Who You Calling Average?
The way we categorize fighters and how we talk about this sport in general has to change.
I should have known Thursday was going to be a frustrating day when my dog, who usually never strays more than 10 feet from my side on our morning walks, bounded off in the opposite direction, twice, prompting me to run after him lest he get too far away and something really not great happen.
It should have been clear to me when I started making a pasta sauce and the thing was boiling and spitting while the element was set to a very low heat, eventually creating a solid little caked-on layer on the bottom of the pan. (Note: I saved it and it was delicious.)
I should have known better than to jump on Twitter and share my thoughts on the tweet below because nothing good every really comes from voicing an opinion on Twitter, but I just had to go and flex my thumbs, lighting a fuse to an annoying back-and-forth that ultimately left me wanting to apologize to my wife (and all women on social media and in the world, generally) for all the times I’ve probably pulled the “Where you’re making your mistake is…” card like her opinion is a mistake. (Note: I did, in fact, apologize, while recounting all this to her after work.)
I should have walked away, but I didn’t, and now I’m here.
So here’s what happened.
Adam sent out this tweet:
And I followed with these:
It led to pleasant interactions with a couple people I know, and one unpleasant experience with someone I don’t — the guy who hit me with the mansplaining, told me I was getting defensive, and asked why I even bothered to voice an opinion if I wasn’t ready to defend it.
Dear Women,
I’m sorry for my gender; we’re the goddamn worst.
Respectfully yours,
Spencer
I’m not going to give the entire thread the cut-and-post treatment because my posts are already TL;DR and you can find it on my timeline, but what it really came down to was the definition of the word “average” specifically and, more broadly speaking, the way we categorize and judge fighters.
I didn’t and still don’t think Adam referencing the now-released Antonio Carlos Junior as “an average UFC fighter” is fair / just / accurate and I want to see if I can better articulate the points I was trying to make on Twitter. (Thank goodness for Substack!)
Antonio Carlos Junior went 7-2-0-1 in his first 10 UFC appearances, earning a win at heavyweight in his debut and a loss at light heavyweight in his second appearance before relocating to the middleweight division, where he logged 11 total appearances prior to his release.
He went 6-1-0-1 in his first eight fights in the 185-pound ranks, including a five-fight winning streak that featured a decision win over Marvin Vettori and consecutive submission finishes of Eric Spicely, Jack Marshman, and Tim Boetsch. He then lost three straight decisions to Ian Heinisch (29-28 across the board), Uriah Hall (29-28 split), and Brad Tavares (30-27 x2, 29-28), resulting in his subsequent release.
His final record in the UFC comes in at 7-5-0-1 with a 6-4-0-1 mark at middleweight.
For me, losing to three straight Top 15 fighters doesn’t mean you’re average; it’s means you’re not quite good enough to earn a spot in the Top 15, and I don’t see that as a major flaw.
The UFC website currently lists 75 competitors in its middleweight division, though a better estimate when accounting for released or retired fighters (and Nick Diaz) is that there are 60 active middleweights in the UFC at present.
That means the Top 15 in the rankings represent the top 25% of fighters in the division, the next 15 representing the range between 26% and 50% and so on down the line.
Personally, I don’t think Carlos Junior falls at No. 30 or lower if we were to rank all of the middleweights in the UFC, which means he’s clear of that “middle of the pack or worse” designation for me, but it’s not just about the literal definition of average and getting all semantic about things.
He doesn't feel average.
Average UFC fighters don’t win five straight inside the Octagon at any point; they just don’t, regardless of who they’re fighting.
And it’s not like he was fighting bums either — he beat the guy currently stationed at No. 4 in the division (Vettori), a Top 15 stalwart who was 3-1 over his previous four fights (Boetsch), and a couple tough outs who are closer to what I would consider average UFC fighters (Spicely, Marshman).
Deeming Carlos Junior “average” during the first prolonged losing streak of his career — one that came against three Top 15 fighters — feels like grading him at his lowest point, where, again, it’s not really that low to me. There are a lot of UFC fighters that would struggle and have struggled against fighters in the Top 15 in their respective divisions, and a good number of them aren’t fighters I would consider “average.”
Now, some of this is obviously subjective — what one person considers average isn’t necessarily the same for the next person, and how everyone grades out “an average fighter” could be wildly different, with some people thinking the majority of fighters in the UFC are “average, at best” while others view average to me “middling or worse,” which would lead to obvious clashes with the “most of the roster is average” set, which, it seems, is what happened to me today.
But that brings me to the broader part of this conversation: how we speak about and categorize these men and women.
I think the way we speak about these men and women is too dismissive of how difficult it is to be successful at the highest levels of this sport and far too narrow when it comes to the way we describe them.
At the outset of Thursday series of tweets, my friend Scott Fontana of the New York Post and Couchside Judges podcast offered up the following sentiment, one I completely agree with:
Personally, my belief is that a lot of people — fans and media alike — see four tiers of fighters in the UFC today:
GOATs
Elite Class
Average Fighters
Bums
GOATs stand alone, the elite class is made up of anywhere from two to 12 fighters, depending on the division and how much people like the athletes they’re talking about, “average fighters” represent the majority of the roster, and “bums” are those competitors who have no business stepping into the Octagon in the first place, which translates into anywhere from 10-35% of the roster, depending on how that person feels about Contender Series graduates, MMA neophytes, and solid fighters they just personally can’t stand.
There’s just not enough nuance there for me.
When I did my Fighters to Watch 2021 series, I broke down each division into six categories — champion, challengers, in the mix, emerging, prospects, and wild cards. It didn’t cover every fighter in every division because each division also has a middle class made up of quality hands who are more what I would consider “average fighters” and a lower tier of competitors who are either just breaking into the UFC or trying to hold onto their spot on the roster.
While I don’t think my definitions and way of categorizing fighters is the right way or the only way, I do think that we, as observers, critics, pundits, and fans, need to find different ways of speaking about these athletes, more accurately quantifying what they’ve accomplished, and doing so with greater consistency.
It’s the old problem the UFC created for itself with its pre-fight packages, where everyone was called a contender.
If everyone is a contender, it devalues actual contenders and blurs the lines on what it takes to be a legitimate contender.
This is my big issue with the dismissive nature of calling Antonio Carlos Junior an “average UFC fighter.”
If he’s “average,” what are the actual average fighters?
I agree that he’s not a contender, but to me, there is a ton of room between contender and average on the “How do I describe this fighter?” spectrum, and I would consider factors beyond his most recent results in figuring out where to place him.
Here’s another example:
When Jose Aldo beat Chito Vera on the final card of 2020, I saw someone tweet after the bout (sorry, I can’t recall who or else I would grab the tweet) something along the lines of “See? Aldo is still a contender and far from washed up,” which prompted me to write the following in my About Last Night takeaway column:
As an aside, we really need to find a middle ground between “He’s far from done” and “He’s still a contender” when assessing these former champions like Aldo, because I don’t think anyone actually thought he was done-done heading into this one, but you can’t come away from a good, but not great effort against a fun, but flawed Vera and call him a contender, especially given how things went when Aldo faced Petr Yan over the summer.
Whatever that middle ground is, that’s where Aldo currently resides, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For me, Aldo is a former champion and once great fighter who is in decline. He’s still capable of beating the right ranked opponents and several other quality bantamweights, but he’s not a contender. He’s the fading, tenured superstar that everyone still loves even though he’s not the same fighter he used to be.
I know it’s easier to just say, “See — he’s still a contender,” but I mean would you really pick him to beat anyone in the Top 5 right now? The Top 10?
And what identifies a fighter as a legitimate contender? What are the criteria?
That’s the part that truly irks me: there is no real consistency to how we handle these things.
Carlos Junior is described as average after suffering consecutive losses to a trio of ranked fighters after winning five straight, but Khamzat Chimaev beats a trio of competitors who, by the same measures, would have to be considered “below average” at best, and is deemed an elite talent who should be taking on Top 5 competition next time out.
How does “Cara de Sapato” get crushed for losing to ranked opposition while Chimaev gets treated like a bona fide contender when he’s beaten three fighters with a combined 7-13 record in the UFC?
If Carlos Junior is considered middling because he can’t beat guys in the upper quarter of the divisional hierarchy, why is Chimaev considered elite for trouncing two guys that reside in the lower half of the very same division?
The two don’t add up.
Again, I get that some of this is subjective, however it’s also important (at least to me) because how we talk about these men and women dictates how fans identify them and if we’re calling everyone contenders or average or prospects, all of those identifiers start to lose meaning and you get a situation where a whole lot of people actually think Chimaev is better than all but three UFC welterweights without him having beaten a single opponent with a winning record inside the Octagon.
Note: I don’t dislike Chimaev — I actually think he’s quite good — but I just want to see it against someone that isn’t Gerald Meerschaert or Rhys McKee or John Phillips, you know?
We can’t just be looking at the last two, three, four results and judging these things on wins and losses alone — who you fight matters; what you did before those fights matters; the circumstances surrounding those fights matter; and when they happened in your career (or your opponents’ career) matters too.
Everything is cumulative and far more nuanced and complex than we ever really make it out to be.
Winning a fight in the UFC is hard; ask any of the people who get there and get sent packing without picking up a victory.
Winning multiple fights in the UFC is even harder.
Winning four, five, six fights in a row is really goddamn difficult, and only 50 people have won seven consecutive bouts or more, which tells you how incredible that particular achievement is.
We have to appreciate this stuff more or else we make it seem like winning is simple and all victories are created equal, and neither of those things is even remotely close to true.
Same goes for how we classify these athletes too, because just tossing around these labels like “average” and “contender” and “GOAT” haphazardly does all fighters a disservice.
There are tiers to this, levels to this, context and complexities to this, and we have to speak about them accordingly, explain them as clearly, consistently, and frequently as we can so that we can have quality nuanced conversations about these competitors and this sport, as well as helping to cultivate an educated audience that understands these things as well.
None of my ranting or complaining or kicking up a fuss is ever about me being right and my way being the only way — it’s always about working together to elevate the level of discourse surrounding this sport so that we can talk about the intricacies, subtleties, and all-around awesomeness of it all in better ways.
/rant