UFC 259 Aftermath: Champions, Contenders, & The Next Man Up
It's time for the UFC to get back to basics when it comes to championship pairings and building contenders
The final two bouts of Saturday’s UFC 259 pay-per-view in Las Vegas felt diametrically opposed heading into the evening, but after a couple days to sit with the results and the takeaways from those contests, they actually feel oddly connected.
In the main event, Jan Blachowicz successfully defended his light heavyweight title, handing challenger and middleweight champion Israel Adesanya the first loss of his professional career. Ever the underdog, Blachowicz ran level with Adesanya through the first three rounds, and then wisely played to his advantage in the final two frames, taking the City Kickboxing representative to the canvas and grinding time off the clock until there was no time left at all.
It was a hyped matchup that didn't go the way many had anticipated, with Adesanya thwarted in his quest to become the fifth “Champ-Champ” in UFC history and Blachowicz earning the kind of high profile, professional victory that should finally earn the unexpected 38-year-old champion the respect and recognition he’s long been due.
One bout earlier, Amanda Nunes, the lone female “Champ-Champ” in UFC history, successfully defended her featherweight title with a two-minute thrashing of No. 1 contender Megan Anderson.
The vast majority of people expected a drubbing and that’s precisely what they got, with Anderson looking resigned to her fate and bewildered by the prospects of contending with Nunes for any sustained amount of time as soon as the first heavy blow the champion threw landed. She was off balance almost immediately and when Nunes forced her to the ground and began locking up the fight-ending triangle choke / armbar combo submission, it felt like she was not only putting Anderson out of her misery, but also putting an entire division to bed, perhaps for good.
Chuck Mindenhall penned a tremendous post-fight column suggesting that “The Champ-Champ thing has run its course” over on his new site, TheMITH.com, which you should check out, tracing the chaos that has traditionally ensued whenever someone successfully achieves this previously unachievable feat. The part that really stuck out to me was this:
If there was a silver lining in Adesanya’s loss, it was that the two divisions in question got back in business. Blachowicz has Teixeira, which is where it should be headed. And Adesanya says he’s headed home to 185, where he remains the most sublime feature of the class.
Not only should UFC 259 signal the end of fighters pursuing championship gold in two divisions, but it should also be the starting point for a return to the days of old, when multiple potential contenders climbed the ranks on parallel tracks, champions faced whomever was next in line, and more attention was given to those working their way towards the top of their respective divisions, rather than the potential invaders from neighbouring weight classes.
Nunes’ fight with Anderson was perfect in that regard — the Australian was the right person to face the champion at that time, even if the road she took to get there wasn’t particularly difficult. She did what she needed to do in order to secure the opportunity she long craved, and Nunes did what dominant champions tend to do with overmatched challengers, dispatching her quickly to further illustrate how next-level she is compared to all those trying to knock her from her thrones.
It may not have carried the buzz of a cross-divisional pairing with Valentina Shevchenko, which remains the fight everyone wants to see again, or even the intrigue of her bouts with Holly Holm or Germaine de Randamie, but it was the correct fight to make at the top of the featherweight division, just as getting “The Lioness” to make a quick turnaround to defend her bantamweight strap against Julianna Pena is the correct procedural call in the 135-pound weight class.
Does Pena, who was scheduled to face Holm in early May before the former champ was forced to withdraw due to an undisclosed injury, feel like the person to unseat Nunes? Not to me, no, but in a division where the champion has already turned back the top two contenders and those two women have subsequently turned back the collection of upstarts below them — including de Randamie submitting Pena last fall — the former Ultimate Fighter winning stands as the best of a shallow collection of options.
Sometimes those contenders have to get their shot in order to keep the champion from languishing on the sidelines for too long and the division moving forward. Most of the time, it plays out how everyone thinks it will play out, with the champion retaining their title with relative ease, but occasionally, one of those challengers rises to the occasion and gives the champion a stern test (think Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 165) or does the unthinkable (Matt Serra at UFC 69) and springs the upset.
Glover Teixeira should have been the one sharing the Octagon with Blachowicz on Saturday night, not Adesanya, but as Chuck said, that’s clearly where it’s headed and that’s a step in the right direction, but it’s going to take more than one step to remedy this issue.
In addition to chasing history and potentially adding to his legacy, part of Adesanya’s argument for why going up to face Blachowicz for the light heavyweight title was that there was no one for him to face at middleweight: two of his last three victories came against the top two contenders in the division at the moment, Robert Whittaker and Paulo Costa, and they each was recently enough and one-sided enough that running them back at this time doesn’t make a great deal of sense.
That’s fair, and that’s why Marvin Vettori should probably have next, even though the two crossed paths earlier in their careers.
Adesanya edged out Vettori on the scorecards in his second UFC appearance, earning a split decision win in a bout that was closer than people anticipated and remains one of the many things that seem to keep “The Italian Dream” in a perpetual state of saltiness each day.
In addition to believing he deserved the nod that night, the 27-year-old feels like he’s done enough since then to merit another opportunity to face Adesanya, and given the landscape of the division, he has a point.
Vettori has won four straight since losing to “The Last Stylebender” on April 14, 2018, earning decision victories over Cezar Ferreira and Andrew Sanchez before submitting Karl Roberson and dominating Jack Hermansson on short notice back in December. He’s currently stationed at No. 4 in the rankings and is the only in the Top 5 who is coming off a win and hasn’t been beaten by the champion in the last 18 months.
He’s clearly a different fighter — an improved fighter — since their first encounter and his run of success should be enough to earn him a title shot.
Instead, Vettori is scheduled to face Darren Till in a matchup that could potentially exacerbate the current problem at middleweight, and highlights a major change the UFC matchmakers need to make in general. Here’s what I mean:
Till enters this fight with Vettori off a loss to Whittaker, and he’s 1-1 since moving to middleweight. He’s 1-3 overall in his last four fights and that one victory came by way of split decision over Kelvin Gastelum, who finally snapped his own three-fight slide a couple weeks ago.
So why is someone coming off a loss facing the lone rising contender in the division? Sure, Vettori gets a bump if he beats a guy with a name like Till, but at this point, how big of a bump does beating Till give him and does he even really need it in the first place?
Conversely, if Till earns a victory and secures a championship opportunity as a result, which feels like where this is headed should he win, why does a single win over a guy who seemingly hadn’t done enough to merit a title shot then carry enough weight to hustle the Scouser into a middleweight title fight?
There are marketability and popularity considerations at play here, obviously, as well as arguments to be made about the totality of a person’s resume and not just the most recent results, but it also feels like the UFC is constantly working to reach a point where the next title contender is more of a “last man standing” when it would be more beneficial to take a “next man up” approach.
It’s the same reason booking Whittaker and Costa against one another in the spring doesn’t feel like the wisest decision.
In terms of strength of schedule and weight of recent results, the winner of that one would clearly be the No. 1 contender in the middleweight division, but Adesanya has finished both with relative ease in the last 18 months. While Whittaker would have a solid case for a rematch if he thoroughly out-works Costa — three straight wins over Till, Jared Cannonier, and then Costa — it still been less than two years since Adesanya dismantled him. And if the Brazilian earns the victory, is anyone really all that jazzed about seeing Costa get a second kick at the can this soon?
There needs to be greater long-term planning and more of an eye towards the future when it comes to matchmaking, specifically with competitors coming off losses, and especially when those losses come in high-profile or championship fights.
Till should have started further back in line at middleweight and been required to earn a victory over a Top 15 opponent before facing Gastelum, especially given how his time at welterweight ended.
Gastelum should have fought someone a little further down the divisional hierarchy following his epic clash with Adesanya.
And Whittaker didn’t need to be booked against an emerging contender in his first fight after losing the title and dealing with burnout, the same way Costa shouldn’t be facing the former champion in a battle of the top contenders in the division given that his last outing was his shellacking at the hands of Adesanya.
By not constantly booking that small collection of contenders against one another in some kind of Round Robin play-down to determine the next title challenger, it not only affords them an opportunity to build some momentum and keeps them from having already fought one another without championship ramifications, but it also opens the door for the likes of Vettori or Kevin Holland to get a shot without having to navigate a never-ending gauntlet of top names.
If Holland beats Derek Brunson in two weeks to run his winning streak to six, the UFC would be better served long-term by having him fight for the title than pairing him off with the Vettori-Till winner or having him face whomever emerges victorious from the Whittaker-Costa fight. Constantly making streaking fighters “prove themselves” against athletes that have already fought for the title is a good way to end up exactly where the middleweight division is now.
Having several viable contenders is always better than narrowing the field down to one because not only does it give the promotion more options when it comes to selecting the next title challenger, it makes all those matchups further down the rankings more important as well.
Wining three, four, five fights in a row with the last one or two coming against ranked opposite should be enough to get competitors into the title conversation because winning three, four, five consecutive fights while taking incremental steps up the divisional ladder is really goddamn difficult. The more than is communicated and highlighted, the sooner everyone will come to see the tremendous importance, value and weight of Holland’s current winning streak or Islam Makhachev manhandling Drew Dober to earn his seventh straight UFC victory the past weekend.
At most, the 29-year-old from Dagestan should need one more quality win before getting a title shot, but unfortunately, it’s more likely that he’ll need to push his winning streak to eight, nine, or even 10 before that opportunity comes around because he hasn’t yet beaten “the right guys” and all of those guys are just constantly being booked against one another, leaving fighters like Makhachev, Charles Oliveira, and Beneil Dariush forced to tread water and try to keep winning before being rewarded for their outstanding run of results.
Anderson Silva didn't always face the absolute top contender each time out during his lengthy reign atop the middleweight division — he faced the next man up, which meant title defences against Patrick Cote and Thales Leites because he’d already beaten Nate Marquardt, Rich Franklin, and Dan Henderson and guys like Michael Bisping, Demian Maia, and Chael Sonnen weren’t in a position to challenge for the title.
The same goes for Jose Aldo, Dominick Cruz, Demetrious Johnson, and Ronda Rousey.
Where things started going south and venturing towards the situation we’re in now in so many division is when those “next man up” championship pairings became a thing of the past and contenders had to start beating two or three other top contenders before earning a title shot.
Georges St-Pierre defended his welterweight title against Dan Hardy because “The Outlaw” beat Mike Swick in a title eliminator. Hardy was 3-0 in the UFC and coming off a split decision win over Marcus Davis, while Swick had won four straight, capped by having stopped Ben Saunders two fights after Hardy edged out “The Irish Hand Grenade” at UFC 99.
No one thought Hardy was the second-best welterweight in the division at the time or a serious threat to St-Pierre; he was just the next guy in line because “GSP” had already dispatches the names at the very top of the list of contenders and the next wave of true title threats hadn’t reached that point yet.
The fight was entertaining, Hardy became a bigger name as a result of his gutsy effort opposite the champion, and both St-Pierre and the division kept moving forward.
Rather than always trying to find a way to make the biggest possible fight in every division, all the time, the UFC needs to get back to making the fights that make sense in the moment because that’s ultimately what’s better for the athletes, the divisions, and the company in the long run.