UFC Vegas 35: Kevin Lee is Schrödinger's Fighter
Will the returning talent prove he's the Top 5 welterweight he declared himself to be earlier this week when he steps in with Daniel Rodriguez on Saturday night in Las Vegas?
Kevin Lee is the Schrödinger’s cat of the UFC.
Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics devised by Erwin Schrödinger where a cat, placed in a sealed box, may simultaneously be considered alive and dead based on its fate being linked to an event that may or may not occur.
Basically, the cat may be alive because the event didn’t happen and the cat may be dead because the event did happen; both are equally plausible and no one will know the outcome for sure until they open the box.
Lee might be a Top 5 welterweight.
Lee might also not be a Top 5 welterweight.
No one will truly be able to say for sure whether he is or he isn’t until we see the confident and mercurial talent step into the Octagon with someone that can provide a baseline assessment for where he fits in the 170-pound ranks, which is why his return engagement with Daniel Rodriguez on Saturday night is such a crucial contest in the career of 28-year-old Michigan native.
Ever since Lee went on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani this week and made his bold statement, I’ve been trying to find a way to (a) wrap my head around his grandiose claim, and (b) figure out how to write about his claim and this situation without coming off like a complete jerk because admittedly, my initial reaction was not great, and had I written something right away, I probably would have come off like a complete jerk.
Now, I appreciate Kevin Lee’s confidence. I mean, if you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else, right?
I don’t know if he genuinely thinks no one in the Top 5 in the welterweight division brings what he brings to the table or that none of them are superior talents than he is, but from the handful of times I’ve spoken with him and the ease and balance with which he navigates the above conversation, my instinct is to say that he is being 100 percent honest when offering this assessment, and while I think the confidence is commendable, my reaction remains the same: prove it.
Stop talking and prove it.
Do you know what everyone currently ranked in the Top 15 in the UFC welterweight division currently has that Kevin Lee doesn’t?
At least one victory in the UFC welterweight division.
Lee has ventured to the 170-pound weight class once in his UFC career, losing to Rafael Dos Anjos by submission in the fourth round of their headlining clash in the spring of 2019.
Again, I appreciate the confidence and self-belief, and have long been a believer in the skills that “The Motown Phenom” brings to the table, but eight years into his UFC odyssey, there have been more of these types of statements than there have been statement wins over truly elite talents, and after more than a year on the sidelines and an unsuccessful first foray into the talent-rich welterweight ranks, claiming you’re Top 5 in the division and elevating yourself above Colby Covington, Gilbert Burns, Leon Edwards, Vicente Luque, and Stephen Thompson — not to mention everyone else in the Top 15 and some outside of it — before you’ve posted a single victory is a bold strategy, Cotton.
Looking at his resume, Lee’s three best wins to date came against Michael Chiesa (June 2017), Edson Barboza (April 2018), and Gregor Gillespie (November 2019).
Each are talented, Top 10 fighters, though none have proven themselves to be Top 5 talents quite yet. None of them have challenged for championship gold, and while they’re divisional stalwarts, now across three different divisions, thus far they’ve all topped out at residing in the 5-10 range in their respective weight classes.
Those are all very good wins, and each was impressive in its own regard, especially the head kick finish of Gillespie, but each of those victories was also followed by a loss, and since pushing his winning streak to five with his win over Chiesa, Lee is just 2-3 inside the Octagon, having missed weight twice, which feels like at least part of the reason for him moving to welterweight again.
As I said earlier, I have long believed in Lee’s upside and think he possesses an uncommon blend of skills and abilities — he’s a solid wrestler, a better grappler than he gets credit for, and he has sharp, diverse striking skills, in addition to being a plus athlete — but thus far, those ample skills and abilities haven’t translated to any Top 5 wins at lightweight, yet alone welterweight, where size and strength are going to be two elements working against him more often than naught.
Lee was initially scheduled to fight Sean Brady this weekend in a bout that had already been pushed back once, but it was scuttled for a second time when Brady suffered a foot infection, resulting in the always game Rodriguez taking his place on Saturday night.
There is no other way to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it: Lee has to win this fight and he has to win it emphatically.
Not in an “otherwise he’s going to get cut” sense or anything like that, but after declaring yourself a Top 5 fighter in the division when you have exactly zero wins in the division and continuing to say that you’re disappointed Khabib Nurmagomedov retired before facing you because “He didn’t really have the challenges that he should’ve had to be an all-time great,” you can’t go out and struggle with or lose to Rodriguez.
To be clear: I think Rodriguez is a very good fighter and a very dangerous matchup for Lee on Saturday; he’s got good size, good pressure, clean boxing, and nothing to lose by taking this fight on short notice, plus he’s 5-1 in the division and has earned four of those wins since Lee last fought, so he’s the more proven welterweight of the two.
It’s like when Lee used to talk all that mess about being the best grappler in the lightweight division — he showed flashes of it against lesser fighters and started convincing people with his win over Michael Chiesa, even if Mario Yamasaki botched the stoppage, but he then got submitted by both Tony Ferguson and Charles Oliveira, never amassing enough consecutive or consequential victories to earn the chance to face Khabib, and ultimately falling well short of proving himself to be the best grappler in the division.
Now he’s set the bar for himself at “Top 5” welterweight and as good as I believe Rodriguez is, he’s someone that each of the men that currently make up the Top 5 in the welterweight rankings would beat handily — not because he’s a lesser talent, but because they’ve all proven they’re that good.
And now Lee has to as well.
Can he? It’s absolutely possible — Lee should have a considerable speed advantage, he has a three-inch reach advantage despite being three inches shorter than Rodriguez, and his game is more multi-faceted than what “D-Rod” brings to the table.
Will he? I lean towards “yes,” but I don’t think it will be easy — not after nearly 18 months on the sidelines, not after having reconstructive surgery on both of his ACLs during that time, and because Rodriguez isn’t going to make it easy for him.
Bigger picture, he needs to if he has any hopes of backing up his exceedingly bold statement from Monday, and maybe he gets there, but Belal Muhammad is 9-2 with 1 no contest in his last dozen welterweight appearances and is stuck at No. 9 in the rankings, which should tell you how much work Lee has to do in order to make good on declaring himself a Top 5 welterweight before he’s even registered his first divisional win.
And ultimately, that’s what I find most challenging with this: it was wholly unnecessary and feels like a zero upside play.
No one came away from that interview, hearing that statement, thinking, “You know, I think he’s right! He is a Top 5 welterweight.” Instead, Lee put an unnecessary target on his back and set the bar exceedingly high for himself.
Again, there are a ton of terrific fighters in every division that are not Top 5 fighter — and Lee wasn’t a consistent Top 5 fighter at lightweight either — so why say it?
Why not just go out there on Saturday night, put in a good performance against Daniel Rodriguez, and get on with the business of proving you’re a Top 5 welterweight, rather than making a bunch of grandiose statements that are going to be extremely difficult to back up?