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Post by Exe on Sept 28, 2016 15:21:03 GMT
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Post by shenlong on Sept 28, 2016 19:57:00 GMT
Have to say I understand the guy. I have nothing against Conor and I think he's an amazing fighter but the way the UFC treats him is just absurd in terms of respect to their own divisions, rankings and fighters.
The first Conor/Diaz fight was kind of an accident since Conor was supposed to fight RDA if I remember, but that's okay. It was a good fight. That the UFC decided to do a rematch is one of the most baffling decisions I've seen them do. From a business perspective, it was great since lots of people wanted to see the rematch, and from a pure quality fight perspective, it came out great and the fight was even better than the first one.
But doing that made a mockery of the featherweight title. That Conor wanted to have a fight at a higher weight class is okay, Anderson did it a few times (although Anderson had three defences when he started doing that), but when he lost, it's like the UFC said "Uh, you know, actually, we really didn't want him to lose and we're kinda building him up as our new cash cow, so let's just do that again, ok ?". So instead of having to defend his title like any normal champion, his weight vacation just extended a few more months for an opponent who's barely in the title picture at this point.
In the meantime, Aldo rebounded and got a pretty decisive victory against one of the most solid fighters ever in the UFC in a title eliminator bout. And now that Conor is finally done with that whole Diaz business and got the win the UFC needed to keep putting him up on a pedestal, he's getting a lightweight title fight, just like that.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great fight and I wanna see it, but yeah, Aldo is being shat on by the UFC at this point. It's like the featherweight title doesn't mean shit right now.
But I don't know how to feel about the whole business (other than the fact I don't really care that much). This is wrong to the fighters because fighting sports traditionally obey to a few rules like ranking and champions having to defend their titles. It's wrong because the UFC has been trying for years to tell everyone they followed these rules seriously (of course, there are other examples, like Lesnar being catapulted into title contention for big bucks), and now they're just completely disregarding them entirely because they want to build a character with Conor, a loud fighter who fights everyone and beats people up. They know he's got the right ingredients to be entertaining and they don't want to let that go to waste. Plus he's got a quirky accent and Americans love that. Now that Anderson is gone, they need someone new whose face they can put on all their products. They did that with poor old Ronda, but there's no telling if she's ever really gonna be back.
On the other hand, those rules are just that, rules, and while they might seem fair because everyone follows them, they're actually just part of another type of narrative. I mean, the simple concept of a champion is a narrative in itself. There's one guy who's above the rest and he's the champion. He's got the belt which symbolizes some kind of martial arts social status and the goal of the whole sport is to get the belt. You get the belt, you're the revered superman, you're the man, you're the guy other guys want to take down and to get to you, they'll have to fight it out and only the best of them will get to try his luck at beating you because in the end, there can be only one !
The champion is the king and the fighters, the conqueror after the piece of shiny plastic he gets to wear. It's a narrative. And of course, to decide who's gonna get to challenge the champion, we need a way to point at someone and say "he's the one !", that's ranking. In order to fight the king, first you have to be the n°1 in the world (except the champion who's in a world of his own) and then you have this waiting line that's supposed to tell you that this guy is better than this other guy who's better than this other guy, etc. There's another narrative.
In fact, a weight division is an organic mess of fighters who have on and off days. When they have a fight scheduled, they train specifically to perform a certain way against a certain other fighter. Over time, they develop habits and approach specific to themselves (which also evolve for better or worse), but all a fight really proves is that this one time, that one fighter managed to outperform another one and/or the judges agreed they did. Saying one is a better fighter, and ranking them higher, is both a practical way of deciding who'll fight the champion next and a type of narrative. People want heroes, they want to be told that this guy's victory clearly means he's a better character.
So yeah.
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