The new MMA general news, events and thoughts thread

[Noah Southworth]

If the Conor vs. GSP fight happens, I expect it to happen at a catchweight, rather than at welterweight or lightweight.

Conor loses a step or two when he fights at welterweight. I believe it’s a good 10lbs above his optimum fighting weight and I think Conor is smart enough not to fight at that weight again. As for GSP, I don’t think he can easily make the cut to 155lbs, if he can even make it at all. By his own admission, GSP walks around at about 187lbs, so he’d have to cut over 30lbs to make the lightweight limit. Whilst that’s theoretically possible, that kind of thing gets a lot harder the older you get, and GSP will be 37 or 38 by the time any hypothetical fight with Conor comes around. GSP has said he could make 155lbs but saying you could do something and actually doing it are two completely different things. Until he makes a test weight cut to prove he can do it, which I don’t believe he’s done, I remain sceptical that GPS can reach 155lbs, and even then, he may find it’s not a good weight for him to fight at.

I think the Conor vs. GSP fight will happen at some point, but I expect it to happen at a catchweight, probably at around 162lbs because that’s the half-way point between lightweight and welterweight.

[wandshogun09]

Yeah that's the smartest scenario. I think circumstances could change that though. Like say GSP regains the title at 170, I think Conor would do it at 170, he'd want the chance to win a third division's belt. It's an interesting one to think about. 

[Noah Southworth]

2 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Like say GSP regains the title at 170, I think Conor would do it at 170, he'd want the chance to win a third division's belt. It's an interesting one to think about. 

If GSP wins the welterweight title, I fully expect everyone involved to push for his first defence to be against Conor.

[ColinBollocks]

GSP being one of them. GSP has not been shy saying to the media he's only coming back for big money fights.

[wandshogun09]

"Some fighterrr 'ave 'igherrr stock than otherrr. I want to face the guy with the 'ighest stock".

[the_mole]

What do you guys think of California's new weigh in rules, it will be brought in for the Cormier-Jones fight and you can't cut more than 10% of your body weight, so both guys need to be under 225 come fight time or they will be asked to move up a division in their next fight, Cyborg will probably be on the same card, she would need to come in on fight day no bigger than 159?

Dana was saying today that they have been talking about doing away with 125 for the men and have been for 3 years.  If California has it's way they would have divisions every 10lbs until 205 then one at 225 but obviously a promoter doesn't have to do that, I wouldn't mind Flyweight gone if they do 155, 165 & 175, they easily have the depth to cover that as I believe they have about 200 fighters at 155 & 170 currently, which is way too much but 195, 205 & 225 would hurt the already shallow LHW & HW divisions.

It's not like promoters & fellow commissions haven't followed CSAC lead before it was them that started the morning weigh ins and everyone followed.

I do believe they can't force a promotion to start a new weight class though, Elite XC just made up their own weight classes, they had a 162lb belt Nick Diaz & KJ Noons, fought over and Wilson Reis was the "featherweight" champion at 140lbs

[ColinBollocks]

I think in the current era of the UFC, more weight classes make sense. Not only for fighter health, but it also means the divisions and titles may not suffer the sort of constant mess they've endured in the last few months. Realistically, it means the UFC have more chance creating more stars too.

[Noah Southworth]

The last thing the UFC needs is to add titles that mean nothing to their bevy of titles that already mean very little. Boxing has dozens of titles over a million different weight classes; how many of them mean anything? Learn the lessons of boxing, don't ignore them.

And adding more weight classes is to treat the symptoms whilst ignoring the disease. Fighters are still going to cut the most weight they can in order have the biggest advantage they can over their opponents. If you really want to tackle weight cutting, deal with the mentality behind it. Only by changing that mentality will you really be able to deal with the problems it causes.

[Supremo]

42 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

I think in the current era of the UFC, more weight classes make sense. Not only for fighter health, but it also means the divisions and titles may not suffer the sort of constant mess they've endured in the last few months. Realistically, it means the UFC have more chance creating more stars too.

I think more divisions and more champions makes it much harder to make stars, rather giving them more chance of creating them. I'd argue they've already reached the saturation point where there are too many champions to keep track of, everything blends together, so winning the belt doesn't make you the star it would have done five to ten years ago.

 

When there's five or so divisions it's easy to keep track of who all the champions are, so someone like Matt Serra winning the title is a big deal. Nowadays I think people would struggle to even name all the champions. As such, the belts mean less than ever in terms of making someone a star, which is one reason why the gulf between Conor and everyone else is so big. He's a star who happens to be a champion. Just being a champion isn't enough to make anyone a star anymore.

[ColinBollocks]

No, but a reason Conor is such a big star is he wins big fights. People love personality, but you've got to be good too. My point about it helping create stars is down to that. It maybe helps some that could struggle in a current weight class break out from the pack.

Also, I don't disagree with your points about over saturation, but with the current way the owners like to do things it maybe creates less chaos going forward. The UFC have too much content to fill and not enough hooks. Whether or not new divisions solve this helps, who knows, but it will mean we probably get far less farcical interm belts which already water down the champs value.

Plus, I think we can get a lot more interesting fights.

[wandshogun09]

Reading stuff on twitter (pinch of salt etc) that Cyborg vs Megan Anderson is looking good for UFC 214 now. That's the DC vs Jones 2 PPV. They badly need a co-main for that one so hopefully it gets done. 

Might end up being for the 145 title as well because apparently Germaine De Randamie was on about vacating and going back down to 135. She wants none of Cyborg.

[Noah Southworth]

12 hours ago, ColinBollocks said:

No, but a reason Conor is such a big star is he wins big fights. People love personality, but you've got to be good too. My point about it helping create stars is down to that. It maybe helps some that could struggle in a current weight class break out from the pack.

Emphasis on big fights. Not title fights. Neither of the Diaz fights were for a title and they did as big or even bigger business than Conor’s long awaited showdown with Aldo. Yes, you’ve got to win the big fights, but they don’t have to be for a title, and adding a title doesn’t mean a thing of the fighters going for it aren’t people the fans care about. Fighters are still going to struggle, regardless of how many weight classes you have. Adding half a dozen new titles  isn’t going to change that.

12 hours ago, ColinBollocks said:

Also, I don't disagree with your points about over saturation, but with the current way the owners like to do things it maybe creates less chaos going forward. The UFC have too much content to fill and not enough hooks. Whether or not new divisions solve this helps, who knows, but it will mean we probably get far less farcical interm belts which already water down the champs value.

How is it not going to great chaos to add more titles when the eleven they already have are struggling to maintain what little interest they already have? And just because the titles will be official and not interim, it doesn’t make them any less farcical and it will still make the current titles mean less because there will be so many more going around

12 hours ago, ColinBollocks said:

Plus, I think we can get a lot more interesting fights.

Fights that would be just as interesting without adding a title that doesn’t need to exist in the first place.

[ColinBollocks]

First off, by big fights I clearly was on about important ones. You know, for belts.

Also, I completely disagree adding more belts somehow creates more chaos, when there is probably going to be more order and logic rather than "interm belt, because".

Also, my point about more interesting fights is to do with the more weight options. It means, in theory, someone at a larger weight doesn't need to quite cut as much to make it a better fight against someone in a smaller weight class. There could be some middle ground. It's something Rogan and co have wanked over for years and you can see why.

[Noah Southworth]

4 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

First off, by big fights I clearly was on about important ones. You know, for belts.

Important fights don’t need belts to be important. A belt can make a fight important, or even more important, but only if it’s a belt that people think means something. Simply creating a belt to add to a fight in the belief it’ll make it more important won’t work. The belt first needs to be made important, by stars and fighters people care about competing for it. And you need the fighters to be important before they can make the belts mean something. That’s the problem that needs to be solved first before you add more titles to the mix, and unfortunately, it’s a problem that can’t be solved easily and is more down to luck than anything else.

4 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

Also, I completely disagree adding more belts somehow creates more chaos, when there is probably going to be more order and logic rather than "interm belt, because"

Adding more belts means more for fans to keep up with.  It’s difficult enough keeping up with the eleven champions the UFC currently has; you seriously don’t understand how adding even more belts will make things even more chaotic, more difficult to keep up with? Order and logic doesn’t inherently mean easy to keep up with.

4 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

Also, my point about more interesting fights is to do with the more weight options. It means, in theory, someone at a larger weight doesn't need to quite cut as much to make it a better fight against someone in a smaller weight class. There could be some middle ground. It's something Rogan and co have wanked over for years and you can see why.

Adding more weight classes doesn’t tackle the real problem behind the issue with weight cutting, which is the mentality to try and have as much of a weight advantage over your opponent as possible. If the problems with weight cutting are to be fixed, that mentality needs to be addressed and dealt with. More weight classes do nothing to help the situation because they’re not dealing with the root cause of the problem.

[the_mole]

It should always be about fighter's safety first I don't agree in full with new weight classes but there is more than enough talent at 155-170 (I think nearly 100 fighters per division, while most have less than 50) especially with extreme weight cutting to split it into 3, so 155, 165 & 175, some of the bigger guys at 155 are moving up but will struggle when they get in there with a big guy at 170 that is well rounded.

I would want it to go up as usual to 155, then 165, 175 then go up 15lbs to 190 and then 205 and I wouldn't even think about a 225lb belt.. That would be one extra weight class or two when they add Women's Flyweight (it's a massive gap between 115 & 135 for women)