MMA Ranking Talk

I really hate all of the Fedor talk lately. Sadly, I hate misinformation and faulty logic even more. The ultimate point here is that Fedor does *NOT* need the UFC and the UFC does *NOT* need Fedor. For a more point by point breakdown…

1) Fedor is a grown man

Thus far in 2009 I’ve made job decisions because of pay, because I didn’t want to travel, because I did want to travel, because of benefits, because of who was trying to hire me…just to name a few. There are other reasons, and whether any of those played a part in Fedor’s decision I honestly can’t say. What I can say is that it’s Fedor’s choice based upon what Fedor wants. Whether that lines up with what *YOU* wanted or not sadly doesn’t matter.

Right now lots of people seem to think Lebron James is going to New York when he becomes a free agent. It might happen, it might not. NY might offer the “best” deal, it might not. Either way it will be *HIS* choice to make, just like this was Fedor’s choice to make.

The thought that a professional (athlete or otherwise) should agree to a deal one way or another just because of what *SOME* people want is very perplexing. If you’ve never been in a situation where you turned down a “great” offer for reasons all your own then I’m afraid you’ve never been in high enough demand.

2) Competition inside and outside the UFC

The crux of some arguments I see about Fedor “needing” to go to the UFC revolves around the fact that the UFC has the best of the best of the best SIR! and everyone not in the UFC is a bunch of 40 IQ, quadriplegics that couldn’t survive the weigh-in against Fedor. Let’s dig into this a bit more.

Round 1 – Given to the UFC side
Let’s start off by defaulting the first fight to the “UFC” side of the argument. Lets say that right now the “best” fight for Fedor is against Brock Lesnar. Whether you agree or not, just please go with it for this scenario. We’ll say that Fedor against Brock would be the highest profile/grossing/challenging/whatever fight he could get.

While conceding this point I do want to note how poor it makes the sport look when someone claims a 29-1 fighter that’s been almost universally recognized as number 1 for 5(ish) years *HAS* to fight a 4-1 guy that has gone 3-1 against top 20 fighters since beating a “can” about 2 years ago. Realize that we aren’t talking about some BJ Penn Vs Shinya Aoki, some East meets West, some Catchweight uber bout. What we are talking about is the longest standing #1 fighter in a weight class “needing” to take on someone that two and a half years ago hadn’t even had a professional fight.

Cro Cop and Big Nog
So the score stands at:

UFC – 1
Mouth Breathers – 0

Here’s where it gets weird. After conceding Brock as the number one fight for Fedor we start to look at other fighters both in and out of the UFC. Let’s take a quick look at Cro Cop and Big Nog. Both of these guys have been “top 10″(ish) fighters for years. Both have had recent losses, but those happen.

What is interesting is that no one really wants to have Fedor fight these guys. Nog turned down a fight with Fedor a few years back and although Cro Cop has seemed willing, most fans have had little desire to see a rematch. This is “weird” because two of the best fighters in the UFC are fighters that people don’t want to see Fedor fight.

Fighter Comparisons
With Brock, Nog and Cro Cop accounted for, let’s take a look at some of the other fighters inside the UFC and how they compare to fighters available outside the UFC.

Werdum Vs Gonzaga

People seem to scoff at a possible fight between Fedor and Werdum, but have no problem claiming Gonzaga among the many possible challenges for Fedor in the UFC. Looking at the comparison we see that the fighters are *VERY* even. They have the same number of wins/losses/KOs. Their Subs are within one. What we also notice is that Werdum holds *TWO* wins over Gonzaga and has a harder strength of schedule. If you consider Gonzaga a valid opponent for Fedor, then I can’t fathom how Werdum wouldn’t also be considered reasonable.

Rogers Vs Carwin

One is 10-0, one is 11-0. One has 6(t)KOs and 5 subs, one has 9(t)KOs and one sub. Both have an overall weaker strength of schedule. Both had their biggest win in their last fight. Much like the example above, if Carwin is a valid opponent for Fedor, then Rogers has to be considered one as well.

Silva (bigfoot) Vs Cain

Cain is 6-0. Bigfoot is 12-1. Both have similar strengths of schedule and Silva has a big size and BJJ advantage. Again, I’m not going to claim one is categorically better than the other, but isn’t it at least reasonable to consider them “close”.

Monson Vs Mir

Monson has more wins, more subs and a higher sub percentage. Both have a win over someone the other person lost to. The big “advantage” for Mir is that he has the one big win over Nog. Even still, I’m forced to wonder where the huge gap is? What is it that makes Mir an absolute “challenge” to Fedor and Monson a “can”?

Sergei Vs Couture

One fighter has 16 wins, 4 losses and finished 15 of those wins. The other fighter (amazing as he is) has the same number of wins and more than twice as many losses. In addition to that they only finished 9 of their 16 wins.

This is definitely one of the more volatile groupings for a few reasons. First, Sergei took some time off and didn’t look great in his last fight. Second, one of the fighters is Randy Couture. Randy is always a game opponent and anything can happen. Having said that, the last time Randy won three fights in a row was in 2001. The last time he finished a fight (other than Gonzaga who broke his own nose while being taken down) was 2004.

Truth be told I’d gladly watch both of these people fight Fedor. The thing to remember about Fedor though is that he hasn’t gone to decision in about 5 years. He’s hardly left the first round in that time either. Given that information it seems reasonable that a person who finishes fights has a bit of an edge compared to someone going the decision route. Regardless, take an objective look and logically explain to someone who’s never even heard of MMA that one of the above fighters is an absolute challenge to Fedor and the other has zero right to even step into the ring.

Wild Card – Aleks
There’s one more fighter that needs to be mentioned. Fedor’s brother Aleks. People sometimes forget, but Aleks is an amazing fighter in his own right and people able to defeat him easily improve their standing. Even though Fedor won’t fight his brother directly, I’m sure you could persuade him to fight whomever did manage to beat him. (Try to find the video of Fedor in the locker room when Aleks loses. /hides)

Wrap it up
So let’s see, we defaulted Brock to the top spot, we completely ignored Josh Barnett, and we still found very similar competition for Fedor outside the UFC. The exact order of how the above fighters matchup will vary from person to person, and competition isn’t the same as attention. The point though is that it’s reasonable to say that at worst Fedor will be able to face “comparable” competition outside the UFC.

3) Haters Hate…and usually use faulty logic

Something that amuses me is seeing people that two weeks ago called Fedor a can now calling him a bum. The people that hated on Fedor two weeks ago are the ones that would have claimed he’d lose to Brock, that if he beat Brock would claim he’d lose to Randy, that if he beat Randy would claim Randy was old, etc. Some people will *NEVER* give Fedor his due respect (not talking hug his nuts I’m talking pay the man his fucking due).

Here are a few of the illogical things I’ve seen in recent days:

To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best
Shockingly enough this comment was used to bash Fedor! Uhhh, he is the best, he’s been the best. Why on earth is it Fedor has to go out of his way and make concessions to compete against people lower than him? How can you claim you need to beat the best to be the best and then automatically have people leapfrogging the best?

The reason this is faulty logic is I’m not even the one claiming the “beat the best blahblahblah” line. The person in one breath claims you *HAVE* to beat the best to be the best, and then turns around and claims the best is no longer the best even though they haven’t been beaten. Stuff like that seriously hurts my head.

Rothwell is a challenge to Fedor
Look, I respect Big Ben. Just like I respect Paul Buentello. They are both solid fighters with careers most would kill for. What bothers me though is that 2 weeks ago both Paul and Ben were outside the UFC and no one was talking about them being legit fights for Fedor. The fact that they are now in the UFC doesn’t immediately make them better. If you didn’t think Rothwell was competition outside the UFC for Fedor, then you can’t suddenly think he’s competition inside the UFC for Fedor.

Lebron didn’t go to NY, he sucks!
Isn’t it confusing how Fedor can be worth huge sums of money, making concessions and the second he doesn’t sign he’s a bum? If Dana White would have just went on record and said, “We don’t want Fedor, he’s washed up, blahblahblah” and never offered him a dime I’d have been ok with things. Where I get confused is how you can stress how hard you trying to get a guy that suddenly isn’t even a good fighter.

One final point

Sadly I find myself forced to once again point out that the UFC will *NOT* have all of the best fighters. They have lots, they can even have most, but they will not have all of them. I’ve explained this before, I’ve shown the math and it’s simply a fact at this point in time. Anyone that continues to base their opinions around the notion that the UFC can, will or does have *ALL* of the best fighters is simply wrong and needs step back and reaccess things.

Tags: fedor, ufc

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.