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The Natural

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It's not so much the interim title, as you're right in saying this is an occasion that actually warrants it, it's the fact that it'll likely throw two divisions into chaos if Holloway wins (and I think he does).

If he announces he's moving up permanently then fair enough, but I'm fed up with guys fucking about in two weight classes for this stupid "champ champ" shite.

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Yeah I agree with that. It’s really clogging up the divisions. There’s already enough issues delaying guys getting their shot with injury pullouts, USADA suspensions, weight missing, TUF etc. All this ‘champ champ’ bollocks is fucking things right up. And not just that, I think it’s really diluting the ‘champ champ’ thing itself now as well. Remember how big a deal it seemed when Conor McGregor beat Eddie Alvarez and held the two belts up for the first time? First fighter in 20-odd years to do it and it felt like a special occasion. Now just two and a bit years later there’s been how many ‘champ champs’? We’ve had Cormier, Nunes, Cejudo, anyone else? I can’t even remember, which says it all really about how they’ve devalued that achievement. It’s ridiculous. I think it was you Dave who used the pro wrestling term ‘hotshotting’ the other day and it’s the perfect description for what they’ve done with the double champs. They’ve taken something that should feel like a rare and special accolade and made it the norm. 

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I mean, it's a cool fight. I like both of the guys, and the combination of styles, added on to the fact it's a rematch and we get to see how both men have progressed means it'll be a great watch, but like Wand says, I'm just done with this whole idea of being a "champ champ!". It genuinely feels like we're seeing it happen every three months or so now, because they've got very few stars remaining and will slap whatever tag they please on to a fight to make it seem more appealing. I genuinely forgot about Nunes now holding the 145lbs belt. Are they just going to dissolve that division? What's going to be next? Holm's 34th title fight? De Randamie popping up out of the woodwork now that Cyborg's not holding the strap?

Where the fuck is Ferguson in all of this? I get why he wouldn't want to endanger his rightful contendership, because he should be the next fight for Khabib, but is the winner of Poirer/Holloway going to be happy waiting around for Khabib/Tony to sort itself out? And you know if Conor comes back demanding the Khabib rematch, that's what they're going to do. It's just a mess. What do you do at Featherweight if Holloway decides to make the move permanent? Aldo vs Volkanovski at UFC 237 for the interim championship there? Ortega's coming off a loss, Edgar/Aldo III won't sell, Edgar/Volkanovski isn't going to be headlining any PPV's and even then you've got talk about Aldo going up to 155lbs! What a mess indeed.

 

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That’s the thing as well, Aldo might not even be a real option. He seems adamant he’s retiring this year and only wants one or two more fights. He’s not even been talking titles and has been on about fights with Pettis, Poirier and Cerrone at 155. Doesn’t seem much point putting him in an interim anything at 145 because is he even going to be still around for the unification? I’m sure he might be convinced to stick around a bit longer if they dangle a financial carrot but he’s not the most active as it is so is there much point? Just let him finish up at 155, I say. 

I think if Holloway doesn’t go back to 145 then you’re looking at some combo of Edgar, Ortega and Volkanovski. 

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I think Max will commit to the 155lbs division fully if he beats Poirier. He's had his eye on leaving the Featherweight division for a while. He's also more or less cleaned out the division and all the big money fights are at Lightweight (Khabib, McGregor, etc). Perhaps he'll not fully abandon the Featherweight division until he fights Poirier. A loss to Poirier would reduce him to a contender status in an already crowded division. In that event, the Featherweight title would act as a nice insurance policy for him. 

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Problem is this is the way all sports go, in the end. Most new achievements start off rare, then they start becoming more common, pushing back the boundaries of what achievements are impressive. The "champ champ" thing is already comparatively common in boxing, no? I understand it's more likely to be rare in MMA because of the bigger gaps between weight divisions, but as the sport becomes more and more its own and fighters get increasingly more skillful at MMA as a completely integrated discipline in itself, and not just at several disciplines that they just happen to put together to be good at MMA, we'll probably also see the newer generations raising the bar, aided by the marketing men in their respective promotions.

The "champ champ" accolade was previously considered (rightly or wrongly) an elite achievement; now it's "just" the achievement of the best. Now the new elite accolade is "champ champ champ", I guess. And then the money/marketing men will decide to dilute it all even further by introducing more weight classes, and then it'll be "champ champ champ champ" that'll be the elite achievement.

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7 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Guess Ferguson is going to sit out and wait for Khabib. 

Surely when Khabib is ready, he's fighting the winner of this?

 

Has there ever been a situation where there was an interim champ, but the actual champion didn't fight them right away? Yes, it happened to Colby, but he was stripped. If they do that again here it's fucking laughable.

Bit of a weird situation Tony is in. 

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Yeah, you’d think so Silky but you know what they’re like. Interim titles are solely a prop to create fake stakes to sell more PPVs now. Or at least the UFC perceives it sells more PPVs whacking interim belts all over the place. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a great fight between Holloway and Poirier, the winner will be the new interim champ and then McGregor will beat Cowboy and then Dana will do a u-turn and give McGregor the title shot anyway and go ‘Hey it is what it is. I know we had Max and Dustin for the interim belt but Conor beat both those guys.’ And the McGregor bumtonguers will run with that like wins from 2013/14 mean something in 20fucking19. 

I can’t remember now but what happened to Tony Ferguson’s interim title? He won the thing in 2017 when he beat Kevin Lee and hasn’t lost since. But I’m blank on how he’s interim beltless now. Guess they took it off him when he fell out of the Khabib fight again last year in Brooklyn right? 

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27 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a great fight between Holloway and Poirier, the winner will be the new interim champ and then McGregor will beat Cowboy and then Dana will do a u-turn and give McGregor the title shot anyway and go ‘Hey it is what it is. I know we had Max and Dustin for the interim belt but Conor beat both those guys.’ And the McGregor bumtonguers will run with that like wins from 2013/14 mean something in 20fucking19. 

 

Fuck me. You know this is gonna happen, right? On the button as always, fella. 

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That's a fucking great fight is Max Vs Dustin. If the UFC wanted to try and promise wall to wall violence and action in a fight, these are two of the top guys you would pair up in order to do it. 

Having said that, it adds two more divisions to the list of those with muddied water. Take a look at this list:

Men's Flyweight- Cejudo is the undisputed champ but wants to move up to fight. . . 

Men's Bantamweight - TJ Dillashaw, who has been fucking about at 125lbs, getting knocked out and God knows what is happening with the contenders at 135 whilst he tries to wrangle the Cejudo re-match.

Men's Featherweight - Max Holloway is the king of 145 but he is temporarily vacating the division, making an interim title at his weight class more likely.

Men's Lightweight - Top dog Khabib is on Hiatus for thinking he's an extra from crouching tiger, Hidden dragon. He's back in November to likely fight Max, Dustin or Conor again. Poor Tony. 

Men's Middleweight - The Bobby Knuckles show, co-starring Kelvin ringworm and Adesanya. Fuck knows where this whole mess is going. 

Men's Heavyweight - DC is the clear champ right now, but this division has uncertain times coming around the corner. 

Women's 135/145 - 145 is a sham division at the best of times, but could be on its way to being closed down by an Amanda Nunes retirement. 135 has been solid as a rock under Amanda though, and probably will be for another two fights anyway.

It kind of leaves you with women's flyweight and straw-weight, and then Welterweight and Light Heavy as your solid divisions. . . and one of those four divisions is headed by Teflon Jon, who can always be a split second away from doing his best Gene Snitsky impersonation, or getting caught doing lines of coke off a strippers arse. 

We're really deep into the 'throw shit at the wall and see what'll stick' era now. 

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The Matt Hughes story takes another disturbing turn:

Quote

The wife of Matt Hughes has been granted a restraining order in which the UFC Hall of Famer must be at least 500 feet away from her and their children at all times, according to TMZ Sports. Audra Hughes alleges that her husband has attacked her multiple times since he was injured when his truck was hit by a train while crossing railroad tracks in June 2017. Hughes suffered a serious brain injury in the accident, but by all accounts has made a miraculous recovery.

However, it wasn’t long after the welterweight’s recovery that he began acting increasingly more violent toward his wife and family. Audra claims Hughes attacked her in the shower after he refused to give him the keys to his truck due around September or October 2018. Audra didn’t think it was safe for Hughes to drive due to his brain injury. Audra claims Hughes choked her, smashed her head against the shower wall and yelled, “This is what choking is!” Hughes also allegedly asked for the code to his gun vault.

The incidents continued into the following year. In July 2018, she accused Hughes of threatening to shoot her after Audra took his phone and claimed that he was in contact with “multiple women.” Audra filed the restraining order on Dec. 13, 2018 when Hughes hit her in front her son, their daughter and her stepfather for again accusing him of texting other women one day prior.

Additionally, Hughes’ twin brother, Mark Hughes, filed a restraining order against his sibling for getting violent over a dispute over ownership of a tractor. Mark claims that upon seeing his 15-year-old son driving the tractor on Sept. 23, 2018, Hughes grabbed the boy, shook him and told him that’s his “f—-ing tractor.” Mark also alleges that Hughes doused the tractor in gasoline one week later in an attempt to destroy it. Hughes has been ordered to stay away from his brother and family via a separate restraining order.

 

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Fucking hell. It goes without saying that Hughes always came off as a bit of a dick but this is obviously much more than that. Probably the scariest thing about brain injuries is that even if you recover to a large degree they can make you a completely different person emotionally and you act in ways that are alien to your family and friends. It’s a really messy situation and it must be heartbreaking for his wife and kids to see him like this. I know him and his brother were pretty much as close as brothers can be as well, as twins often are, so for him to feel like he has to distance himself it must be really bad. 

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8 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Fucking hell. It goes without saying that Hughes always came off as a bit of a dick but this is obviously much more than that. Probably the scariest thing about brain injuries is that even if you recover to a large degree they can make you a completely different person emotionally and you act in ways that are alien to your family and friends. It’s a really messy situation and it must be heartbreaking for his wife and kids to see him like this. I know him and his brother were pretty much as close as brothers can be as well, as twins often are, so for him to feel like he has to distance himself it must be really bad. 

That was my initial reaction. And obviously that is often the case. 

But others aren't being as kind with Hughes. Ben Duffy of Sherdog wrote this. It summarises the general line of thinking:

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CTE from a career of 50-plus fights, not to mention a horrific vehicular accident that left him comatose, could certainly account for this violent behavior, but...

...Matt Hughes was by many accounts an unconscionable bully and mean-spirited guy from the beginning. And those "many accounts" would include his own: the stuff he gleefully talks about doing in his own autobiography makes him sound like a complete sociopath, not only for the things he did to family members and teammates, but for seemingly finding nothing wrong about it.

It may be that all that's changed now is that Matt's ability to manage his temper has been compromised, which is absolutely a primary sign of CTE, especially frontal lobe damage, which affects impulse control. But it's not exactly a new monster that's emerging.

 

I actually somehow forgot some of the stuff in Hughes's book. I disliked him prior to reading the book. But I was conscious that TUF's editing had perhaps stitched him up a bit. I also thought he was just a smug prick, as opposed to a complete scumbag. Although, there was that scene where he made light of Din Thomas's lips. That would have caused all sorts of problems if it aired today.

I nevertheless bought the book to hear his thoughts on Big Timmey, Couture, Tito and others. But his distaste for those lot was only the tip of the iceberg. See here for a brief summary of the book's content. Be warned, things take an especially grim turn in Chapter 4 - https://forums.sherdog.com/posts/145504227/

Who knows where the truth lies. But the last paragraph of Duffy's post does seem plausible. 

 

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