UFC tarnishes the shine on its belts
Decision to give Holloway and Pettis a title shot at UFC 206 in Toronto was poorly executed
The machinations that have led to next weekend’s new UFC 206 main event between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis for the interim UFC featherweight title highlights both the perceived importance and current status of championship belts.
On one hand, installing a replacement championship bout atop next Saturday’s pay-per-view return to Toronto seems like a logical decision from a business standpoint.
All but one UFC pay-per-view this year has included at least one championship clash and those shiny gold belts are often seen as the hooks that reel in those elusive casual viewers and can appease the hardcore set if the rest of the fight card isn’t particularly strong.
Generally speaking, championship fights feature the best competitors in a particular weight class and who doesn’t want to see two of the best athletes in their respective division go toe to toe?
On the other hand, the shifting of belts between Conor McGregor, Jose Aldo and Toronto’s new main event pairing of Holloway and Pettis feels like a mad scramble to give greater importance to a terrific fight that didn’t have enough juice to headline a pay-per-view. The solution to make it appear more important was to throw an interim title into the mix even if it meant clumsily taking a belt away from McGregor and installing Aldo as a rightfully disputed undisputed champion.
Championships have to mean something and right now they don’t seem to have that much value.
A few weeks ago in New York, McGregor’s quest to become the first fighter to hold two titles simultaneously was the centrepiece of UFC 205 — a monumental event built around three championship fights and supported by a handful of additional bouts featuring former titleholders.
In deciding to shuffle featherweight belts around in an attempt to give added meaning to the Holloway-Pettis clash, the UFC has quickly brought McGregor’s historic reign over two divisions to a close in under a month (and without a fight), diminishing the importance of its titles on the whole.
Interim titles used to be a rarity in the UFC, reserved for those select cases where sitting champions were felled by injuries and sidelined for an extended period of time; see Mir, Frank or Cruz, Dominick.
Now they seem to be added to bouts simply as an attempt to spike interest and generate conversation, even if the reigning champion isn’t expected to be out for very long or just happens to be busy fighting in other weight classes while pursuing other titles.
It’s weird because the UFC is trying to do the right thing — get the featherweight belt back into circulation, add some tangible stakes to next week’s new main event and build toward a title unification clash between Aldo and the Holloway-Pettis winner in the first half of 2017 — but the execution is off and the problem runs deeper than just the featherweight division.
Championships and divisional rankings are either always of the utmost importance and what fans should be focused on or they’re secondary to making the biggest fights possible; it can’t be a little of Column A and a little of Column B depending on which position best fits the current situation.
Interim titles shouldn’t be thrown into the mix a couple weeks before a fight in order to hold the audience’s attention or add a little more spice to a matchup. And championships should be won in the Octagon, not doled out during a break in a mid-November broadcast from Australia.
If the UFC wants fans to care about championship fights and the men and women wearing those 10 title belts, it has to lead by example.
E. Spencer Kyte writes on MMA for The Province. Follow him on social media — twitter.com/spencerkyte