Shortly after claiming the UFC lightweight title with a slick first-round submission win over Benson Henderson, Anthony Pettis said he’s still very much interested in sharing the cage with the man he was supposed to meet at UFC 163, featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
From a fan’s perspective – yes please; they’re two of the most electric fighters in the sport, and we were teased with the match-up earlier this year.
From the standpoint of what makes the most sense for the UFC and the two divisions these two champions represent – please don’t do it.
There was no real need to skip Pettis to the head of the line in the featherweight division when his initial encounter with Aldo was set up, and there is even less reason now that he stands atop the lightweight division.
The only time we should be contemplating super-fights is when a champion has cleaned out the weight class. I mean, Pettis hasn’t even been the champion for 24 hours and we’re already thinking about him facing someone from outside the lightweight division?
As outstanding as he looked on Saturday night – and he looked tremendous – Pettis has three wins in the UFC, and there are a number of challengers queuing up to face the newly-crowned champion in the 155-pound ranks.
T.J. Grant was supposed to be the other half of the main event Saturday night in Milwaukee before a concussion opened the door for Pettis, and many people thought Gilbert Melendez should have been the man wearing championship gold after his encounter with Henderson back in April.
Josh Thomson is making noise about wanting a bout with Pettis, Rafael dos Anjos just dominated Donald Cerrone and the winner of the upcoming bout between Pat Healy and Khabib Nurmagomedov will also be “in the mix.”
That’s five guys within a win or two of fighting for the title, and that doesn’t even include veterans Jim Miller and Gray Maynard, both of whom are capable of putting together two or three dominant victories in quick succession to get back into the title hunt as well.
The same goes for Aldo at featherweight.
Ricardo Lamas has been patiently waiting for his opportunity to fight for the title since blistering Erik Koch back in January. It was his fourth consecutive victory and third straight over a top-10 opponent. There is literally no fight out there that makes sense for Lamas outside of a championship bout with Aldo, and yet the UFC (and fight fans) still seem intent on brushing “The Bully” aside once again.
Saturday night, Chad Mendes became the first man to finish Clay Guida, stopping “The Carpenter” with an assortment of thunderous punches early in the third round. After wrestling his way into a title shot against Aldo at UFC 142, the Team Alpha Male standout has become comfortable and confident with his striking, which in turn has made him a much more dangerous fighter and has brought him back into the title picture quicker than many expected.
And then there is Cub Swanson, who has rebounded from a Nov. 2011 loss to Lamas by stringing together five straight wins. Four of those victories have been stoppages, and the one decision came in an entertaining, dominant performance against Dustin Poirier, who also happened to show he’s still a contender on Saturday night.
UFC President Dana White said Saturday night that he believes Pettis is the biggest potential challenge to Aldo, calling it a “sick fight” during his post-fight media scrum. He also said that if it did happen, one of the champions would have to relinquish their title and permanently relocate to a new weight class.
OK – he didn’t say it in that much detail, but if you watch the video, that’s the impression that you get from White’s “ums and ahs” when Dave Meltzer brings up the “champion vs. champion” possibility.
That’s the right way to do it, but why would you want to strip one of these dominant champions of their belt at this point in time?
We’ve long talked about Aldo making the move to lightweight, and I think that would be the right direction to go in the future. But if that’s the case, Lamas deserves his chance to win the title before Aldo leaves, and a couple other fighters deserve a shot in the space where Pettis is defending the title he won in Milwaukee.
As I said off the top, a fight between Aldo and Pettis would be an exciting match-up that, coupled with the right peripheral pieces, could headline a monster pay-per-view card down the line. The trailer that the marketing and promotions department could put together with the combined highlights these two have delivered would be insane, and every time I saw it I would get more and more amped up about the fight.
But now is not the time to make it happen.
These two divisions are building all kinds of momentum individually right now. Featherweight has been the most consistently entertaining weight class in the UFC over the last two years, and lightweight is one of the deepest collections of talent in the organization.
Putting together a super-fight between the divisional champions puts them in an even greater spotlight, but pauses the budding stardom of some other athletes in those weight classes, forcing those that have worked their way into title contention already to keep risking their spot in the rankings.
And if you want to look at this from a business perspective, pitting Aldo against Pettis would take a viable pay-per-view headliner off the table. Two title fights for two pay-per-view events provides greater returns than a “champion vs. champion” showdown that doesn’t necessarily need to happen at this point in time.
Let nature take its course.
We already know that an Aldo versus Pettis match-up is one that makes the hairs stand up on the back of the neck of fight fans around the globe, but that isn’t going to change any time soon as long as they keep winning.
Aldo and Pettis each still have work to do in their respective divisions, and the fighters that have worked their way into the title picture at both featherweight and lightweight have done everything the UFC could possibly ask of potential challengers. They’re finishing fights, exciting the audience, doing all the right things outside of the cage and should be rewarded for their efforts.
If a bout between Aldo and Pettis is meant to happen, it will happen, but forcing it at this point would be a misstep. Let them both continue to grow as champions, stars and pay-per-view draws before rushing them into the cage against each other.