UFC Vegas 21 Aftermath: What Happened to the Welterweight Division?
Examining how the welterweight division became so jumbled and how it can be fixed going forward
The welterweight division is a mess and it has been for quite some time — we just didn’t see it because things at the top found a way to keep moving.
Usually when a division bogs down or runs into problems producing contenders and keeping things fresh, it’s because the title hasn’t been defended for an extended period of time, but since the start of 2019, there have been four welterweight title fights, each featuring a different challenger. As a result, it felt like the things in the division were running smoothly, but after a No Contest verdict in Saturday’s critical main event clash between Leon Edwards and Belal Muhammad, the ugly state of the 170-pound ranks became readily apparent, leaving many to wonder how we got here and how we fix it.
How We Got Here
This is a complex problem with a number of pieces that all fit together to create a mess, and it’s more systemic and approach-based than anything else, but if you want a point of origin for the division going sideways, Spring 2018 is a good place to start.
Interim Champ for a Month
After champion Tyron Woodley defeated Demian Maia to successfully defend his title at UFC 214, he had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, putting the belt on ice for an extended period of time.
The following spring, the UFC headed to Chicago for a pay-per-view event headlined by a middleweight title rematch between Robert Whittaker and Yoel Romero, and an interim title bout between Rafael Dos Anjos and Colby Covington was added to the co-main event slot to bolster the main card. Covington dominated, claiming the interim title, setting up a highly anticipated clash with Woodley, but when the champion was ready to return, the interim titleholder was unavailable.
Rather than wait on the title unification bout, Covington was passed over in favor of Darren Till, a forced contender coming off a narrow, debatable victory over Stephen Thompson, and the interim champion was stripped of his title. Woodley trounced Till to retain his title, and before Covington had a chance to get back in line, Kamaru Usman outworked Dos Anjos to establish himself as the new No. 1 contender.
On March 2, 2019 at UFC 235, he dominated Woodley to claim the title.
In the span of 10 months, Covington went from being the interim champion and clear No. 1 contender to losing his belt, losing his place in the pecking order, and watching a new champion be crowned without stepping into the Octagon. The grudge match that had been brewing with Woodley never happened and an outstanding fighter that had never really been in the spotlight was suddenly stationed atop the division, with the polarizing loudmouth who had been the center of attention in the 170-pound ranks left twisting in the wind.
None of these booking decisions felt quite right at the time and they became one of the elements that contributed to the division becoming the jumbled mess it is now.
The Same Two Tests
Another part of the problem is that the UFC has relied on the same two fighters to serve as veteran litmus tests for potential contenders over the last two-plus years: Woodley and Dos Anjos.
Since the start of 2019, Woodley is 0-3, losing his title to Usman before suffering back-to-back lopsided defeats at the hands of Gilbert Burns and Covington.
Following his interim title fight loss to Covington at UFC 225, Dos Anjos dropped three of his next four to Usman, Edwards, and Michael Chiesa, earning a submission victory over lightweight interloper Kevin Lee prior to his bout with Edwards.
While the two men have the experience and standing in the division to hold down positions as guardians to contention, when the losses keep mounting, the people holding down those positions need to be replaced. Instead, everyone that beat Woodley and Dos Anjos graduated to being contenders, but only two of the five actually earned a title shot as a result of those victories: Usman after he beat Dos Anjos, and Burns after he bested Woodley.
The problem with keeping those two in place as gatekeepers to the title picture is that unless everyone that beats them is going to get a championship opportunity soon after their victories, you end up where we are now.
Edwards watched Covington and Usman become the No. 1 contender after beating Dos Anjos, but has since been told his win — his eighth consecutive victory — wasn’t enough to earn him a title shot. Chiesa’s win of the Brazilian, who has since returned to lightweight, came recently enough that he knows he’ll need to win at least once more before entering the title conversation, but that’s another piece of this that we’ll address shortly.
Covington eventually got his title shot, losing to Usman in the fifth round of a highly competitive, thoroughly entertaining scrap at UFC 245, and rebounded by running through Woodley last summer, which has him once again stationed at the top of the list of contenders, waiting on another title shot, because that’s how things played out for the guy that dominated “The Chosen One” before him.
Rather than keeping Woodley and Dos Anjos in a position to face all of these emerging contenders, they needed to take a step back with each subsequent loss, with someone like Stephen Thompson being cycled in to replace either or both of them as “the guy you have to beat to earn a title shot.”
His two fights with Woodley were ultra-close, he handily beat Jorge Masvidal to get back into the win column following his tandem title fights, and he was utilized in that role when Till was hustled into his championship opportunity. After a surprise knockout loss to Anthony Pettis in March 2019, “Wonderboy” has been used a little further down the line in the division as more of a gatekeeper to the Top 10, having recently turned back Vicente Luque and Geoff Neal.
It’s good work if you can get it, but Thompson was seriously overqualified, and now seems like he’s been replaced… by Woodley… who takes on Luque next week at UFC 260.
Focused on Buzz, Not Building
This falls in line with a core piece of last week’s reaction column in the wake of UFC 259 talking about the need to just keep things moving forward at all times and therefore being required to occasionally make an unsexy matchup or two.
Woodley shouldn’t have been hastily paired off with Till, who missed weight by a considerable margin (4.5 pounds off championship weight) ahead of his fight with Thompson and barely eked out the win, but the Liverpool man had been christened the next rising star in the division, and nothing was going to prevent him from being hot-shot into a championship opportunity as soon as an opening presented itself.
One of the best individual fighter examples of how things got so messed up in the welterweight division is Jorge Masvidal, who went from a two-fight slide and 16-months on the sidelines to headlining in London against Till following his championship loss, knocking him out, and kicking off a late-career breakthrough that eventually saw him fight for the title.
His run was great, but there were decisions in there that contributed to the division bogging down and backing up.
Following his win over Till, Masvidal got into a literally fist-fight with Edwards backstage, with the scuffle and his subsequent conversation about it with Brett Okamoto giving birth to the “Three Piece and a Soda” line that became his first of several hashtag-able quote during the year.
Why a fight between the two wasn’t the next thing booked for each man remains a mystery, as they were on the same timeline and just had a physical altercation, which made it an easy sell for the UFC.
Instead, they each fought in July against separate opponents: Masvidal blowing up Ben Askren with the fastest knockout in UFC history and follow-up shots that were #supernecessary and Edwards outclassing Dos Anjos two weeks later in San Antonio, Texas.
Still, the opportunity was there to put them together — both had earned impressive follow-up wins, they were still on the same timelines, and they were running on similar tracks towards the title; a bout between the two could have established the next No. 1 contender. But once again, the UFC went in a different direction, pitting Masvidal against Nathan Diaz in a battle for the “BMF Title” at Madison Square Gardens, leaving Edwards to stand on the sidelines, yearning for the major opportunity he’d earned.
As everyone knows by now, Masvidal thrashed Diaz and then subbed in for Burns on short notice opposite Usman, losing a lopsided decision in an impromptu championship fight on Fight Island last summer. He hasn’t fought since, and yet “Gamebred” remains in the thick of the title conversation.
Last year proved to be complete chaos for Edwards, who lost a fight against Woodley in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then briefly lost his place in the rankings before agreeing to face Khamzat Chimaev, a hyped prospect who mauled two short-notice opponents and one journeyman in three months to somehow become deserving of the opportunity to share the cage with a Top 5 fighter on an eight-fight winning streak.
The fight was booked three different times — for December 19, January 20, and this past weekend — with COVID issues scuttling it each time.
Why Edwards was sidelined throughout the year after initially being booked in a bout with Woodley in March never made any sense, and neither did pairing with Chimaev, but once again, the focus was on a fighter with a ton of buzz, and not the one who had worked their way into contention by stacking up victories.
Fighting Forward, Not Fighting Back
It’s impossible to know for sure which athletes are actually turning down fight offers (or even how legitimate all those allegedly declined offers really are) because no one is going to put all the receipts out into the public, but the last piece of the “How Did We Get Here” puzzle is that there seems to be a number of athletes that are only interested in fighting individuals ahead of them in the rankings.
In theory, it makes sense: you’ve worked your way to a place in the rankings where you’re in contention or on the fringes, and the last thing you want to do is jeopardize that standing by taking on someone three or four spots below you or a dangerous, but unranked opponent because you’re expected to win and there is limited upside to securing that victory.
The problem, of course, is that if everyone is only interested in fighting the people ahead of them in the rankings, no one is going to be fighting anyone.
Guys like Covington, Burns, Edwards, and Masvidal only want to fight for the title, while the Michael Chiesas of the world are only interested in bouts with those four athletes, leaving guys like Muhammad constantly taking tough assignments against the Dhiego Limas that don’t move him forward in the rankings, but would cost him his place in the Top 15 if he were to lose.
There are always exceptions to the rule — Thompson facing Geoff Neal last December, for instance — and results often force fighters to shift their stances, as Woodley has to do now that he’s on a three-fight slide, resulting in Luque finally getting another chance to face someone ahead of him in the rankings, but when the competitors at the top of the standings hold out for the one or two big name fights rather than being shuffled back into the deck once they lose, this is where we end up.
How Do We Fix It
It takes a multi-layered solution to fix a complex problem, and it’s no different here.
There are always going to be times where deviating from these guiding principles will make a ton of sense — and that’s what will make those individual moments extra special — but for the most part, sticking to a more structured approach following some of the recommendation below will help keep divisions moving forward fluidly.
“Next Man Up”
Stephen Thompson should probably be the next man to face Kamaru Usman for the title, given that he’s the only one in the Top 5 that hasn’t already lost to the champion and he’s coming off a pair of quality wins over ranked opponents.
It’s not the most commercially appealing bout the UFC could make, but it’s the right decision in terms of keeping things moving and creating a window to sort some things out with everyone else in the Top 15.
It’s the same reason Marvin Vettori should be facing Israel Adesanya for the title and not Darren Till, and why Julianna Pena should get the opportunity to be murdered by Amanda Nunes.
Rather than finding ways to justify rematches that don’t make sense or having long stretches where titles sit undefended, the UFC needs to make it worth their champions’ while to consistently face whomever is next in line, regardless of their popularity or the commercial viability of the championship pairing.
Sure, a rematch between Usman and Masvidal or Covington has more sizzle to it, but what have either of those men done since losing to the champion to merit another crack at the title? Why do they only need to win one fight (Covington) or no fights (Masvidal) to justify a swift second kick at the can, when someone like Edwards had won eight straight and couldn’t get a sniff?
Thompson is the lone fighter in the Top 5 coming off a win, he’s beaten Luque and Geoff Neal in consecutive outings, and he’s an established name. What’s the hold-up?
The title should be on the line again somewhere between July and September, maybe October at the latest, so either one of those other cats needs to get a quality win that makes them the clear choice or “Wonderboy” should be challenging for the title again later this year.
Keep things moving, even if it means a less sexy title fight here and there.
More Long-Term Planning
The previously discussed bookings of Woodley and Dos Anjos are the clearest examples of this, but looking forward, it will be interesting to see what the UFC opts to do with Gilbert Burns when he eventually returns to action following his UFC 258 loss to Usman.
In recent years, evidence suggests he would be paired off with someone like Woodley or Dos Anjos (though he’s beaten the former and the latter relocated to lightweight), but the most likely course of action is that he’ll be paired off with someone like Chiesa, who is a perfect 4-0 in the division and coming off a pair of quality wins.
But a better decision would be to pair him off with Neil Magny, a Top 10 staple coming off a loss to Chiesa.
Facing someone like Magny probably doesn’t sound all that appealing to Burns, who would undoubtedly prefer to face a Top 5 opponent or someone on the rise like Chiesa in order to get right back into the title chase, however from a promotional standpoint, none of those pairings benefits the UFC in the long term, and that’s what needs to be the focus.
Instead of just pitting the recent title challengers and top handful of fighters against one another in a continuous “round robin” setting where the same names stay in the title conversation, guys like Burns that just fought for the title and lost need to have a little more runway put between them and another title shot so that things don’t bog down as they have now.
Fewer “Just Lost vs. Winning Streak” Matchups
This is another point that was brought up following UFC 259, but it bears repeating: the UFC needs to get away from putting fighters coming off high profile losses against competitors rising through the ranks because all it does is create a situation where one of the two most likely outcomes exacerbates the problem.
Not to frequently target Darren Till, but his upcoming fight with Marvin Vettori is a perfect example.
The 28-year-old Scouser is 1-3 in his last four fights, with that lone victory coming by split decision, and yet he’s paired off with Vettori, who has won four straight and is coming off an impressive win over a Top 5 opponent in Jack Hermansson last time out.
What has Till done as a middleweight — or in the last three years and change for that matter — to be positioned as a test an upstart like Vettori needs to beat in order to keep climbing the ranks? If anything, Vettori should be ahead of Till in the hierarchy, at which point the Italian would likely have little interest in fighting backwards against the British fighter whose last convincing victory came in October 2017 against Donald Cerrone.
Now, the reasoning behind the booking appears to be that if Till wins, he’ll get a title shot, as champ Israel Adesanya and his team have mentioned him as the lone intriguing new name they’d be interested in facing (Adesanya edged out Vettori three years ago), but why not allow Vettori to keep moving forward against someone coming off a victory while putting more than one win between Till and a title shot considering he dropped a unanimous decision to former champ Robert Whittaker last summer?
It’s the same thing with Whittaker’s bookings since losing the title — he came off that loss and got paired off with Till, handing him a defeat after his narrow win over Kevlin Gastelum in his divisional debut, and then he faced Jared Cannonier at UFC 254, halting his impressive run up the divisional ladder.
Now he’s the No. 1 contender to a champion that knocked him out viciously less than two years ago, and set to face the last man to challenge for the middleweight title, Paulo Costa, next month in another bout that doesn’t really help the division progress at all. Sure a win further solidifies Whittaker as a top contender, but that’s already been established, and a loss kills his momentum and creates an even worse situation at the top of the heap given that Costa got trounced even more recently than “The Reaper.”
In more instances, the UFC needs to get back to having winners face winners and losers face losers because it’s the only real way to keep things moving and keep things fresh.
More Roads & Shorter Roads
It shouldn’t take four, five, six wins before a fighter starts getting noticed and given bigger opportunities, not even in deep weight classes like welterweight.
Edwards shouldn’t have needed eight wins to become a contender, and Luque’s six-fight winning streak shouldn’t end up with him facing “Wonderboy” in order to then earn a date with a Top 5 opponent, but all too often, there is always another fight many of these emerging talents need to win in order to really establish themselves in the eyes of the promotion and its fans.
Rather than making the road to contention exceptionally long and constantly narrowing it down until it’s one-lane traffic, the UFC should reduce the distance and expand the road, making it a multi-lane highway where four or five victories lands you a marquee assignment and maybe even a title shot.
Let’s use Sean Brady as an example.
The Daniel Gracie black belt pushed his UFC record to 4-0 with a third-round submission win over Jake Matthews two weekend’s ago at UFC 259, moving his overall record to 14-0 and breaking into the Top 15 as a result. His next fight should be against someone in the Top 10, and if he wins that, the 28-year-old rising star should be staring at a title eliminator or at the very least, a date with a Top 5 opponent where a convincing victory puts him on the short list of potential title challengers.
That would mean he went from arriving in the UFC to title contender with six straight wins, which feels reasonable, especially given his performance and the steady progression up the divisional ladder he’s made thus far.
And he shouldn’t be the only one on that kind of path.
The aim should always be to have two or three viable potential contenders at all times, if not four or five, honestly, so that there are multiple quality options.
Along with Brady, fighters like Miguel Baeza and Shavkat Rakhmonov should be moving forward alongside of him on a path towards the Top 15, facing established names coming off wins so that another victory would further elevate their standing in the division.
Baeza is 3-0 in the UFC with three finishes and 10-0 overall, while Rakhmonov choked out Alex “Cowboy” Oliveira in his promotional debut in October to move to 13-0 for his career; neither should need any more than two more victories before they’re facing Top 10 competition.
Consistency
The frustrating thing about Baeza and Rakhmonov most likely still being a couple wins away from securing the kind of fight that could potentially elevate them into the Top 15 and put them on a parallel path to Brady is that they’ve each done more in their brief UFC careers than Chimaev did last summer and fall, and yet he’s the one that had a rocket strapped to his back and got hurried into a main event pairing against a Top 5 opponent.
Not all prospects are created equal and there will always be exceptions, but it’s those grand disparities that contribute to these situations.
While Chimaev logged one win at welterweight — against a debuting fighter on short notice — and got paired off with Edwards, Baeza stopped Matt Brown and submitted Takashi Sato in his last two fights, while Rakhmonov tapped out a divisional stalwart in Oliveira, and yet they’re more likely to land opposite middling veterans than fellow emerging talents or Top 15 opponents next time out.
Hell, Muhammad, the guy that replaced him opposite Edwards, had won four straight and eight of nine and needed Chimaev to withdraw for a second time in order to land a fight of this magnitude.
Business considerations are always going to be factored into these decisions, but if more fighters are being given opportunities in the spotlight rather than the same collection of names, it expedites the process of those emerging contenders becoming established with audiences and therefore more viable as main event talents and potentially even title challengers.
Epilogue
While the frustrating ending of Saturday’s main event between Edwards and Muhammad served as the catalyst for everyone’s closer inspection of the state of the welterweight division, a guy like Brady feels like the better case study for where the division is at and why changes need to be made going forward.
Given what he’s accomplished thus far, Brady should be in a co-main event pairing on a Fight Night card next time out, perhaps even the main event with the right opponent to serve as the A-Side.
Unfortunately, the division is so messed up right now that there are only four fighters ahead of him in the rankings (Thompson, Chiesa, Luque, and Li Jingliang) who are coming off a victory: one of them is already booked (Luque), and two of them probably want no part of facing the No. 14 guys in the division (Thompson, Chiesa), which means he’ll most likely end up facing Jingliang in a bout that offers an minimal step up at best.
Here’s a genuinely intriguing new name working his way up the ranks and he’s now stuck because all of the “How We Got Here” factors have created a traffic jam in front of him.
Sure, he could face someone like Magny or Neal, two guys positioned ahead of him in the rankings with more experience and more cache with the UFC audience, but they’re each coming off recent setbacks and shouldn’t be thrown in the path of one of the few exciting up-and-coming talents in the division, not when a win over either of them wouldn’t do more than more him ahead a couple spots in the pecking order and a loss doesn’t create someone new to get behind.
If you want to pair him off with someone coming off a loss, stick him in there with Burns — that way, if he loses, at least he lost to a guy that just fought for the title and it doesn’t really stunt his progress all that much, and if he wins, a new contender is born.
Burns doesn’t need to be facing another Top 5 fighter; he needs to take a step back and log two or three wins before being considered for another title shot. And Brady should be getting a turn in the spotlight, because at the very least, it establishes him as someone the audience needs to pay close attention to in the division, and a fight like this saws that with more authority and volume than a bout against Magny or Neal or Jingliang would.
But getting Burns to agree to that fight would be difficult, and it’s not the kind of fight the UFC typically makes, but that’s exactly why it’s the type of fight the promotion should be considering right now.
Now’s the time to take meaningful steps towards untangling the division and changing the way fights are booked in order to avoid similar situations in different weight classes in the future.
Welterweight is a mess, middleweight is trending in that direction, and a few more divisions are showing signs of following suit if something doesn’t change.
It’s a big undertaking and a grand departure from how things have been done in recent years, but in the long run, it would create a healthier landscape and more consistency, which would ultimately benefit everyone — the promotion, the fighters, and the fans.