock it off, New York.
Equally interesting is that Benson Henderson chose that contract over whatever the UFC was offering him to stay (a contract that, according to UFC President Dana White, would have only paid Henderson more if he’d become UFC champ), so what does that tell you? I’ve never heard of anyone voluntarily taking a pay cut just for the privilege of fighting in Bellator.
Imported snow for his driveway, maybe? Though maybe that’s a less popular marker of ostentatious wealth in places like Conor McGregor’s hometown of Dublin.
He looks like it recently. Then again, in that division Kevin Lee will need more than a three-fight winning streak to really get his name on the map.
The encouraging thing is that he seems to get the marketing side of this sport. Any time you’re on a UFC Fight Pass-only UFC card and people are still talking about you a few days later, you did something right (or else very, very wrong). That goes double if you can pull off the same trick on a day with back-to-back UFC events and 12 total hours of programming.
It used to be that the hostile crowds and tendency toward matchups that favored the locals were the best reasons to avoid taking a fight at a Brazilian UFC event. But lately the Brazilian’s MMA commission (CABMMA) has been working overtime to make its case for foreigners to seek their fortunes elsewhere, especially in the aftermath of UFC Fight Night 100 in Sao Paulo.
At that event we saw two fights marred by fouls. After Darren Stewart appeared to accidentally head-butt Francimar Barroso before putting him away via TKO, the commission quickly stepped in just days later to overturn the result. But after Claudia Gadelha launched a blatantly illegal kick to the head of Cortney Casey at the same event, the commission first accused Casey of faking her injury, and then issued a follow-up statement saying that it does not “judge the character of any competitor.”
Normally that’s not something you have to clarify as a commission. Not unless you were very recently seen doing the thing you claim not to do.
From the outside, it’s hard not to look at those two instances and see that things worked out relatively well for the Brazilian fighters involved and not well at all for the foreigners. Maybe that’s just the result of bad optics and unfortunate timing, but it’s worth remembering that this isn’t the first time we’ve had cause to question the CABMMA. If it wants us to have any faith in it as a fair and competent sanctioning body, it needs to improve its track record – quickly.
Real talk, Sean? As much as I love Thanksgiving – and I do, because I’m totally into any holiday where you are encouraged to eat until you feel sick and then rest and then eat some more – I must encourage you to resist the turkey part of the tradition. Turkey sucks, man. It’s a garbage bird. It’s dry and flavorless. It makes you sleepy. It is, at best, a gravy delivery platform. Nothing more.
Free yourself from the shackles of turkey, my friend. Do a roast instead. Maybe even a ham. Hell, use that turkey platter and build an enormous mound of nachos. Think outside the gross turkey box, and you’ll be much happier in the end. So will the estranged relatives who drag themselves into your house and then refuse to leave.
The question you need to ask yourself is: What are the chances this discussion will end in either of us changing our minds and/or arriving at a more nuanced understanding of the issues? Then admit to yourself that the odds of someone throwing a turkey leg in anger are much, much greater, so stick to discussing TV shows and college football instead.
UFC 206 is shaping up to be one of those cards that had more great fights rumored and shot down than it can possibly deliver in reality.
It’s like when you were a kid and your classmate invited you to his birthday party with wild claims that his parents had rented out the entire miniature golf course plus the batting cages. A part of you never really believed him, but once the idea was in your head it was hard to expel. Then you show up and there’s just a sheet cake and a kind of sad piñata hanging in his backyard, and you’re like, this is even more disappointing than usual. That’s UFC 206 in a nutshell.
It’s not a bad fight card by any means. The top three bouts are all really strong. But does it compare with the images you had of yourself running free across 18 holes of miniature windmills and poorly constructed mockups of world monuments? No. No it does not.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Ryan Bader in Bellator. Not only would it give him a chance to get that rematch with Tito Ortiz, it might also finally get him some respect. You know, in a way.
Because in the UFC, he’s seen as just another light heavyweight who will never be champ as long as the top three guys are out of jail and above ground. He gets used, forgotten, taken for granted. He goes nowhere.
But it Bellator? There someone like Bader is an instant player. He can also ease right into the moneyweight division for aging former contenders without missing a beat. Maybe it’s not where anyone dreams of ending up, but there are worse fates. If he sticks around in the UFC he may even discover a few of them.
Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.
Filed under: Bellator, Featured, News, UFC