UFC Vegas 48: No Place for Patience in the 'All or Nothing' Era
Accepting that development takes times isn't something most fans or media wants to do these days
Shortly after Sunday’s Super Bowl Halftime Show wrapped, I got a text from my buddy Andy, who was expressing his frustration with people deigning to christen the Dr. Dre et al collection from this year as the “Best Super Bowl Halftime Performance Ever” in a world where Prince’s Super Bowl XLI performance is a thing that happened.
After going back and watching the performance — I was taping The Next Day Takeaways when it aired live — I responded that while it was quite good, it wasn’t Prince good, and we got talking about the “Best Thing Ever” times we’re living in today.
“I think people confuse ‘Dr. Dre and Snoop are playing songs I like and that’s awesome’ with ‘This performance is awesome,’ but we live in a world of hot takes,” Andy offered, leading us into a conversation of our preference for measure analysis and a general “wait and see” approach.
Each of us would have loved to see someone come out and say, “That was quite good, but I’m going to go back and watch a whole bunch of other memorable performances before offering my thoughts on where this show fits in the pantheon off all-time great Super Bowl Halftime performances, accepting that not everyone is going to agree.”
But no one does that these days, because it doesn’t make for good television or Twitter’ing or podcasting.
It’s a Hot Take, Ricky Bobby, instant assessment world, and folks like Andy and me that prefer measured analysis that preaches patience and waits for empirical evidence before forming reasonable conclusions are plumb out of luck, which stinks, because that’s undeniably the best way to go about things.
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I think about this stuff a lot because this happens in MMA all the time. It’s also extra-present in my head right now because Johnny Walker is headlining Saturday, and he’s one of the greatest recent examples of when patience and more evidence was required, but folks just said, “The hell with that!” and opted instead to start suggesting he might be the man to dethrone Jon Jones because he’d beaten Misha Cirkunov in no time flat.
From The Hype Machine is Broken:
When he ran through Misha Cirkunov, who was ranked in the Top 10 at the time, in just 36 seconds at UFC 235, the hype machine kicked into overdrive, with people talking about Walker as a serious threat to Jon Jones and the Brazilian’s every comment about the dominant champion being parroted for clicks without much pushback. Three wins in a touch under five months with one win over a fringe Top 10 fighter and folks were genuinely discussing this man’s chances for beating arguably the most gifted fighter to ever grace the Octagon.
In his next appearance, Walker got knocked out by the perpetually underrated and overlooked Corey Anderson in just over two minutes, instantly ending any conversations about his title prospects, and four months later, he dropped an uneventful decision to Nikita Krylov, unable to contend with the inconsistent divisional stalwart’s grappling-heavy approach.
That piece ran ahead of last September’s Fight Night event where Walker and Kevin Holland fought alongside each other, both in critical matchups they would not win.
Walker returns on Saturday, paired off with Jamahal Hill in a bout that has been elevated to main event status, and coming off a loss to Thiago Santos where he connected on 48 of 130 significant strikes over five rounds.
Read that again, please: this dude that people were honest to goodness discussing as a possible threat to Jon Jones enters this weekend’s event with a 1-3 record since that talk reached a fever pitch and coming off a fight where he connected on less than two significant strikes per minute and less than 10 per round.
The reason this stuff bothers me so much is that it’s completely unnecessary and results in these athletes being treated like disposable commodities.
There is literally no reason to get as wildly hyperbolic and fantastical as we do other than to generate clicks and foster ridiculous conversations, especially when there are ways to still be ultra-excited about someone like Walker when things are going well, while also acknowledging that he’s got a long way to go before we should be talking about him in the same breath as Jon Jones.
Instead, everyone hypes these competitors to the hilt and then abandons ship as soon as things start heading south, and they almost always head south.
Don’t believe me?
Walker is still just 29 years old — he turns 30 at the end of next month — and all that intriguing potential he showed when he ran through Khalil Rountree Jr. and Justin Ledet and Misha Cirkunov and stopped Ryan Spann is all still there, but his struggles have prompted just about everyone to give up their seats on the Johnny Walker Express and form a different opinion about him and how far he could ascend in the light heavyweight division now that things aren’t going as well as they were at the start of his UFC career.
Rather than riding this three-and-a-half-year rollercoaster, we could have just said at the start, after the first couple highlight reel efforts, that Walker showed a ton of upside, but needed to prove himself against more established, more experienced competition before making a projection about how far up the divisional ladder he could climb.
We could have said that very seldom do fighters make an absolute beeline to the top of their division, getting to the top in a couple years while continuing to murderize everyone that stands in their path, so while Walker has looked outstanding against less established foes with limited experience and modest results in the UFC, he could encounter some trouble once he starts facing the more tenured members of the Top 10.
We could have said asking whether he’s going to be the one to dethrone Jon Jones after a list of former champions and world-class talents couldn't accomplish the feat was at the very least a little hurried, but also a lot ridiculous.
But no one wants to do measured.
No one wants to do patient.
No one wants to do “this person is probably three years away and likely to have a couple losses in there too” content, even though there is a mountain of evidence that tells us that is almost assuredly what is going to happen.
I’m as high on Casey O’Neill as a prospect and future champion as just about anyone, but even when asking if she will be the “Future Queen of the Flyweights” on Saturday following her win over Roxanne Modafferi (split decision my ass!), I made sure to included that I hoped she would have a slow progression with plenty of time to garner more experience, and capped her “looks capable of going toe-to-toe with anyone in the division right now” south of current champ Valentina Shevchenko, because suggesting a 24-year-old with nine fights — even one that has looked as good as O’Neill has — is ready to beat a woman that has mauled far more seasoned fighters for the last five years, barely losing a round, is wholly unnecessary.
It’s like everyone wants to offer up and parrot the absolute best-case, “if everything goes perfectly” projections for these athletes just in case it happens, so that they can go back and say, “See — I said Johnny Walker could be the one to unseat Jon Jones,” while also having little-to-no interest in addressing the myriad times that position has come up short.
Because rather than acknowledge they should have preached patience and caution, it’s just on to the next one, repeating the same pattern with the latest high-upside fighter generating some buzz.
It has to stop.
We need to give fighters time.
We have to be patient, be measured, and consider the evidence, even if it’s not the most exciting way of doing things.